BAM: In Partnership, In Action

Community Progress provided a step-by-step action plan utilizing a framework of high level toward deep and transformative actions for BAM to consider in the months and years to come. The Action Plan was designed to capture both a visionary and reparative goal of ultimate community control and ownership of land, and also to provide reasonable and actionable incremental programs and activities to achieve equitable transformation—and reasonable costs of each such program along the way. Action items included simple ground level activities like updating and building out BAM’s website and social media presence, and continued implementation of acquiring properties through transfer from Memphis local government, to mid-level activities including hosting community meetings in priority neighborhoods, and acquiring large number of properties from county-inventories that have been in limbo for years, to deep and systematic programming such as linking all acquisition and disposition activities to larger community planning efforts, and designing and implementing a community benefit tax foreclosure program whereby CDCs and other community groups enjoy rights of first refusal and other privileges on certain BAM inventory in accordance with equitable and reparative development plans.