The Reparations Investment Company is making reparations a reality
Most of the time when you hear “real estate investment” it is a signal for gentrification:predatory developers, rising prices and black families being pushed out of their neighborhoods. But what if you could invest in the opposite? What if your investment could build a Black-led program to end gentrification and rebuild black community control over land, housing and development?
That is the vision behind the Reparations Investment Company (RIC), a bold, community-driven initiative to rebuild North St. Louis through renovation that contends with gentrification, reclaiming development in the hands of the black community.
As the newest expansion of the Black Power Blueprint, co-sponsored by the African Peoples Education and Defense Fund (APEDF), RIC is restoring distressed homes, apartments and lots, creating community homeownership and long-term rental housing and reinvesting in expanded renovation across the Northside.
This is investment with a purpose. As Chairman Omali Yeshitela, founder and leader of the Uhuru Movement says, “The Reparations Investment Company is reverse-gentrification.”
Repairing the legacy of Team 4 and the Delmar Divide
The history of St. Louis is the story of a heroic black community, one that has never stopped fighting for political and economic power over their own lives. It was this community’s courageous fightback that brought the eyes of the world onto the conditions of African people in St. Louis after the police murder of Mike Brown in 2014.
Black St. Louis was once a thriving hub of economic life with businesses, schools, hospitals, restaurants, grocery stores, theaters and historic neighborhoods like Mill Creek Valley and the Ville. Generations of deliberate policy razed entire neighborhoods to the ground and tore apart the fabric of black economic life.
Today when you drive across the colonial “Delmar Divide” into North St. Louis, you see thousands of boarded-up homes, collapsed buildings and empty lots.
From the “Team Four” plan of the 1970s that intentionally let the Northside rot, to the more recent takeover and demolition of hundreds of homes to build the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, one administration after another has systematically stripped resources from black communities while directing investment to the Southside where most of the white population resides.
Then came the tornado.
The devastation didn’t start with the tornado
In May 2025, an EF-3 tornado tore through these same neighborhoods, destroying thousands of homes. The city government failed to activate the warning signs in an act of criminal negligence that caused the violent deaths of seven people. Immediately after the tornado the black community came out in droves to support each other, remove debris from the streets and pass out water and food.
The mayor urged the people not to “self-deploy” and claimed “help was on the way.” Instead, the city imposed a police curfew on the Northside and red-tagged damaged homes with notices ordering families to move out.
Nearly a year later, most of the damage still hasn’t been repaired. Many community members are still facing unimaginable loss, unable to return to the homes their families had lived in for generations.
City officials are cynically attempting to exploit the disaster to escalate the forcible removal of the black community, covering up this land-grab with lies and excuses. The African community of St. Louis has pledged to resist the government’s efforts to repeat what happened in New Orleans after the hurricane in 2005. Community leaders have raised the demand, “North St Louis Will Not Be Another Katrina!”
At a recent budget hearing in City Hall, the “recovery office” announced that nearly $300 million is being allocated for demolition, while a mere fraction of that amount is being set aside for repairs. Their priorities are clear: to demolish, not to rebuild. Now they claim they won’t even start doing repairs until mid-2027, a full two years after the tornado.
But North St. Louis isn’t waiting.
A future of prosperity and power for North St. Louis
The decimation of black communities through redlining, zoning laws and other colonial policies is a familiar story across this country. St. Louis was ground zero for gentrification, and now it will be the launchpad for a reparations model that can expand to cities everywhere.
The Black Power Blueprint and the RIC were created to repair this legacy of injustice and build a stronger future of self-determination and power for the African community.
As Ona Zené Yeshitela, the architect of the Black Power Blueprint, explains:
“We are working to build a North St. Louis where our community can thrive again, where beautiful homes are restored, families raise their children in safety and prosperity, businesses flourish, parks and green spaces are enjoyed by all, and multi-generational families live and grow together.”
This is what reparations looks like in practice.
In less than ten years since its launch in 2017, the Black Power Blueprint has built a community center, a bakery and cafe, a workforce and affordable housing program, a basketball court, an outdoor event space and so much more. Its mission is to build political and economic power by and for the African community.
White people are supporting the Black Power Blueprint as a stand of solidarity with the right of the black community to regain the power and resources that have been robbed from them for decades.
When white people invest in RIC it is a concrete act of repairing the damage: divesting from an oppressive economy built on genocide and slavery, investing in the liberated economy that African people are building brick-by-brick.
Ready to make reparations a reality?
RIC is actively organizing investors, volunteers, contractors and construction crews to renovate its first three properties: two homes being restored for families to buy and a four-unit building that will create stable rental housing.
Just as Northside residents and volunteers mobilized immediately after the tornado, the community is self-deploying once again, stepping forward to rebuild, taking responsibility and shaping the future of North St. Louis with its own hands.
Be a part of the first-ever “reverse-gentrification” project to revitalize North St. Louis as an example and inspiration for how reparations-driven development can transform communities everywhere.
A new world is under construction. You can be a part of building it.
Start your investment today. Email info@reparationsinvestment.com to set up a meeting to get started.
Sign up to volunteer at: reparationsinvestment.com
