The Village REIC - A Learning Journey

Jenga Mwendo and Lydia Cutrer participated in Cooperation New Orleans’ first Black Liberation Co-op Academy (BLCA). They understood that centuries of racist and discriminatory practices have led to disproportionately lower Black property ownership & wealth, as well as increased gentrification. With Jenga’s experience as a Project Manager in real estate development, and Lydia’s experience Licensed Real Estate Agent (and now as a Broker), the two sought to address this problem with a cooperative solution - collective real estate investment. To gain additional support and technical assistance, Lydia took part in the VOQAL Fellowship and both Lydia and Jenga joined the Start.coop Business Accelerator. They presented as a part of Cooperation New Orleans’ “Cooperative Strategies for Shared Land, Housing and Real Estate Learning Series” last spring. They also created a focus group of New Orleans residents and established an informal advisory committee. I was included in both. Due to my ongoing interest and support of this project, as well as my work with Cooperation New Orleans, Lydia and Jenga invited me to join them in this project.

Since last summer Jenga, Lydia, and I (the Stewardship Team) have been working together to explore starting a real estate investment cooperative in Louisiana. We are creating a real estate investment cooperative to collectively invest in commercial (not residential) real estate with the following goals:

​

1. Provide more opportunities for wealth-building in the Black community (note: returns are expected but will likely be modest)

2. Greater Black community control of the built environment

 

This will be the first real estate investment cooperative in Louisiana that we are aware of. We recently received funding to organize a learning journey for 10-15 people to educate ourselves together on how to start a real estate investment cooperative in Louisiana. A learning journey is a planned educational experience designed for a group of people to gain knowledge collectively so that they are equipped to work together or create something together. In this case, we will be learning together about how to start a real estate investment cooperative in Louisiana. We anticipate that the learning journey will begin in April and end in September.

Learning journey participants will meet regularly to study and discuss. Key meetings will be led by professionals in the relevant study areas. Opportunities to travel to Minnesota to meet other REICs and to Atlanta to connect with other Black cooperatives will be available; Assistance with travel expenses will be available. Please contact us at villagereic@gmail.com if you’re interested in joining the learning journey cohort. Ideally, interested learning journey participants will ultimately be the founding members of the cooperative.