The Community Economies Collective (CEC) seeks to bring about more sustainable and equitable forms of development by acting on new ways of thinking about economies and politics. Building on J.K. Gibson-Graham’s feminist critique of political economy, the CEC challenges two problematic aspects of how “the economy” is understood: seeing it as inevitably capitalist, and separating the economy from ecology.

Over the last few years, Prosperity Now has increasingly focused on developing and strengthening its approach to addressing racial economic inequality and advancing racial wealth equity. In 2015, we launched the Racial Wealth Divide Initiative to integrate a racial economic equity lens, framework and analysis to focus our work and bring expertise to this issue.

This research report explores how progressive social agencies and non-profits (including legal clinics) can support community organizing pursuing the aims of the Right to the City (R2C) and Right to Housing (R2H) agendas. R2C/R2H theories and movements seek transformative social change to achieve urban social justice, emphasizing that cities and housing should be built for people, and not for profit.

WHEN MILTON FRIEDMAN SAID, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business– to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits …” he could not have been more wrong when it comes to social enterprise business models in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES).