Mondragon Village Association (MVA) was formed in 2014 by Dr. Curtis Haynes, Jr., who attended the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, wrote his dissertation on the intersection of cooperative economics and Black political economy in 1993, and teaches in the Economics department at Buffalo State College. He has been a longtime champion of cooperative movements in Buffalo and is a former City Common Council Member. In recent years, Dr. Haynes has been nurturing a collective of community members interested in practical applications of cooperation, and Mondragon Village Association's conversion into a real estate co-op is the first of such ventures. The real estate co-op, which owns one 3-unit property, is part of a broader educational and entrepreneurial project led by Conscious Investment Group's "Leadership Academy." The long-term vision for the Academy is a "nexus of cooperatives and cooperating institutions" including the real estate co-op, a co-op investment vehicle owned by and for Black cooperators in Buffalo, and worker co-ops which will be tenants of commercial units in an expanded real estate cooperative.

Read more:

Conscious Investment Group Website

Building Economic Resilience in the Rust Belt: Buffalo’s Growing Co-op Network