KarunaNews Story

During the Covid-19 pandemic, when The Miami Foundation received a $20 million grant from Wells Fargo to support small business owners, it created the Collective Real Estate Ownership program, a five-year, fully-forgivable $500,000 commercial down payment program to help Miami-Dade County’s small business owners of color partner with similar organizations to buy their buildings instead of continuing to rent. When you own both your business and the place in which you operate it, you won’t be pushed out, says Brittany Morgan, senior director of economic resilience. ”We’ve deployed a little bit over $4 million in commercial acquisition assistance, and that has leveraged $22 million worth of property and real estate, including nine acres of land, multiple facilities and almost 100,000 square feet of space.” Although the CREO program has sunsetted, it’s helped spark a “laundry list” of local governments creating similar financial tools to help combat small business displacement. “We’re now creating a national cohort of cities, municipalities and funders who are looking to do this work,” Morgan says.