Anti-Displacement Project

The Anti- Displacement Project based in Springfield, Massachusetts has undertaken a set of bold intiatives in community organizing, community and economic development and social service delivery. ADP has pursued a model that retains the power and influence associated with organizations that regularly move a membership into action while simultaneously preserving thousands of units of housing, developing a new community-owned business, and creating the structure for a new low wage worker center.

The ADP creates new institutions and then incorporates those entities into its membership, linking them together to leverage power, relationships and resources. These institutions are built by extremely low-income men and women who want a better way to live and who understand that they need new economic structures to protect themselves and their families. Poor people not only participate in these new institutions, they control them and the assets they generate.

As the ADP has grown and evolved the organization has developed a more complex set of relationships. ADP has worked with five local governments, private developers, building trade unions, higher education institutions and lenders to achieve success. In total the ADP has created business and capital holdings worth $45 million. These community owned assets contribute $20 million a year in cash flow to the local economy.

The ADP addresses the policies and structures that perpetuate poverty. Our housing campaigns stop gentrification and change the relationships of power between landlord and tenant, so that tenants gain permanent control over their housing as well as control major assets in their neighborhoods. Through cooperative economic development and our jobs campaign, we create new businesses and living wage jobs with dignity for our members who typically bounce from low wage job to low wage job. By demanding accountability from the Workforce Investment Boards and large employers in the region, we build power to transform the structures that create and maintain poverty as well as create an alternative political economy for community members to participate in and control.

By acting as a mediating institution, we are able to leverage the benefits of higher education for our young people who have been locked out of the class mobility offered by a college degree. By developing strong mutually respectful relationships with people in power, we win substantial improvements for our communities, and share a seat at the decision making table

ADP • 130 Union Street • Springfield, MA 01105 • (413) 739-7233

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