This State Will Hire You—No College Degree Required

The Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund is helping Black farmers buy land. More than $200,000 have gone toward urban land purchases in a practice some see as “restorative economics." Black land activists are also purchasing land in rural communities across the United States.

An organization is partnering with companies to connect job seekers, who don’t have college degrees, to corporate positions. The “skills-based hiring” is a step toward closing the racial wealth gap.

The Predatory Loan Prevention Act caps loan interest rates at 36%, including all fees. Before the Act passed, rates were extremely high, including 297% for payday loans and 178% for auto-title loans. The Illinois Legislative Black Caucus pushed for the Act to pass in an effort to close the racial wealth gap and address socioeconomic disparities, as these high-interest rates historically affected minority groups.

The Bayanga Human Rights Center in the Central African Republic has helped restore Indigenous Ba'aka people's access to justice, administrative documents, and political participation. They've done this through a combination of grassroots legal assistance, mediation, awareness campaigns, and grievance mechanisms—resulting in criminal convictions for serious abuses, reduced conservation-related complaints, and Ba'aka members now serving on local councils.

Invest STL’s Rooted program provides financial and investment help to community members by giving them money and pairing them with a financial advisor who helps them build generational wealth and avoid displacement by putting their money into wealth-building activities like property renovations and investment portfolios. 50 people have participated in the program so far, and early evidence shows they’re investing their money in responsible, meaningful ways, and gaining a deeper connection to their fellow community members.

Despite soaring housing costs, the city government in Paris aims to achieve mixité sociale. That essentially means it's preventing economic segregation to ensure residents from a broad cross-section of society reside in the city and own businesses there. It’s doing so by nabbing real estate to create public housing and providing real estate subsidiaries for small businesses.

Sacramento’s Cannabis Opportunity and Racial Equity program is helping people who were adversely affected by discrimination during America’s war on drugs to start businesses in the regulated cannabis industry. Qualifying entrepreneurs receive wraparound support including funding and small-business education. So far, 10 dispensary licenses have been awarded to participants.

Volunteers of the PDX Housing Solidarity Project are working to redistribute generational wealth through homeownership in Portland. The project connects people with ample resources to Black and Indigenous homebuyers and helps facilitate cash gifts, no-interest loans, or other ways to assist throughout the process.

A philanthropy-funded guaranteed income pilot program, Oakland Resilient Families, distributed a $500 monthly payment to 300 participants for a year and a half. The money was provided with no strings attached, so participants could use it for whatever they needed.

Medical schools and public health programs have shifted some of their practices in an effort to attract more Black students, such as by removing GRE requirements and recruiting more Black faculty, and these schools have seen an influx of applications during the pandemic. One example is Brown University's Health Equity Scholars program, which offers tuition support, a paid research assistantship, and formalized mentorship to a diverse cohort each year.