In this episode of, “Financial Freestyle with Ross Mac,” renowned urban revitalization strategist, MacArthur Fellow and Peabody Award winner, Majora Carter challenges conventional wisdom on community development with her groundbreaking approach to building wealth and opportunity without leaving your neighborhood behind.

Carter shares her journey from the South Bronx to the South Bronx, becoming a leading voice in urban renewal and community empowerment.

“Financial Freestyle with Ross Mac” on Yahoo Finance strives for economic prosperity for all. Through expert insights, actionable advice, and inspiring success stories, we empower you to build and accelerate wealth. Join us on a transformative journey towards financial freedom and inclusive economic growth.

This post was written by Jimi Corpuz

Video Transcript

I literally grew up watching my neighborhood on the news being considered just like the epitome of everything that was wrong in America.

Economically disadvantaged, people are easy to push around.

Gentrification starts to happen first when we don’t believe in the value and the power of our own communities.

What’s up world?

I’m Ros Smack and welcome to Financial Freestyle here on Yahoo Finance.

And look whether you’re a professional on Wall Street, a first time investor or just somebody looking to change their overall financial situation, there’s always a first step you gotta take and look no further.

Look, I’m gonna be talking to some of the most influential voices in my universe and asking them about their path to economic prosperity.

And my guest today is none other than Ma Carter urban revitalization, strategist, community developer, and the author of reclaiming your community.

You don’t need to move out of your neighborhood to live in a better one.

Ma how are you today?

And thanks so much for joining us.

I’m happy to be here.

Thank you so much for having me.

So tell us a little bit about yourself, right?

If someone has never heard of Maa Carter, which I probably would find that hard to believe.

Right?

Because your, your name precedes you.

But what would you say to that person?

I would say that I got caught trying to show that you can build communities that make people feel that they don’t have to move out of them in order to live in better ones.

I watch, you know, one of your TED talks and when you talk about that, it’s like obviously a when you come from an urban environment, right?

I’m from the south side of Chicago.

Quite often people deem their pathway to success is moving away from something, right?

Like your overall growth is also moving away from maybe where you came up in the in the event that it wasn’t the most successful or you know, safest environment.

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So let’s let’s, let’s talk about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the kind of places that people we usually call the poor underprivileged uh disadvantage, you know, we use the term low status communities to describe them because they are the communities where air quality um you know, food, food options, career opportunities, just the whole m kitten caboodle of being in those communities are worse than other parts of the same town.

And but, but, but really the real crux of the matter is people will tend to look at those communities as places that you wanna measure success by how far you get away from them because the word status implies inequality.

And it is assumed by both the people that live in those communities and also the people on the outside looking in even those that are claiming to help it.

And so we use that word low sta lo the term low status communities as a way to remind people that, you know, what these communities are developed in a very particular way that doesn’t always work for the people that are there.

And again, if we’re, if we continue to lose talent, you know, from those communities, whether they’re academically or artistically or athletically inclined, you know, what does that mean?

Why are we not creating the kind, the right kind of infrastructure in those communities to make people wanna stay and invest in their own communities?

And I think we can do that through a kind of uh what we call a talent retention approach to community development.

I find that fascinating, right?

And I think obviously it’s uh you know, kind of a double edged sword, so to speak when certain environments people deem you know, not as safe, right?

And so what do you say to that one person that would say, well, you know, I wanna move now that I started my family.

Uh because I, I feel as though the greatest testament of a parent is to give your Children a better or, or, or head start, right?

And also give them a better life than you had yourself.

So, you know, what do you say to that person that’s thinking about maybe the safety as well.

First of all, I would never throw shade on anybody who’s making that kind of a life decision for themselves.

Like you can’t, but I do think that it is going to take some, some of us who are going to decide that like, you know what, we didn’t make the conditions that exist in this place that make most of us feel like we really should get out, but someone did make them and some of us can actually be a part of reclaiming and changing things in a way.

So that more of us down the road are going to be able to benefit from being in our own communities in ways that are, are actually beneficial and helpful for us.

