Our Reparative Approach
Led by community — past and present — Rondo CLT is committed to shifting the paradigm of community economic development. Our approach recenters and reclaims power for community members by acknowledging and repairing the harms of the past and creating new pathways for lasting generational wealth long into the future.
Our abundant vision
At Rondo CLT, we hold close the wisdom of our ancestors and the growing movement worldwide that has shown again and again that we can produce everything our communities need and desire without destroying the wellbeing of others.
That’s why we are creating new systems for the housing and businesses in our neighborhood. For generations, community development has created immense wealth for the few by exploiting and excluding Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) communities.
We can’t fix systems that were designed to maximize profits at the direct expenses of our people and the planet. Instead, we have to uproot old systems and plant something radically different
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Rondo CLT's Reparative
Development Framework
Why Reparative?
When the I-94 freeway bulldozed through Rondo, it didn’t just destroy more than 700 homes and 300 businesses. It disrupted the networks of care and commerce that provide pathways to upward mobility for workers and families. It wiped out the financial and cultural inheritance of Black residents and entrepreneurs who lost homes and businesses that could have been passed down to future generations. At Rondo CLT, our community and economic development framework accounts for that loss and seeks to repair the damage done.
Blueprint for Community Wholeness
Our framework creates the blueprint for our organization to “make our community whole” by assessing and ascribing value (including monetary $$$) to intangible contributions of our community and the value gap stripped by racist policies and practices.
