Own the Block
A show for the people who want to build community-owned real estate — and the practitioners who make it possible. Each episode unpacks a different piece of the capital stack and tells the stories behind the deal, through conversations with the connectors, technical assistance providers, and fund creators who turn complicated deals into real, non-extractive wins for communities. Smart, practical, and story-driven, Own the Block is built for nonprofit workers, community activists, lenders, funders and local government partners navigating this world firsthand — real strategies, real success stories, and a clear-eyed look at what it takes to own the block.
Assessing the Capital Ecosystem
This is the big-picture money episode: how much capital genuinely exists for community-owned real estate, where the real gaps are, and why "relationships" keep turning out to matter more than any single financial product. Oscar Perry Abello (Senior Economic Justice Correspondent, Next City), Jaime Gloshay (Managing Director of Impact Investments, Common Future), and Cindy Wu (Chief Executive Officer, Our Neighborhoods Capital Fund) bring the data, the capital-structuring lens, and the on-the-ground fund manager's view together to size up a field that's still figuring out its own numbers.
In this episode:
The biggest misconception about capital: that...Who Gets to Own the Neighborhood
This is the episode that earns the show's name: a real look at who actually gets to own a neighborhood, and who makes that ownership possible in the first place. Adriana Abizadeh-Barbour (Executive Director, Kensington Corridor Trust) and Noni Session (Executive Director, East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative) compare notes across two very different community ownership models — a Philadelphia neighborhood trust and an Oakland cooperative — on what it actually takes to build power, not just acquire property.
In this episode:
How the Kensington Corridor Trust's neighborhood trust model works, and why collective ownership doesn't have to comp...What Is CORE—and Why Capital Matters
This first episode of Own The Block sets the table for the season: what community-owned real estate actually is, how mature the field is in 2026, and what it will take for community ownership to become a durable, repeatable part of the real estate system rather than a one-off exception. Curt Lyon (Executive Director at Transform Finance) and Ahmed Mori (Co-director of the Community Ownership Learning & Action Lab at the University of Miami) zoom out to the state of the field and its policy landscape, while Nikishka Iyengar (Founder and CEO at The Guild) brings it down to the ground...
Welcome to Own the Block!
Welcome to Own the Block, a show for the people who want to build community-owned real estate — and the practitioners who make it possible. Each episode unpacks a different piece of the capital stack and tells the stories behind the deal, through conversations with the connectors, technical assistance providers, and fund creators who turn complicated deals into real, non-extractive wins for communities. Smart, practical, and story-driven, Own the Block is built for nonprofit workers, community activists, lenders, funders and local government partners navigating this world firsthand — real strategies, real success stories, and a clear-eyed look at what it takes to o...