And I think that that it’s always has to be the case.

I mean, I think back on, you know, sort of like the the unintended consequences of integration, you know, the fact that we were racially segregated by law, right?

And um you know, but economically diverse in those communities, and I feel like that was something that actually benefited us to, to a bunch of ways and, you know, actually created like the the the the the beginnings of the civil rights movement.

Like people seeing like, wait a second, things are, things are tough for us right now.

But the idea of, and I do think it’s just an idea because we’re still very segregated, you know, all of our communities that they definitely are.

Um If you think about it that way, it’s kind of like, but we’ve taken out the folks who are actually probably most ideally suited to actually be the ones who are owning property, keep showing an example of what it looks like because again, if you don’t see it, you don’t believe that there are other things that you could be doing in with your life.

And I realize that not that concentrating poverty and all the things associated with it makes people feel like that’s all that there is.

And if we keep doing that, then ultimately, I think it comes down to sort of like even the psychic bad baggage that we hold dear in our lives about like that’s all we are.

And, and I feel that that is something that when we start reclaiming our communities from the inside out, when we start thinking about opportunities for homeownership business development in ways that support us first within those communities that have been written off.

And what’s interesting about Los that way you find load communities is that they are not necessarily in urban areas, they could be Native American reservations, they could be rural areas.

But it all comes down to how are those like is what kind of development is happening in those communities?

Is it the kind that’s ultimately going to um you know, lead to gentrification displacement or are they the kind that, that’s essentially going to be what we call poverty level, economic maintenance and just sort of keep the status quo in terms of the concentrated poverty that exists in those areas.

And I wasn’t challenging you just for, you know, like I, I have my own thoughts on it largely because I’m from the south side of Chicago and the area that I grew up, which is South Shore, it is seeing, you know, remarkable change.

And the reason I say that is now there’s gonna be the Obama Library and Obama Foundation, everything is now, you know, he’s focused on, you know, putting it on the south side.

And I look, and I said, wow, at some point, I should have bought some property there, right?

Because I grew up, obviously, we’re renting, right?

And so obviously, you know, I, I look, and when you say kind of the unintended consequences of integration, you look back at the, you know, kind of Tulsa Oklahoma where they had one of the most vibrant all black, you know, neighborhoods, you know, and so you think about what you’re doing is something that is very necessary.

And obviously you coined a phrase called Greening the Ghetto.

What does that mean?

And can you explain that to our listeners?

Um Greeting the ghetto, uh Everything I see just brought back a blast for the past.

Um I always thought because I started out as an environmental justice activist and our goal.

But we did projects.

We, we total project based.

Yeah, there were people who did that advocacy, we focused on actually literally changing what people saw in a community because we were just told, yeah, we’re the poorest congressional district in the country.

It’s like a lot.

And it was after a while, it was kind of like, it’s because I think it’s like you, it gets hard frankly to just fight against stuff.

You gotta like be fighting for things.

And so I was like, we need to fight for what do we want in our communities.

And people told us we did surveys et cetera to find out what people were missing.

And they were like taking their kids to parks outside of the community.

Like they wanted to feel like they had nice things in their own neighborhood.

And so I started one country’s first um green collar job training and placement systems to give people both a, both a personal and a financial stake in their environment, transform a dump into a park.

Um And literally, it’s now a national award winning park.

Actually, I know, I know you’re from, from Chi Town and whatnot.

But the national award that we won, we beat out Millennial Park.

Oh, hello.

That’s what I’m saying.

I know.

Right.

It’s like, it’s like Hunts Point, Riverside Park.

We beat Millennial.

I was like, oh my goodness.

But anyway, um but the whole point is that greening.

The ghetto was about, yes, the literal green here we were this, this literally environmentally ravaged community, you know, sewage treatment um facilities, uh sewage sludge pellets plants, 100 thousands of truck trips a day.

And it was just like this is kind of crazy.

So greening literally meant like adding more green to our community as a way to purify the air, you know, just, you know, deal with them, you know, the issues around urban heat island effect.

