The East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) is reimagining real estate as a tool for community wealth, stability, and self-determination. Based in Oakland, this democratically governed cooperative brings residents, community members, and investors together to purchase properties, remove them from the speculative market, and preserve them for long-term community benefit.
Its model challenges the conventional relationship between property ownership and neighborhood change. Rather than allowing rising property values to displace longtime residents, EB PREC creates opportunities for people to collectively own and steward the places where they live, work, and gather. Members can invest in the cooperative, participate in governance, and help shape decisions about neighborhood assets.
The work is already taking shape across the East Bay. In West Oakland, EB PREC acquired Esther's Orbit Room, a historic Black music venue, as part of a larger effort to revive the cultural life of the Seventh Street corridor. Nearby acquisitions, including The Barn and Esther's Garden, extend that vision to arts spaces, cooperative businesses, community gathering places, and future affordable housing. Elsewhere, EB PREC has preserved existing residential buildings, including housing for artists and longtime residents.
Through its Freedom Shares program, EB PREC also offers qualifying low-income East Bay residents a $1,000 ownership share at no cost, expanding access to both investment and democratic participation.
EB PREC demonstrates that preventing displacement can mean more than protecting people from development. It can mean changing the ownership structures themselves, allowing communities to build lasting wealth, preserve cultural identity, and exercise meaningful control over their own futures.
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