In New York City, community-owned internet is offered by NYC Mesh, “an infrastructure commons that is accessible to all New Yorkers.”

Community internet networks seek to offer affordable, fast and fair access to the Internet by working with members to form “nodes” that connect together into an independent internet network. For example, NYC Mesh members use a wireless router mounted on a rooftop or balcony to connect to nearby buildings, allowing internet traffic to pass from building to building across the city.  Each new member who joins the network helps to maintain and grow the strength and resilience of the network.

Community internet networks offer an alternative to the telecom oligopoly (e.g. Verizon, Optimum and Spectrum). Due to their decentralized structure, they have no single point of failure as an organization or network, so can also support emergency communications during natural disasters, when centralized infrastructure often fails.

-adapted from NYC Mesh

Limited-equity housing co-ops are a type of permanently affordable housing cooperative. In NYC, they're usually multifamily apartment buildings that are owned and operated by their residents. Two forms this housing takes in NYC are Housing Development Fund Corporations (HDFCs) and Mitchell-Lama (M-L) Cooperatives. There are around 1,200 HDFC co-ops with around 25,000 units in New York City, mostly created in the 1970s and 1980s by low-income communities of color fighting disinvestment in their neighborhoods.

There are around 60,000 units of Mitchell-Lama cooperative housing in 86 co-op developments across NYC, making them one of the largest groups of limited-equity housing in the U.S. A response to deteriorating housing conditions, government disinvestment, and white flight, the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program was created in 1954 to create affordable quality housing for the middle class.

-adapted from Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB)

Community gardens are shared greenspaces where neighbors grow a variety of plants to meet their needs for food, connection and natural beauty. Community gardens share a tradition of transforming abandoned or underutilized land into vibrant community resources, improving visitors' well-being and the city's air quality and biodiversity.

Community gardens reflect the cultures of the neighborhoods they are built in. Many gardens are planted by migrants, immigrants, BIPOC people, the young and elderly. They offer spaces for neighbors to share cultural values, traditional foods, and knowledge with people from different backgrounds.

-adapted from Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, a community garden network

Food co-ops are member-owned and often member-operated grocery stores. This means that, in addition to buying groceries, the shoppers also support the operations of the grocery store in some way. By helping keep the store running, members help to reduce labor costs at the food co-op, keep food costs affordable, and guide the business to align with the values of the membership. Compared to commercial profit-driven grocery stores, food co-ops tend to offer more affordable, local, seasonal, organic, bulk and fair-trade goods.

Food co-ops are one example of a “consumer cooperative” (meaning that their membership is made up of shoppers/consumers) in contrast to “worker cooperatives”, where the members who own and manage the business are the worker-owners.

- adapted from 4th Street Food Co-op and Park Slope Food Coop

Worker cooperatives are values-driven businesses that put worker and community benefit at the core of their purpose. In contrast to traditional companies, worker members at worker cooperatives participate in the profits, oversight, and often management of the enterprise using democratic practices.

The worker cooperative model has proven to be an effective tool for creating and maintaining sustainable, dignified jobs; generating wealth; improving the quality of life of workers; and promoting community and local economic development, particularly for people who lack access to business ownership or sustainable work options.

-adapted from Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI)

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) connects regional farmers directly to consumers who want to buy locally grown, high quality fresh produce. Using a membership model, CSA’s offer consumers the opportunity to purchase a season-long “share” of vegetables from a regional farmer, before the start of the season. In return for making that upfront commitment to the farm, members receive just-picked, local fresh produce at a good value, usually on a weekly basis from June to November. In addition to fresh produce, some CSAs also offer fruit, dairy, eggs, meat, and other local products.

- adapted from Just Food and Garden of Eve Organic Farm

A Community Development Credit Union (CDCU) is a non-profit, community-based financial cooperative with a mission of serving low- and moderate-income people and communities. CDCUs are financial institutions owned by their members, who can elect the board of directors as well as supervisory committees.

CDCUs offer affordable savings and checking accounts; personal, business and home loans; free financial counseling and more. By providing flexible requirements to open accounts, accepting municipal identification cards, and partnering with non-profit organizations, CDCUs provide financial services and community development investments to low-income, immigrant and other under-served communities who are often excluded from mainstream financial services.

-adapted from Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union and New Economy Project

Mutual aid is a form of collective action that seeks to meet people’s immediate needs, build solidarity and facilitate community-based problem solving. ​While many new mutual aid groups rose in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, mutual aid has existed throughout human history. When existing systems have not met their needs, marginalized people have turned to one another for support and formed mutual aid organizations.

Mutual aid is not charity. Within a mutual aid framework, everyone has something to offer and may have something they need. Without eligibility requirements to access resources people provide services or support via self-organization and operate in a non-hierarchical structure. 

Mutual aid is also political. Leaders and politicians have made choices that leave many communities without sufficient food, housing, or healthcare, and we all suffer for it. Mutual aid provides for these basic necessities, while at the same time arguing that mutual aid organizations shouldn’t have to exist–and organizing for a future in which our society provides these things to everyone.

-adapted from Astoria Food Pantry

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are nonprofit organizations that treat land as a public good.

CLTs own and steward the land to ensure it is used in ways that benefit the community. The land is leased to organizations or businesses to create permanently affordable housing, community centers, commercial spaces, community gardens, or other entities for the public good.

- New York City Community Land Initiative (NYCCLI)