Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC)

The Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) facilitates the growth of sustainable, localized, and just economies, through legal research, professional training, resource development, and education about practices such as:

• Cooperatives

• Community-supported enterprises

• Barter

• Sharing

• Local currencies

• Intentional communities, ecovillages, cohousing

• Affordable housing and limited equity housing

• Urban agriculture

• Community-based renewable energy

• Community land trusts

• Social enterprise

• Microlending

• Local investing

• Co-op banks/credit unions

In addition to creating and making available resources to the public, SELC provides training to legal professionals, student interns, and others, empowering them with tools to bring about more sustainable, localized, and just economies. SELC also convenes special working groups, bringing together experts and practitioners from various fields, for the purpose of investigating, collecting resources for, and developing resources in specialized areas.

Based in Oakland, California, SELC is a fiscally sponsored project of Community Ventures, a California 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. All SELC projects are currently managed by volunteer attorneys.

Analysis document/working paper/article