We  sat down with Adriana Abizadeh to discuss collective wealth building and neighborhood governance through a neighborhood trust.

I’d love for you to tell me a little bit about Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT).

Adriana: We purchase real estate on Kensington Avenue, a primary neighborhood commercial corridor, and we put it into a trust for the neighborhood to directly own, govern, and control. It is an anti-displacement, land conservation, and building preservation model. We produce permanently affordable housing and commercial spaces. The average annual household income in Kensington is about $26,000, which is less than half of the city’s. This is a neighborhood experiencing deep poverty, and historically has experienced abandonment. Over the last five years, we have decommodified 31 assets and have 10 small businesses in the collectively owned spaces. We’re proud that we have not lost a single commercial tenant, and we have had zero evictions to date.

So, how does it work? 

Adriana: We are the nation’s first neighborhood trust, the only one focused on a commercial corridor. In addition to preserving real estate and producing permanently affordable housing, we are building a model for collective ownership. We looked at the best practices from community development corporations, which have done affordable housing and wraparound social service work for decades. Community land trusts, who decommodify land and buildings. Business improvement districts, who improve the built environment. Private developers, how they stack capital and move money quickly. We took learnings we liked, left behind the pieces we didn’t, and we built the neighborhood trust. We are a nonprofit that is legally and financially tethered to a perpetual purpose trust, which protects the land, buildings, and liquid assets for a particular purpose. The neighborhood defined our purpose – to preserve affordability intergenerationally and retain collective control of real estate in the commons.

I think that distinction between individual wealth building and collective wealth building is key. How are you thinking about how to build wealth in an anti-racist way?

Adriana: First, all things rooted in wealth building are rooted in racism. The fact that we all need to amass wealth in order to survive and sustain ourselves is a byproduct of a deeply racist system. Moving policy is critical to our work because we acknowledge the present is still determined by the same historic racist policies. We can say that redlining no longer exists, but the impact continues. You can clearly see very different health outcomes, employment, property valuations, proximity to environmental harm, and all of that follows those historic maps. At the KCT, we think about financial wealth, but we’re also looking at wealth as the built environment and health. Everybody wants to know our rate of return or how we recapitalize dollars. That matters, but when your zip code is tethered to your physical and mental health, we want to know how we move beyond those redlined barriers.

For us, collective wealth building is twofold. In capitalism, those who own the land amass the wealth and the power. So we build collective power for a neighborhood through the ownership and control of real estate. We want it to impact people daily, not just to build a portfolio. By keeping housing units permanently affordable, who might go back to school or access upward mobility?

The other aspect is wealth redistribution. Assets are collectively held, but that does not have to negate independent wealth building. We’re working on launching a community stewardship trust (CST), which will launch in 2026, replicating the model of The Guild in Atlanta. Folks will be able to make investments as low as $10 per month and receive healthy market rate yields while still preserving deep affordability in the housing. We’re operating in a way that is benefiting the collective and not rooted in traditional, racist standards.

That’s very exciting. Can’t wait to follow along. You said you’re five years in now. I’m curious to hear, what are some lessons that you’ve learned? 

Adriana: First, we need deep value alignment with folks who stay committed to the vision when it gets hard. Because we’re working on systems, and it’s complex and heavy work.

Second, neighborhoods can govern themselves. When we transitioned to neighborhood governance in 2022, we heard externally that we would be missing key skills. But our board knows how Kensington feels, day in, day out. You can hire an attorney or an HR expert. You can’t hire for lived experience. And they bring a vast mix of expertise; the neighborhood is not devoid of brain power, so we were able to disprove those misperceptions.

We’ve learned to navigate in markets, have access to capital, and make rapid decisions. When I started, whenever a property would go for sale, I would have to beg our philanthropic and investment partners for a check. But we couldn’t move quickly enough, so we would lose buildings. As KCT built its reputation and portfolio, we now have cash on hand that allows us to move nimbly and compete with the rest of the market. We’ve had to learn to navigate this market like everybody else, but holding values and collective decision-making at the core.

One surprising lesson was that you can attract businesses to a historically disinvested corridor with high crime, vacancies, drug use, and sex trade. When we first started, we assumed we needed an 18-month vacancy in the commercial storefront for every proforma. We were so wrong. In less than six months, in 2022 we attracted our first business, and since then people keep coming to us. Why would you choose Kensington Avenue? Because it is home. 100% of the business owners either grew up in or currently live in Kensington. They know what it looked like before white flight and disinvestment, and they know what it has the capacity of being. It has been beautiful, organic, and has helped our finances.

This is a beautiful example of a place that a traditional risk assessment might have called too risky, but you’re actually experiencing a lower vacancy rate than would be expected anywhere. You mentioned your governance model. How do you collectively advance an equitable vision for the neighborhood?

Adriana: Our neighborhood governance began in 2022. At KCT, we believe the value of the neighborhood’s deep local expertise exceeds the external legal or HR expertise. Every January, we hold a neighborhood-wide call to let folks know about open seats. We give preference to folks who have been in the neighborhood for more than 10 years, since we know there is already active displacement. We hold two seats for folks under the age of 21, thinking about succession. We want to think about the next generation of leadership in a neighborhood that is changing and evolving.

It’s a blossoming model for local governance. We compensate folks for their time, because their time is valuable. Time is a social justice issue. They’re making decisions around what their neighborhood will look like into the future. That’s hard work that requires expertise and time.

We decided that the governing body’s 19 voices were not enough to represent 32,000 folks in the neighborhood. So we built larger feedback loops for people to tell us what properties to acquire, or what businesses to attract. The neighborhood approves every business, which takes time. But that has been critical to their success. People know they’re coming, want them to succeed, and patronize their businesses.

When I first came to KCT, people made it clear they wanted a grocery store. And this year, we’re launching a grocery store, owned and operated by a Kensington native. He’s been in the food import and distribution business for years. He approached us about doing a shared commercial kitchen, and we said we bought the property for a grocery store, but didn’t yet have an operator. He said, I’ll do both. And we couldn’t be more excited, because it was in direct response to what people wanted.

Governance has been a beautiful assembly of neighbors with different ideas. There is healthy discourse and dissent. It gets uncomfortable, and I love it, because that means we’re working together to make the best decisions for this neighborhood’s future. We’re really striving.

Adriana Abizadeh is the executive director of Philadelphia-based Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT), whose mission is to utilize collective ownership to direct investments that preserve culture and affordability while building neighborhood power and wealth. Adriana is also a policy fellow at Princeton University and Rutgers University. She has committed herself to serving on boards that reflect some of her deepest passions: immigration, racial and health equity, and youth development. When Adriana isn’t serving her community, she is at home with her husband, their four children, and two dogs.​