ROOTED: CULTIVATING BLACK WEALTH IN PLACE
Explores how direct, place-based wealth-building investments impact Black residents’ ability to thrive in their chosen community in St. Louis. As development and speculative real estate activity has increased significantly in the neighborhoods over the last decade, the Rooted initiative investigates wealth building as an anti-displacement strategy.
Rooted is focused on helping residents build wealth so that they can afford to stay and grow in their neighborhood. We recognize that without access to larger funds, it is hard for people to make investments, whether it is investing in their home or the stock market. We have created mechanisms for stabilizing, building, and passing on wealth to future generations.
You can learn more about the program’s anti-displacement journey and how to replicate it in your city by digging into the Rooted Powerbook, a case-making and how-to guide to facilitating replication of the Rooted initiative in your own community.
download the Rooted Powerbook overvieW
To view and download the .pdf file for the Rooted Powerbook Overview. The complete Rooted Powerbook is coming soon.
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
- Rooted provides 50 Black residents in the West End and Visitation Park neighborhoods of St. Louis with a dedicated financial planner and $20,000 to purchase a home, complete home repairs or upgrades, start or build a small business, or add to an investment account.
- An anti-displacement strategy: By investing in long-time residents, many who have been in the neighborhood 21+ years, we can ensure that they can build wealth as their neighborhood market flips and that they see a continued place for themselves in the community.
- Learning for replication: The Rooted Powerbook will provide step-by-step guidelines on how to build a similar anti-gentrification project for YOUR city.
To date, Rooted resident investors have:
- Launched 6 new businesses
- Scaled up 2 existing businesses
- Capitalized 19 investment accounts to seed long-term wealth building
- Made major home repairs on 24 homes
- Created and filed beneficiary deeds for 16 homes to preserve the asset for the next generation
“I’m hoping that different kinds of people change into a “we thing” so people already in the neighborhood prosper and the people who move in feel part of the community.
Change (happens) by teaching people how to GROW wealth – one of the most important things they’re doing. If you don’t have money, you won’t be able to stay in the neighborhood.”
“My bubble is expanding in seeing and talking to people about how things have changed in a good way. Initiatives like this are impacting people that actually have… even deeper roots than I do here, right? It is a very fulfilling feeling for me.”
“It’s where I live, and where I’m comfortable. And I want to see whatever’s coming. I want to see the development of it. You know, new things are coming. I want to see what the changes will bring since the days my mother and grandmother lived here.”
THANK YOU
Rooted: Cultivating Black Wealth in Place was made possible by a small but mighty team of organizations who helped Invest STL plan and scope the initiative. We have the utmost gratitude for our colleagues at Mass Economics, the Center for Civic Research and Innovation, Urban Institute, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for their role in helping to guide our planning and offer their expertise.
We are grateful for the financial institutions and financial planners who stepped up to help us figure out how best to support participants throughout this initiative including Wells Fargo, Wendy Hartman and the team at Buckingham Wealth Partners, and Peter Lazaroff at Plancorp. In addition, we have financial planners volunteering from the following firms: Signify Wealth, CKH Financial, Thornton Advisor Group, Commerce Bank, US Bank, Moneta, Pines Wealth Management, Ratliff Group, Brand Asset Management Group, Toberman Wealth, and Carson Group. Legal and contract support has been provided by Polsinelli.
We are also working with the following partners to help support Rooted participants along their wealth-building journey: Prosperity Connection provides credit-building support, Small Business Empowerment Center provides mentorship for those pursuing entrepreneurship, Park Central Development Corp. provides property repair oversight, Legal Services of Eastern Missouri provides estate planning services, and True Title provides property title inquiry support.
None of this would be possible without major financial support from Wells Fargo and the Boniface Foundation. Additional funding support has been generously provided by Commerce Bank, National Development Council, NISA Foundation, and Regions Bank. We are grateful to our partners for understanding the opportunity and investing in learning.
people | power | place | systems
Initiating a 20 Year Journey
Every St. Louis neighborhood is a chosen place to live, raise children, and grow old.
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5600 Delmar Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63112
PO Box 300010
St. Louis, MO 63130