We are building Groundcover in solidarity with the communities we are trying to impact, meaning we are working with rather than for communities. Ultimately, we are trying to build a movement around collective ownership, and this requires us to invest as much time, labor, and resources as we put into the model towards building people power.

There is so much about real estate as an industry, that is opaque by design. Our value around transparency is about ensuring that everyone, including poor and working class people, have access to clear information so they can make informed decisions about projects that impact them, and be empowered to challenge status quo development.

Black communities have been deliberately and violently disenfranchised and stolen from for centuries. Treating everyone “equally” doesn’t do the work of resolving and repairing these harms. We operationalize equity down to the line items in our financial models, to ensure we shift risk away from marginalized communities, and financial (and other) returns to them.