CY PLAN 113B Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Evergreen Cooperatives, Rust Belt, Zip Code
22 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Couity Wealth Buildig: Ted Hoard fro
Deoray Collaoratie April ,
• Your zip code is more determinant of your life and your health than your genetic code
o Life and death matter for those of the lowest income
• For job creation
o But a job is not enough anymore, we need other resources to build wealth in order to stay
out of poverty
o What is the quality of the job? Career path of the job?
o Income can start and stop. Assets create security and stability; allowing families to better
withstand shocks like unemployment and illness
• Community wealth building: systems approach to economic development built on locally rooted and
broadly held ownership
o More equity and wealth, community stability, environmental outcomes for those who live in
disinvested neighborhoods
o Broaden ownership locally = less likely to get up and leave the community
o Cleveland was in the top 5 richest cities, but now they are the #1 or 2 poorest cities in the US
o The business and manufacturing have all left the city
o Leveraging anchor economic power: Corporations will come and go (as anchor institutions),
but universities and hospitals are substantial endowments that stay for the long haul (but
rarely invest those returns = maximize what the market will give them on Wall Street)
▪ Hire local, buy local, invest local, and build local supply chains
▪ Public and
• Cooperatives
o Employee owned: each employee has a share in the company; share in the profits
▪ No outside investors that get a share of the profits
o Evergreen Cooperatives (Cleveland, OH)
▪ Everyone ones a share of the company
▪ All of the eployees deide ho uh to ork sie they are the oers
o Created 3 companies: Evergreen Cooperative Laundry, Evergreen Energy Solutions, and
Green City Growers that work in partnership with the ity’s ajor ahors
o Need to create an ecosystem to build wealth and ownership within the community
o If these orkfores ere far aay, it ould’t e aessile to the orkers
• Community Wealth Building in Preston and Lancashire, England
o Rust belt city – the consequence of recession and accompanying lack of investment
o Wanted the cooperative to come out and replicate the model
o Called the model of capitalism a systemic failure. They believed that they needed to do
something differently
o The city was creative. They wanted to have a public bank that would help out the economy
and change their source of electricity to renewable energy
o Most of the money left the community beforehand (now only 20% left the Preston City
Council boundary, compared to 61%)
o Shows the impact of keeping the money within the community
o Major economic development strategy of England is to replicate this scale elsewhere
o Take control of the community and use a system that will take care of the community
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