Draft:Kensington Corridor Trust

Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT) is a non-profit neighborhood trust located in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. KCT was founded in September 2019 by a partnership of four separate Philadelphia based organizations and is one of the first neighborhood trusts in the United States. It was founded with the purpose of mitigating the effects of gentrification in a section of Philadelphia's Kensington neighborhood. The trust utilizes the neighborhood trust or steward-ownership model where it buys commercial and residential properties along Kensington Avenue from Lehigh Avenue to Glenwood Avenue – what it calls the “corridor”. It stewards its properties with the stated goals of providing the community with control over real estate assets, preventing wealth extraction, and fostering local entrepreneurship.

History
In 2019, Kensington Corridor Trust was founded by Impact Services, PIDC, Shift Capital, and IF Lab. These organizations collaborated to address rapid development and new investments that they saw as a threat to the future of the neighborhood's affordability. Specifically, the founders feared that the low income residents of the neighborhood would be displaced by increasing rents that have accompanied gentrification in other neighborhoods in cities around the United States. The four organizations had made early governing decisions to guide the trust's growth, but soon after hiring an executive director for the trust in 2020, the founders relinquished their control. In their place, a new board was formed including Kensington business owners, residents, and a federally qualified health center from the neighborhood. The trust announced in September 2022 that it is transitioning towards a permanent oversight committee of neighborhood residents and business owners, called the KCT Neighborhood Trust, that will make important decisions on the trust. KCT is currently growing its portfolio, stewarding its current properties, and developing a democratic governance structure that will allow residents to have ultimate control over the trust's assets and ultimately over a significant portion of the Kensington Avenue Corridor.