And, but also it was also about like, how do we create new opportunities for us to make some money while we’re here?

And that’s why developing the green college job training and placement system, literally not just training people because there was like a big move for people to have like uh to get green job training.

But no one was thinking about getting people in real jobs or helping to develop businesses.

And I was like, that’s just crazy like why aren’t we doing both?

And we were still a very successful at it, which made me really proud.

So yeah, it’s, it was green in both the the in every way from the environment to like what you put in your pocket, you know, I’m sorry.

And I, and I’m not mad at it.

I’m really very proud that we took that, that, that tact like all the way because economically disadvantaged people are easy to push around.

So why aren’t we talking about more generational wealth in our own communities.

You know, why are we always having to, you know, when we think about wealth like we go and we wanna spread it in and in in our in other neighborhoods, how come we’re not building up our own neighborhoods in ways that benefit us?

And um why are we selling grandma’s house so quick?

When some developer, the excuse me, not even a developer, you know, some predatory speculator runs up on us and basically tells us that um you know, I’ll, I’ll pay you some money for this house and take it off your hands and um and it’s just like you would instead of understanding that he’s willing to pay me XYZ that it’s worth XYZ Plus.

So why, why?

But we, but I think on some level, we’ve written off our own communities long before anybody else does.

And you know, people like to think that um you know, first signs of gentrification are things like you, you’re seeing a coffee shop or a uh you know, in a neighborhood you never saw before.

And um but really, I think gentrification starts to happen first when we don’t believe in the value and the power of our own communities.

Wow, that is, that’s powerful, right?

I think um to your point, right?

I think the average person like, oh, you know, it is gentrifying, you’re seeing certain people walking, you know, walking their dogs.

But the reality is, it’s us that actually just kind of lost faith in the community.

So let’s actually segue there right into kind of what does the Ma Carter Group do.

So we are an urban revitalization strategy firm, although we actually do work in not so urban areas as well or less urban ones.

And we do real estate development and, but we have a very particular focus which is about retaining, which is called a talent retention community development.

And it’s the same kind of thing that businesses do.

Like when you think about uh you own a company, you’re gonna want your people to stay because you don’t wanna be retraining people, you don’t wanna pour resources and training into some day so your competition can hire them away.

You want them to like lean into what you’re doing and keep and, you know, basically keep you, you keep you in the black and um and that’s a good thing, right?

If you’re running a company, but when we think of low staff as communities, we don’t think about retaining the talent in those neighborhoods.

As a matter of fact, it’s almost a talent repulsion, you know, um you know, experience that many of us experience.

I know I was a really smart kid, you know, I was reading when I was three and I remember like almost every single day, it’s like you’re gonna grow up and get out of here, you know, you’re just gonna be somebody when you get out of here and I wasn’t alone.

It was a whole bunch of us who went through that.

I wasn’t the only like, super smart accent.

I probably wasn’t the smartest one at all.

Um, but there was, and, you know, I’m not alone in that regard where the academically or artistic or, uh, athletically as well.

Those kids are considered the ones that you need to get away.

And again, and I’m not, not to throw shade at anybody because I’d be throwing shades at my own parents who would tell who told me the snake.

But um it was, it was to protect us.

But that idea of protecting us personally, I think came from this, this, this white supremacist ideal that communities that included us were naturally bad and that the best we can do was get out of them.

I mean, of course, we took everything with us, you know, but it was at least you got out of it.

But just, but it was just a way to destabilize like the entire culture and, and it’s been successful and that whole logic and way of thinking stems from systemic racism that stems from red lining, which prevented those areas from actually those homes, you know, increasing in value.

But listen, guys don’t go anywhere.

We’re gonna take a very short break but stay with us and we’ll be right back.

All right guys, welcome back to Financial Freestyle.

I’m Ross Mack and I’m here with none other than Maa Carter.

Listen, I, I, obviously I’m finding everything you’re saying to be quite, not only insightful but that’s something that’s actually, you know, making me say I need to do something.

