Commonland Solutions, Llc

CommonLand offers the experience, technical skills, pragmatic solutions, and systems thinking to tackle housing and community development challenges so that clients can strengthen their organizational impact, and portfolios to meet their community development goals. I grew up in big cities with the benefits of close-knit neighborhoods. Pittsburgh’s steel industry, ethnic and historic neighborhoods, Earth Day, and the civil rights movement shaped my values of economic, racial, environmental, and social justice and equity. Living in Washington D.C. as a teen, I witnessed homelessness grow to scale as a symptom of how our real estate system segregates winners and losers by race, income, and ability. I focused my academic studies on how land justice can create safe, secure, healthy, and equitable communities. Community development became my professional home because of its orientation toward community-based wisdom and solutions. The community development toolbox offers versatility to design and create the social, economic, and physical infrastructure that promotes healthy and inclusive communities, particularly when grounded in environmental and racial justice. Creating new or breathing life into old spaces, structures, and neighborhoods for people to participate fully in society creates positive ripple effects for all of us. Through a progressive land-use policy lens, CommonLand brings pragmatic project development experience to assist clients with research, planning, and implementation. CommonLand also forms collaborations with a wider network of consultants to deliver technical assistance to organizations and communities, aimed at sustaining a healthy rural society. CommonLand Solutions infuses these values into all of its work and offers project development and management services for nonprofits, municipalities, and cooperatives to revitalize and transform communities.