Vision
We envision a future where places and buildings of diverse cultural and community significance find long-term sustainability through shared stewardship and social purpose.
The physical heritage of marginalized communities is an integral part of every urban neighborhood. And the people represented by and supported by those precious places remain in place as market forces shift.
Mission
Cultural Equity Realty Trust (CERT) supports communities in developing and sustaining social-purpose real property to advance cultural justice and preserve diverse heritages.
We define real property broadly to include buildings, natural landscapes, gardens, sites of memory, and others. Cultural justice is the act of preserving the memory and physical heritage of marginalized groups, as well as serving the needs—whatever they may be—of these communities.
Social purpose refers to the usefulness of a site to a particular community, its ability to be inhabited and animated, a location for discourse, action, illumination, healing, or refuge. It also suggests a sense of value capable of supporting the site financially and operationally.
CERT interprets its mission in two ways. Primarily, we are interested in sites of historic, cultural, or community significance that need a solution for more sustained stewardship. We may also undertake the creation of new building or place, if the purpose is to serve the needs of cultural justice.
Our Journey
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Now
CERT was inspired by the three projects currently under our umbrella in late 2018—all projects with communities facing challenges to preserve and sustain the sites. At the same time, there was growing recognition by Social Impact Commons of the need for more capacity in the nonprofit community to leverage shared management solutions for sustaining real property resources. This was particularly true among nonprofits of and for BIPOC and other communities combatting market displacement and preserving cultural heritage.
The current group of Philly-based stakeholders gathered and CERT was launched more formally in 2021 with generous support from the Barra Foundation. We remain in start-up mode with Impact Commons as outsourced management while we explore these initial pilot projects and raise funds to bring on full-time leadership.
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Next
As we complete our initial goals for current projects, we are looking projects that will permit CERT to build its financial capacity to support a dedicated shared team of finance, legal, fundraising, as well as project and property management professionals to support our community of projects under co-management.
To make this leap, we are looking to larger projects, including nonprofit shared space, artist live-work space, and affordable housing for low-income nonprofit and culture workers. For this next project we are interested in joining permanent market stabilization and affordability with community governance and control, after the model of the Community Land Trust (CLT). CERT will retain its role as a shared management platform and supporting organization.
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Future
CERT is a national nonprofit platform for facilitating and housing solutions for preserving and sustaining cultural heritage.
We maintain a team of experts in real estate finance, exempt organizations and real estate law, project and property management, historic preservation, and portfolio management. We focus on solutions that leverage our shared resources while focusing on projects that center community stewardship, cultural equity, and long-term sustainability. Essential to our vision of sustainability is the design of legal and stewardship structures that resist market forces and shield against future expropriation of real property assets for private exploitation. Permanent stabilization is essential to creating a true set of commons resources for generations to come.
The Challenges
Market Pressures, in particular in urban cores, have been accelerating development with the result being displacement of communities and the rampant destruction of heritage sites. The speed of money in the private sphere also ensures that nonprofit or community groups cannot compete.
Access to Capital for acquisition, pre-development, and construction or renovation remains a substantial barrier given the slow pace of institutional philanthropy, lack of diversity of nonprofit financing products, and high risk aversion among funders and financiers in the nonprofit space.
Access to Expertise by community groups that integrates knowledge of complex real estate financing, real estate and nonprofit law, program and business modeling, historic preservation, project management, and ideas in solidarity economy approaches to shared governance and resources is rare.
Nonprofit Capacity among organizations and fiscally sponsored projects that own and operate their own real estate is often lack in knowledge and operating resources to develop and manage real estate, in particular when it comes to historic or adaptive re-use projects that entail greater complexity.
Our Solution
Structure: The Cultural Equity Realty Trust (CERT) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) holding organization with multiple sub-entities, each designed to meet the unique needs of each property and project: managing different capital stacks, business models, ownership and stewardship structures, and needs from CERT’s team. As we get things started, CERT has engaged Social Impact Commons as its incubation management.
Fund: We envision the creation of a Revolving Capital Fund to increase our ability to respond to opportunities and needs as they arise on the landscape. The Fund will entail some low-interest investment funds but focus on recoverable (zero cost) capital to lower overall cost of capital, which we view as an essential condition for combining both preservation and social purpose goals, such as affordability.
Team: The CERT team and partners, as envisioned, will encompass expertise in nonprofit and real estate law and finance, complex capital structures, program and business modeling, as well as project and property management. Essential to the team design will be high cultural competency and acuity with regard to race equity and social justice, including sound knowledge of the Solidarity Economy, such as commoning, cooperatives, mutual aid, and other approaches to combatting capitalist extraction.
Platform: We see CERT has having two distinct but interrelated functions:
(1) Responsive Steward & Facilitator - In response to urgent needs and opportunities that arise from communities, CERT will serve as a receiver/acquirer, (c0)-holder, and (co)-manager of real properties, as well as a facilitator and advisor to nonprofits, individuals, and communities on the acquisition and development of sites.
(2) Innovation Laboratory - We will engage in speculative or self-initiated projects aimed at exploring new ways in which to join preservation and social purpose real estate goals in the interest of securing, long-term stewardship models, build wealth for marginalized communities, and share power and ownership.