Loiter Community Owned Supply Chains

Our project begins  with expanding local homeowner  farms to decrease the urbanization of East Cleveland Ohio.Our team will increase sustainable living pollinator plants that will increase the local bee population.This will have a huge environmental impact  as  we expect to see increase in  green spaces, pollinator gardens,and community social interaction from our community recruitment drive. We have also designed our program to benefit local homeowners  who want to increase income and equity from their owned undervalued  assets.

Investments will  go to secure land for our  EC resident owned cooperative, that will grow  tea and produce honey  locally.  Additonally,  another pilot will serve as an invitation to design and scale agritourism on urban homeowner  farms. In this pilot,bed and breakfast are reimaginedand members will list their availability for people interested in coming to East Cleveland to stay, learn and contribute to the city doing missionary work. From the associated Urban Farm we will stage and host fire side chats, walking tours and demos of our emerging closed loop industry.

Zoning, land use policy, redlining, housing discrimination, economic discrimination and a myriad of other public policies, systematically denied Black Americans (and other Americans of color) to assets (land, houses, investment instruments, etc.) that create wealth and allow for intergenerational transfer of wealth.

As a result, the average Black household has one tenth of the wealth of the average White household.  Black households have $10 of wealth for every $100 of wealth held by White households.  Black families with children fare much worse, with the wealth gap growing to $1 of wealth for every $100 of wealth in White families with children.

Black wealth is typically held in the form of house ownership.  But most Black families, even high income families, typically live in neighborhoods with significantly lower home values than those experienced by White families earning the same amount of income.  And because of continued disinvestment in traditionally Black communities, overall wealth is diminished as home prices decline.

In addition, racial discrimination continues to fuel economic discrimination, resulting in lower incomes, limited career options, lack of capital for entrepreneurship among other impacts for Black people.  Few are able to build savings and have an economic buffer against unpredictable economic conditions.

Our Santuary Homes incorporates spatial justice  with income opportunities and  invites people to look inward by acknowledging value exist in  what they currently own . Our team of educators will show them how to  increase the equity in their own property, land and themselves. 

Our spatial justice framework  rejects gentrification and looks only  with in the bounderies of microcommunities to  create  income  and equitable opportunity needed for people to  stay in their communities.

LSH and Loiter Farms   reestablishes industries not typically sought after or even expected  to be found  in poor communities and offers people an opportunity participate in uplifting a community from the inside out.Members of the santuary homes program  will list their availibiltiy for people interested in coming to east cleveland to learn about how to contribute to circular economy through  service, such as education, economic justice and food .

Loiter! will work with a local partner Environmental Health Watch to provide deep green retrofits to homeowners and jump start agritourism in East Cleveland Ohio by marketing urban travel as a  destination to contribute to community service , by giving time, money, and expertise to a community project.

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East Cleveland has gone from being the “jewel of the Midwest” to the poorest city in Ohio. The Rockefeller family built an estate and dozens of mansions and once owned more than 250 acres of land. Today, less than 40% of residents own their own homes, and dilapidated buildings dot nearly 600 vacant or abandoned lots across the city. GE's Nela Park, once home to thousands of middle income manufacturing jobs is barely open while unemployment stands at nearly 50%. The city has shrunk dramatically, from more than 30,000 people to its current population of just over 17,000 people. Average family income of $21,000 is barely above the poverty line. The city has a $150 million local economy, but no grocery store, only one bank, and limited access to retail stores, healthcare and other services. Forest Hills Park is a hidden gem - a rarely used sanctuary of green in the metro area. 

 This three mile square city is blessed with the gift of good land and good people. It is both big enough and small enough to make positive, lasting change happen over the next decade. Change that begins by reconsidering the word "loiter".

Our co-founder, and Common Future Fellow Ismail Samad, has experience with multiple leadership positions  focused on some of the underlying and systemic issues we will address within  this challenge.This includes work pertaining to the wealth gap, anchor institutional procurement, resourceful inventory fulfillment strategies and closed loop food systems. 

 He was also born and raised in East Cleveland and can address the problem , solution and citizens  authenticly.

This gives our team a great lens for approaching our quantitative data, as well as being able to harness some of the connections and partnerships that stem from those experiences. 

A recently awarded grant from Common Futures in fall of 2020 let us get Loiter! started. Since then,we have convened a team of dedicated visionaries and entrepreneurs.  Ismail Samad will  be relocating to East Cleveland in August 2021 and will  be working closely with our on the ground team on business planning.We have possession of   3 acres at 15001 Euclid Avenue Loiter’s  Community Wealth Hub. This 7000 square foot building will be the place for creative expression, intergenerational recreation, local manufacturing and a hub for learning, for  buying and investing in EC grown, created and produced enterprises. 

We have courted and recruited a homeowner farmer with a budding tea and honey business to serve as an example of what working with Loiter can look like. We are in negotiations to secure our santuary home to be used as a model home to showcase income potetial for homeowners looking for income opportunities.

East Cleveland has many possible futures. 

Future 1: more of the same. Black people still being considered criminals as they go about their daily lives, and still being required to go elsewhere to find what they need. Black people working harder and still feeling like they have little to show for their efforts.

  Future 2: Gentrification. The city's beautiful architecture, green spaces, and a short commute time to downtown by car or train. Affordable housing makes private schooling a possibility for higher income families but the average residents  will experience a lower quality of life until gentrification displaces them.

The Loiter Future sees the fact that there is currently no hotel in East Cleveland as a huge opportunity for our program to activate a business model that helps current homeowners earn income and increase equity in their land and property BEFORE Gentrification. 

