A nice quote

I recently came across a quote from Jedediah Purdy, from his book For Common Things. I have not read his book, or know much about him, but I thought this was an excellent quote. It summarizes what I feel to be a key issue of our time, or at least my generation.


"These are the conflicting moods of our time. We are skeptical, ironic, and inclined to an impoverished self-reliance. At the same time, we want to give up the ironist’s jaded independence and believe that we are not alone, that we can find moral communities, clear obligations, even miracles. We doubt the possibility of being at home in the world, yet we desire that home above all else."

Website updated!
I have reorganized my website and added some new content based on your feedback. In particular, I cleaned up the homepage and added a page on projects that give some concrete examples of projects that forward the mission of democratic development.

Putting the public back in charge of our real estate businesses
Wow! It looks like I haven't added anything to my blog in over 2 months! But don't worry: it was just a hiatus as I worked on some other things. At the same time, I have been gathering my thoughts and plan to revamp my website shortly. I will let you know when that is done. In the meantime...

Many people don't know that the first corporations chartered in the United States all had very specific and clear public purposes. In fact, it was a requirement. And further, any corporation that was not serving the public interest could have their charters revoked, and some actually did. It was not until the end of the 19th century, when several court cases gave corporations the same rights as people under the constitution (!), that this approach shifted dramatically. From then on, corporations have had the same rights as you and me, except with the power that comes having an income of potentially billions of dollars. (Imagine how much better at lobbying you would be if you earned billions of dollars each year. :)

Although I dream we will one day demand that our corporations serve a clear public purpose and enshrine this principle in our constitution, I don't want to wait that long before making strides in the right direction.

We are starting to see businesses wholly or partially OWNED by nonprofits. It is my hope that this structure will be more widely used to reign in businesses and give them a public purpose.

Here are a few examples:

• State pension funds are quasi-public organizations with the goal of providing for the future of people in their state. With CalPERS in the lead, some states are starting to realize that the billions of dollars in their pension funds should be invested according to their values. This makes the pension funds owners of certain businesses. With a large enough ownership state, these businesses can be made to serve the public good by disallowing them from raiding public goods, without otherwise undermining their efficient pursuit of profit. Or they can fund things neglected (yet profitable) endeavors, like inner city revitalization.
• Nonprofit real estate developers have been around for a long time, but most are local CDCs. Given their small size and limited scope, they make some difference in their communities, but their ability to grow and have more impact are limited. Some new nonprofit developers, like the Commonweal Conservancy, were formed with broader mandates and greater flexibility. The Commonweal Conservancy is serving as the master planner of a large "conservation community" in New Mexico. As the lead developer, they have a chance to plan land use and ensure community standards in a publicly minded way, then selling chunks of land to individual for profit developers to actually build. A nonprofit like this sets the frame for what can be done, creating a higher bar than a for-profit developer make otherwise shoot for.
  
• Nonprofit vulture funds? This last example is really more of an idea: I don't know anyone doing this, but I think they should be! With the slowing of the real estate market, foreclosures will be on the rise as people find out they bought off more house than they could really afford (as interest rates rise or values drop). Private investors are already pooling their cash into what are being called "vulture funds" to be able to buy these houses cheap at auction, planning to resell later when the market strengthens. What I want to know is why nonprofits don't do the same thing? A nonprofit could own an investment trust (funded with socially responsible investment money) that would be used to buy up houses. This would give them much more control in preventing total disinvestment (or gentrification) as the case may be. Of course, it would be great if these nonprofits were also in the business of warning people about their mortgages in the first place, but we have start from where we are.