Toronto community group looks to increase Black property ownership in Little Jamaica

An urban planning group in Toronto is embarking on a project that aims to increase the amount of commercial property owned by Black businesses in the city’s Little Jamaica neighbourhood.

The project, dubbed 'Pathways to Community Ownership' hopes to increase property ownership within the community and the capacity of local Black businesses to understand alternative business models.

The project is led by Black Urbanism Toronto (BUTO), a group founded in 2018 by Brock University alumni Romaine Baker, Dane Williams and Theo Adje.

The group originally planned to create a documentary capturing the “culture and different actors of Little Jamaica,” but that soon gave way to a much greater purpose.

“Black Urbanism Toronto aims to increase the participation of Black people in community development and to advance the collective cultural, economic and social interests in the neighbourhoods we call home,” Williams told CTV News Toronto on Thursday.

“We understood that Black displacement and erasure are patterns that we see continuously see repeating themselves in Canada, so Romaine, Theo and I decided that we wanted to do something about it.”

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