What we are building
What we are building
In plain language, the four pillars, the four-phase arc, the $5 door, and the 10% line.
Seven Years of Change is a community economic self-determination platform. Five things hold it up. Here is what each one is, in plain language.
1. Four pillars of infrastructure
Nutrition. A neighborhood kitchen and pantry that feeds participating households at cooperative prices. Documented monthly grocery savings of $180 to $310 per household, depending on participation level.
Housing. Tied to community land trusts. Rent is not extraction. Refurbish, rebuild, reconstruct, rework, reimagine.
Transportation. Shared, neighbor-to-neighbor, dispatch-supported, and integrated with whatever transit exists. Nobody is punished for not owning a car.
Energy and manufacturing. Paired as a single rhythm. Green retrofits on participating housing. Local repair, refurbishment, and small-scale manufacturing — the kind of work that keeps dollars circulating.
A water pillar, student-led, is in development. High school and college student teams, anchored by the founder’s Bureau of Reclamation credential. Targeting Southern California, Arizona, and other western drought states.
2. The four-phase arc
Get stable. Earn. Build. Lead.
Get stable means food on the table, roof overhead, debt above 10% addressed, body and mind tended to. Earn means a real wage from real work — a kitchen shift, a youth corps role at $16 an hour with a 4% savings match, a cooperative enterprise job. Build means co-designing and operating a piece of infrastructure with your team. Lead means training the next person through the door.
Seven years is long enough for one person, one block, one neighborhood to walk all four phases. That is the platform’s promise about time.
3. The seven-person team
Six members plus a rotating lead. Women-led by default. The team is the basic unit. Teams meet weekly. Teams are organized into Pods around shared functions, and Pods coordinate at the neighborhood level.
Why seven? Because seven people can know each other’s names, schedules, kids, and constraints. A movement of strangers cannot care for itself. A team of seven can.
4. The $5 door
The community-member entry point is $5. That is the door.
The platform is funded by a combination of foundation funding, reparations-targeted relief funding, cooperative enterprise revenue, and a small individual contribution from every participant. Larger gifts are welcomed from people in a position to give them, and they are documented like everything else.
5. The 10% line
Any interest rate above 10% is treated as extraction, not lending. The Community Usury Ledger documents where that extraction is happening — credit cards, payday lenders, subprime auto, rent-to-own, anything that crosses the line.
When the Ledger documents a household in extraction above 10%, the platform’s response is reparations-funded relief — targeted retirement of the debt. Not refinance. Not consolidation. Retire.
The Ledger’s first entry is the founder’s own. On July 1, 2026, the Ledger opens to the public.
Where the work starts
Phoenix and the Bay Area, May through July 2026. The framework is written so that anyone, anywhere, can take it home.
What to do next
If this is for you, write to us. Tell us your region and what you would like to build.