Home – The Guild

We build space(s) for social change by developing community-owned models of land, housing, and real estate.

Our Community
Stewardship
Trust

Join our memory work lab

ONE PHOTO AT A TIME leads participants through the process of cataloging and archiving personal photos as community practice. Join Archivist Sierra King as she guides you through this workshop.

918 DIll Ave.:
Atlanta’s First Mixed-Use Community-Owned Property

A whole systems approach to development

At The Guild, we’re focused on reimagining real estate development to build community wealth and resilience. Our entrepreneurship programs work synergistically with our real estate strategy by building and providing a pipeline of viable small businesses — businesses that are otherwise at the threat of being displaced — to our real estate projects. Our work is based on the idea that there is an alternative economic development model where more people, especially those marginalized and excluded from our current systems, can own and govern more of the assets that make our communities vibrant.

Community self-determination, not gentrification.
It’s what we do.

In order to disrupt the status quo of real estate development, we need to shift power away from corporations, investors, and developers, who have no real stake in our neighborhoods, to everyday people instead. We are rooted in principles of Restorative Economics.

Learn about our first community-owned and stewarded property:
918 Dill Avenue

Learn about our newly launched PEOPLE’S COMMUNITY LAND TRUST

Looking to be part of a movement that reimagines real estate and community development?

Design & Development

Under capitalism, every aspect of development is driven by finance’s desire to reproduce safe havens for investment returns, rather than save havens for people. Our streets, neighborhoods, and cities are made homogenous by design. All aspects of our built environment come to be viewed as commodities, materials lose any character beyond the purely utilitarian, and even the language with which we think about the spaces we occupy are dominated by notions of quantity rather than quality. When ownership means choosing to own property at the expense of others, and renting means being subject to extraction, development becomes an inherent harm perpetuated against each other and our environment. We’re building buildings that pull every lever against that harm.

Vision

Real estate has long been a tool of white supremacy to oppress communities of color. In cities like Atlanta, “big development” has accelerated gentrification and displacement of Black communities. Large infrastructure projects meant to be economic engines only benefit new, higher-income residents, while developers continue to build for investors rather than existing communities.

We’re building a collective vision that understands and acknowledges the foundational history of this industry and how real estate works in Atlanta.

Operations

Development pits us against one another as competitive economic actors, and separates us from each other in our daily lives.
We’re disempowered from taking control of the spaces we love, and are often forced to wait on maintenance which is strategically denied or deferred to suit capital owners.

Our vision for cooperatively controlled spaces is built on spaces of solidarity that reflect all our labor. Cooperative action is the promise of such solidarity in exchange for collective work
by those willing to engage. To that end, we support tenants
to create structures, policies and practices to encourage cooperative self-governance.

Learn more