Right.

Because I think that, you know, when you talk about revitalizing your area quite so often, the idea and the logic of getting out was kinda, you know, ingrained in our brain from a, you know, a, a, like you say, a uh a systemic system where, you know, we’re thinking, you know, we gotta escape while that’s just allowing other people to come in and actually capitalize.

So, you know, when you think about real estate and when you think about your overall mission, like, what would you say your, why is my biggest, why is helping more people understand and then either get or keep generational wealth.

Um I mean, the other big, well, it is probably the biggest why it’s like, but I also believe, you know, I’m a woman of faith and I really believe that create, helping people feel comfortable and confident in their own community is a, is a way of me loving my neighbor and build that is this type of community development will do that often when you think about capitalism is almost like a dichotomy of like, you know, making money slash doing good.

And it’s often at the end of the spectrums, have you found a perfect balance in what you’re doing?

Well, I don’t know if it’s a perfect balance because, you know, bigger people smarter people than me have tried to dismantle capitalism.

I just, just look at it and go and understand that one.

Number one, it’s been unevenly applied like the benefits of it.

Like, because, because quite frankly, if, like, if everybody that came back from the war, regardless of their color got a G I bill, we know the black folks historically did not, you know, if social security started where black people could actually benefit from it, which it did not, we I think people would be in very, very different situations.

So, but if these, these are all like capital structures that were used, right?

So, and we know the things that were used against us.

But I also feel like I look at the Black Wall Streets, whether it was Wilmington or uh Tulsa being the most famous among them and go that’s capitalism too.

So obviously we did some digging, right?

And I know a little bit.

You, right?

You bought your dad the building your dad grew up in, you opened a coffee shop a few blocks from where you grew up and you still also live in that same area.

So kind of let’s segue there to get a sense of kind of one living your why, right?

A lot of people kind of walk in their purpose and they say, hey, I wanna do good but from afar, yeah, you’re on the front lines.

I totally, yeah.

So I grew up, I now live in the house, two blocks from the house I grew up in, ok.

I squatted a house across the street from the one I grew up in.

Yeah, because nobody was, was trying to buy stuff in that neighborhood.

So you got like, squatter rights and stuff.

I did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, ended up, had made it, made it my technically for $77,500 it’s worth a lot more than that right now, which is great.

But we lost my parents’ house.

Um didn’t lose it.

We sold it um because I couldn’t convince my siblings, I’m the youngest of 10 to hold on to the family house after both my parents passed because they didn’t believe in in the neighborhood.

And, you know, at that point, none of them had lived in the neighborhood for years at that point.

I was the only one and, and that kind of hurts, you know, I feel like I was unable to like voice that, you know, in ways that, that people were, my, my siblings were able to hear and understand.

Um But again, I think it speaks volumes to, you know, the idea that in most status communities, folks like will see the, they don’t see the promise that’s in it for themselves.

And so it’s just easy to kind of like turn away because it, it is what we’re trying to do with the work we do is change the mindset about what it is.

But yeah, both of my dad is the reason why I was born.

Um And it’s this little rail station that I did acquire.

Um uh because he was a pullman porter and he wanted to be on the line that he spent most of his time, which is the New New York, New Haven line.

And there were a few stations in the Bronx that he would, that, that was, um, on his line.

So he was like, even though the stations were closed, they were hoping they would reopen them.

That was brothers on the rail said.

And so he won $15,000 in a horse race, um, in California.

And though you could imagine this was in the very early 19 forties, it was even more difficult for a black man to get a mortgage, uh, back then, but he literally carried, he didn’t put it in the bank either.

He literally carried that money, cash home with him.

And he was living in Harlem at the time, like the forties, the bank notes was huge.

It was hilarious.

And so he took the money and he literally carried it with him.

And the neighborhood hunts point is where I grew up is, um, was all white at the time.

