BONUS: Rukaiyah Adams on Reimagining Community

Rukaiyah Adams is one of our favorite, most inspiring people on the planet. Rukaiyah had a long, successful career in investment banking before she moved back home to Portland, Oregon and joined the board of the Albina Vision Trust, an organization dedicated to restoring the historic Black neighborhood of Albina, where Rukaiyah grew up. Today, she’s the Chief Executive Officer of the 1803 Fund (1803fund.com/), and she’s raising hundreds of millions of dollars that she will invest not only in Albina but in community-based organizations in education, place, and culture and belonging across Portland, Oregon.
We talk in this episode about:
Neighborhood REITs and City of the Future Episode 17: Wealth Beyond Ownership [1:52]
The Lost City of Vanport and our upcoming Vanport podcast [5:07]
Rukaiyah on growing up in, leaving, and returning to Portland [7:47]
The Flood: Vanport’s connection to Albina [15:44]
The Albina Vision Trust: “What we did to our river, we did to each other.” [32:19]
Rukaiyah’s background - great-great grandmother’s story - “What is my education for?” [33:51]
How to actually create change & anchoring conversations in the past [38:35]
How to lead your canoe [40:56]
Difference between Albina Vision Trust and 1803 Fund [44:01]
Origins of 1803 Fund [45:22]
Nike & how Rukaiyah became CEO of 1803 Fund [48:14]
Albina Vision Trust progress and projects [56:20]
Superfund site, Willamette River cleanup, and freeway initiatives [58:01]
Why Rukaiyah focused on Portland [1:00:07]
Design Aspects of the Albina Vision - Designing for children [1:01:49]
Creating loving urban design - “Urban form tells Black children they are hated” [1:05:08]
Equity is not the goal - want to be inequitably beneficial to Black and Brown children [1:07:16]
Bringing wealth to Black Portlanders - 1 billion dollars stolen from Black community through eminent domain usage in Albina [1:09:02]
Strategies to build wealth - affordable housing REIT [1:12:51]
Philanthropy to endow Black serving organizations [1:15:09]
Advice for fundraising [1:16:40]
Reflections on impacts of world class education [1:18:32]
Equitable preservation-based development & adaptive reuse [1:19:37]
Relationship between collective memory & historic preservation [1:25:39]
Credits:
Urban Roots is a product of Urbanist Media, a non-profit dedicated to community preservation. urbanistmedia.... You can make a tax-deductible donation to us via Venmo (account.venmo....) or Paypal. (www.paypal.me/...)
Follow us on IG at / urbanrootsculture
Drop us an email [e-mail]
Thank you to Rukaiyah Adams. Your hosts are Deqah Hussein-Wetzel and Vanessa Quirk. This episode was edited and mixed by Connor Lynch. Our music is by Adaam James Levin-Areddy.