Our spatial justice framework looks only  with in the boundaries of microcommunities to  create  income  and equitable opportunity needed for people to  stay in their communities .

Agritourism is not found  in poor communities and offers people an opportunity  take part in uplifting a community from the inside out. 

East Cleveland is a small city- its three miles square, home to 7,000 households and roughly 17,000 people.  This environment provides the perfect opportunity for targeted investment as the community is small enough for investment with it to be tangibly felt by its residents and yet large enough to have a positive impact on a sizable community. With investment in Loiter, we anticipate that the household income of our employees will rise by 25% with an additional $5000 added to the current average of $21, 000 initially. More importantly for the creation of intergenerational prosperity, a large increase in wealth will be seen with an average savings of $400 increased to $1000 for individual farmers in Loiter’s first year. From a community wealth perspective, $25,000 - $50,000 will be generated through ownership of farm coop shares and employee shares.

The blight within the city is clearly visible through the numerous empty lots and dilapidated houses on every street and expressed through the 2019 estimate of 510 properties that are abandoned.  Through the first stage of Loiter we plan to acquire 20 of those lots initially with the eventual goal of getting 75 farmers to purchase 150 plots of land over 3 years. This would culminate in the acquisition of approximately 30% of abandoned and available lots in East Cleveland for Loiter and other community driven initiatives. 

Additionally we have a real world example of how homeowners can buy homes, and land to generate passive income.

We will engage our community partner Policy Bridge to help us measure and evaluate the impact of this project – to determine if our work increases income, equity and well being for the people of East Cleveland and charts a more secure, safe and higher quality of life for its children.While performance metrics will be determined through dialogue with community members, our
local partners and our evaluator, our initial list includes participation and impact metrics in the following areas. Specific metrics are provided as examples, and are not the comprehensive list of metrics to be measured.

Community Engagement # of residents involved in education, training, skill development

# of residents involved in Loiter!
enterprises as employees/members, board members, customers\n% who feel their input has positively impacted the project/enterprise

Narrative Change % of people participating in Voice and Culture content that feel seen, heard and respected

Spatial Justice# of vacant or abandoned lots and houses purchased and activated homeownership rates by Black residents

Economic Justice of new living wage
jobs\average household income and average net worth

Emotional Reparations  % of residents feeling safe, seen and celebrated in their community

Ismail Samad Founder brings his unique vision to this project,

Rashad Samad Loiter Farms Liason

Alima Samad heads up our organizational development.

Jamal Collins,Digital Content Producer

Monty Merza building out Loiter!'s online marketplace

Brandon Smith  Community liason  

Loiter's greatest strengths are also found in its people -- its talented team of social change visionaries, talented
entrepreneurs, committed community members and non-profit partners, engaged and informed investors and funders and
dedicated volunteers.
Our network of talent enables us to bring new energy and vision to a very difficult and tough situation. East Cleveland is in
a deep depression, worn down and hurt by racism and injustice, and exhausted by a deadly pandemic. We have an amazing
community of people, willing to take a second look, consider a complete new way of meeting our basic needs, and finding a
way to do it so that it directly addresses and changes the drivers of inequality.
For our founder Ismail Samad, Loiter! is not a project, not a moment, not a passing effort. It is his lived experience and his
life's work. And all of our leadership team, board members, key funding and investment partners, and community partners
share a commitment to racial, social and economic equity and a passion for real, lasting positive change.
Our team brings unique experience in identifying, mentoring and helping people develop their talents through education,
practice and service. We have deep strength and skill in enterprise development, business and product development,
facilities design and management, partnership development and collaboration.

We will proudly submit resumes of our team upon request.

Loiter!'s team all espouse the core values that are represented in its name:
Love for East Cleveland, its people, its potential and its land.
Opportunity increasing income and building equity through meaningful
work and community service.
Investing in people makes everything else possible.

Transformation happens through deep listening to the community, seeking solutions that benefit all, trying new approaches and learning from success and failure.

Equity should be shared with those who do the work 
Restitution and reparation -- financial and emotional-- are essential ingredients in healing the deep harm caused by  systemic racism. 

We hope it inspires similar action in BIPOC communities across the US.

We are applying to raise match dollars to fund this work.

The time is right. The Black Lives Matter movement, the horrific murders of George Floyd and so many other Black brothers and sisters, the profound racial and economic inequities
made visible by the ravages of Covid-19, and frankly the exhaustion from and impatience with long standing injustice, makes this the moment for once in a generation change.Scholars, thought leaders and government data guided our thinking on the scale and scope of our work. Large scale investment is needed to make the effort tobuild broken communities We know how to raise and deploy mission related investment in community wealth building efforts.

We know how to build successful enterprises and
community organizations. Our team of local Black entrepreneurs and business developers,
along with national fund managers and BIPOC leaders, is uniquely qualified to lead this effort.

Because we are new we  have not yet invested in our info systems .  We need to have soft ware to manage our equity fund investments,  we need a system to manage our cooperatives and the payout of dividends profit sharing, employee stock option plans we  are looking to offer.

We have not perfected our pitch and  would love feedback on our pitch deck and investors relations page.

As we continue to develop our business identity, ethos, and programs, we are actively looking to join with organizations which operate similar initiatives, and share a common understanding of the multiple layers that need to be addressed to successfully put in place a resilient community. We would graciously accept consulting, data, technical advice, and would be interested in working collaboratively with like minded organizations in a broader support network.We are curious  about   ways are other organizations refining their language,focus,and programs to reflect a more receptive public attitude toward investing in closed looped solutions  that increase equity for impoverished cities.