The Equitable Neighborhoods practice at TakeRoot Justice can partner with your organization to educate community members and the public about law and policy. Equitable Neighborhoods team members can facilitate workshops for community members directly, or can work with partners to train their staff or leadership to facilitate the workshops for community members. If you are interested in working with TakeRoot Justice to present one of these workshops in your community, get it touch: equitableneighborhoods@takerootjustice.org
Community Benefits Agreements: Contracting with a Developer to Lock In Local Wins
Learn how a community can get and enforce a contract with a developer (sometimes called a Community Benefit Agreement. This workshop will cover what can go into those contracts and how they relate to making sure residents get benefits from development. Read about some related campaigns here.
Community Land Trusts
Learn about Community Land Trusts (CLTs) as a strategy to preserve the right of low-income people to live in the city. CLTs are legal structures that treat land is a common good and housing as a human right. Learn about how CLTs work, existing CLTs in New York and beyond and what your community can do now to expand the City’s willingness to partner with local organizations in stable, non-speculative development. Read about our work in support of NYC’s CLTs here.
This Land is Our Land: Protecting NYC’s Parks and Gardens
This training addresses the organizing, policy and legal landscape (!) of our parks, gardens and other open spaces. It places current organizing and preservation efforts in context of the history of resident-led development of neighborhoods abandoned by municipal infrastructures and looks to the future of community assets as part of a restorative planning and asset distribution strategy. Read a success story here.
Plugging the Hole in the Bucket: Alternatives to Speculator-Driven Property Tax Collection
Since 1996, the City of New York has sold unpaid property tax bills to an investor-backed trust that gets the right to collect the debt, charge interest and add fees; if owners don’t pay up, the debt collectors can foreclose and auction properties to the highest bidder. The City gives up its power over slum lords and our neighborhoods lose key places when this happens. Learn about how this practice impacts apartment buildings, small homes, community organizations and businesses in your neighborhood. Read more about the campaign to Abolish the NYC Tax Lien Sale here.
Protecting Our Places: Non-Profit Tax Exemptions
Does your nonprofit or church own property? Learn how to get and keep property tax exemptions and protect key places in your neighborhood from unjust foreclosure. Did the city send you a notice of a tax lien? What can be done? Who can help? Learn about our successful Protect Our Places campaign here.
NYCHA Real Talk
Three workshops that respond to the New York City Housing Authority’s plans to transfer control of existing public housing to private developers and allow private housing to be built on NYCHA campuses: How Your NYCHA Home Affects Your Health, What is Infill?, and What is RAD/PACT? More details here.