And he found an Italian family, the Sacco family that were willing to sell directly to this great big old 6 ft three black man and he didn’t feel comfortable living there for two years, um because it was all white and he was a big old black man and, but when he um met and married my mom and it was just like, I think I need to move back in.

I think I, we, we need, we need a place and that’s why I was born.

But the house that it never opened up, the, the rail station didn’t open up.

But um it’s, I find it really hilarious that his baby daughter is now transforming it into one of the coolest um event venues in New York City.

And it’s beautiful.

I think of my daddy every time I walk in when we talked about kind of your why quite so often in our community, people just need capital, right?

We, we, we have a lack of, you know, financial literacy, which also makes us, you know, kinda we’re always in a survival mode.

And so thinking about going back to your, you know, situation where it look, there’s 10 of us, we can all own this together.

We’re probably none of them were saying, listen, let’s sell it.

We need the capital.

And then you think about kinda, you know, historically, 90% of millionaires got their start in real estate.

So I pose that all to say, right?

If you were talking to a young 13 year old Ma Carter, what advice are you giving?

Her.

Um, oh, my Lord.

I literally grew up watching my neighborhood on the news being considered just like the epitome of everything that was wrong in America.

Like if you were from there, you were a pimp, a push or a prostitute.

And I’m not saying that we didn’t have some of those.

We definitely did, but that certainly wasn’t everybody.

And, uh, but I feel on some level that it, I felt that that was a stain that was attached to me.

And uh I would just have to remind, well, tell her, um, it’s not true, you know, you’ve got great things to offer of the world and they’re lucky to have you in it.

And uh yeah, because how I struggled with, with my own self worth around that time being from a community that was literally considered nothing was really, it was almost tragic.

I mean, but it’s, I wasn’t alone.

I mean, that’s the thing.

I mean, I hear kids talking about it now and um i it’s a, it’s a really, it makes me feel really amazing to know that I can actually say that to young, young people right now.

I love that.

And so when it comes to real estate as a whole, right?

There’s obviously a lot of misconceptions and I think that many people of color or people that just come from, you know, lower class demographics, it’s often the thought is just unattainable, right?

And then you start hearing the different programs, FH A loans, et cetera.

And so I get a lot of D MS right in this segment called Dear Mac.

What advice would you give to someone that is trying to get into the real estate market part of it is just getting your credit?

Right?

I mean, because I’ve, I’ve actually noticed that, um, you know, folks that wanna do it, like, think that there’s a difference, at least to start between their, their personal credit and what they can do later on.

And it’s just like, no, you gotta get your, like, you, you start there.

And so number one and another thing that I, because I think the multifamily thing is super important, um, especially in the, in like the, the market that we’re in, um, you know, in, in New York City, there’s a lot of like multifamily brownstones, et cetera.

And, you know, the other thing that I often tell people is like, is there somebody in your family who has something because chances are they might be willing to sell directly to you and you, and so part of it is just opening your mouth to talk about it.

And that would be some of the first things that you can do.

And I think it’s a lower its lower hanging fruit.

Um, whereas many people don’t even wanna have that conversations with, with like family, which I think is just so bizarre.

Um, well, it’s not that bizarre.

Because I think, you know, family is weird and again, like it, within our own community, sometimes we know we’re not like the, the kindest to, to each other even in our own families.

So it’s kind of like, oh, I’m not gonna like, I’m not gonna ask my uncle about that house.

Um because it’s like my cousins, da da da.

And it’s just like, no, we need to be like, more open about that because I do think that sometimes it is just that close to people, but we don’t always wanna like share it.

Well, I wanna say thank you so much for joining us today.

I’m sitting here guys with the Ma Carter, the urban revitalization strategist.

I just wanna truly thank you for sharing your story with us and thank everybody for joining us on the financial freestyle.

I also wanna come back to her book, reclaiming your community, reclaiming your community.

So I hope you guys were able to get some insight and also hopefully, we were able to help you guys on your journey for wealth creation.

I’m Ross Maack.

Make sure you guys come back next week because we got you covered.

Make sure you tell your auntie and your cousins and let’s build wealth together.