Impact Alpha profiles Seed Commons' investment into Baltimore's Water Bottle Cooperative:

In June, nearly a dozen sweaty workers wearing dusty construction work clothes and industrial respiratory masks labored in stifling heat to take down rotting wooden handrails, collapsing walls and crumbling stairs inside a pair of vacant, adjacent homes in West Baltimore.

The two-story, single-family properties, part of the city’s rainbow-colored stock of century-old brick row houses, were once well-maintained and occupied by members of a thriving working class of African Americans. Now decrepit and unoccupied, the structures lie in the Coppin Heights neighborhood, still a predominantly African-American working-class area that’s part of the city’s “Black Butterfly” of empty, abandoned buildings. 

After the decayed stairs, floors and walls are taken down and replaced, electricians and plumbers will make the dwellings habitable. Once the structural renovations are complete, the homes will be leased to local, marginalized residents at affordable rental rates that give them the option to buy into a portion of the property’s equity. The workers rehabbing the houses will also share in the ownership.

Read the article now. (Roodgally Senatus, Impact Alpha, July 11, 2024)