Addressing historical racial disparities in African American communities
through sustainable community building and economic development, with an emphasis on cultural vitality, healthy living, and affordable housing.
✓ COMMUNITY REPAIR
✓ IMPACT INVESTING
✓ SMALL BUSINESS ACCELERATOR
Mission
Power the vitality of black communities through real estate development, small business development, and synergistic alliances that build wealth and economic stability by creating intentional space and capacity to dream while increasing the African American community’s ownership of their land, labor, and housing.
Vision
A global model for black community economic revitalization, community self-determination and sustainability through creating and managing vibrant, inclusive, high-quality housing, rental properties, and commercial and shared public spaces. Inspired to build a new community development paradigm, KOMBOA stewards group equity and stability through a values-driven community-serving approach by providing programming that encourages self-sufficiency. Then, it showcases the critical work done locally to a national audience.
The KOMBOA Approach:
We break the traditional landlord/renter paradigm to create a flywheel for long-term success by leveraging funding partners (fundraise), designing space with the end-user in mind (purchase), creating synergy amongst tenants & community (curate), and propelling small businesses to success (incubate).
01
Fundraise
Secure funding pool via mission-driven beneficiaries, partners, donations, and revenue-generating businesses.
02
Purchase
Secure land and/or property based on pre-approved vision for business & community development. Combat absenteeism, which creates a facade of blight.
03
Curate
Cultivate synergy between commercial and residential spaces with self-determination at the core, increasing sustainability and self-sufficiency.
04
Incubate
Sustaining small business success takes concentrated support. KOMBOA provides financial grants to lower startup overhead costs and offers mentorship through our business accelerator.
Guiding Principles
We aspire to embody African-American achievement in every aspect of our work, every interaction, and every opportunity.
Our programming, outreach and impact is aimed at healing our community. Loving ourselves allows us the space to love others, be loved and create a better future for us all. In line with our mission & vision, KOMBOA has 7 guiding principles to create a significant impact within our community.
UNITY
PLACE & SPACE
EQUITY
CULTURE AS ECONOMY
HEALING
SUSTAINABILITY
STEWARDSHIP
COMMUNITY BUILDING & REPAIR MODEL
Community Wholeness: Our value-driven framework is a blueprint to “creating the community we want to live in” by assessing and ascribing value to intangible contributions of our community and attacking the value gap stripped by policies and practices. Crucial to repairing damage is protecting future injury. Protecting the community must account for Reparative Economic, Restorative Programming, Property Ownership Reinvested, Heritage & Community Resilience, Displacement, and a Development Framework.
VISION
Unlock a Black economic & cultural zone previously bound by trauma and paralyzed by fear. Develop a new model for upward economic mobility and power shift into the community’s hands.
UNITY
Collective alignment, community interest hierarchy, and shared values. A mobilized community in solidarity through the power of organizing, leveraging the abundance of the collective, seeking to co-create options.
INVESTMENT
Qualified investments into community wholeness, repairs past damage, and incentives for greater community growth. Secure & redistribute resources to liberate community wealth and support programs to increase property values and jobs.
HEALING
Reparative actions are integral to overcoming our greatest barriers. KOMBOA meets our communities where they’re at, creates pathways to where they want to go, and accelerates healing by bringing the healed into the community.
Why a Community Land Trust?
A legal nonprofit entity that protects land and property rights for the purpose of human capital development. Community land trusts are community-run, nonprofit landholding organizations that sell or rent the units atop the land they own, safeguarding affordability and preserving neighborhood culture.
The first community land trust (CLT) was founded in 1969, New Communities Inc (NCI), a collaboration between civil rights activists and Black farmers in Albany, Georgia, to help Black sharecroppers who had lost their homes and jobs register to vote. Established as “a nonprofit organization to hold land in a perpetual trust for permanent use of the community.” To date, Minnesota leads the US with 31 of the the approximately 250 CLT’s in the nation.
• COMMUNITY SUSTENANCE DRIVEN Land trusts are a tactical mechanism for which a representative board can remain the stewards of real estate, ensuring long-term access & affordability to its community, building stability, equity and agency for people who have been marginalized or shut out of traditional markets to foster the unique cultural character of a neighborhood.
• LEGAL PROTECTION Historically, CLT’s permanently preserve farmland, cooperative work, recreational, scenic, historical land, or affordable housing for people.
• TAX RESPONSIBILITY Along with estate tax benefits, there are income tax benefits and deductions that a landowner can experience by donating to a land trust. Land trusts can benefit from tax exemptions and charitable deductions as well.
PROJECT 1A: 38th + Chicago Ave
Do you want to help our mission?
✓ Effortless procedure
✓ INITIATIVE BASED INVESTMENTS