LEBANON — Vital Communities is launching a project to help members of minority communities become home and business owners in the Upper Valley.

A breakfast to kick off the Upper Valley BIPOC Home and Business Ownership Project will be held on Friday at 8:30 a.m. at Hilton Garden Inn in Lebanon.

The project will aim to “advance home ownership, business ownership, and a sense of belonging in the Upper Valley for BIPOC community members — existing, new, and those yet to come,” by providing resources and connection to help folks find affordable homes and buildings to house businesses, and walk them through the ownership process. (BIPOC stands for Black, indigenous and people of color.)

“O wnership is a tangible way to root people to community and set people up for success,” said Vital Communities BIPOC Community Navigator Miranda Dupre.

Donors supporting the project include Mascoma Bank, a private party, and Think Vermont, an initiative of the Vermont Department of Economic Development to help newcomers to the state.

“When you don’t have that generational knowledge or wealth, you live in this mindset that (being a home or business owner) can’t happen,” said Dupre, whose mother just recently became the first person in her family to buy a home. “We can be a safe space people can come to and do those initial introductions to Realtors or banks.”

The breakfast is an initial networking event with stakeholders.

Latonya Wallace, director of economic inclusion at New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, is the keynote speaker at the event. Other registered attendees include real estate agents, elected officials, members of the Upper Valley Lake Sunapee Regional Planning Commission, Twin Pines Housing and Mascoma Bank.

“We wanted to be able to have some connections so when we meet with community members we have something to offer them rather than just asking them their needs,” said Dupre.

Community members seeking resources are also welcome at the event, but the project is not in full force yet.

A New Orleans native who moved to White River Junction two years ago, Dupre said she was lucky to find her community quickly after moving here, but knows it’s not always easy to do so as a person of color in the region.

The 2023 U.S. census reported 93.6% of Vermont residents and 92.5% of New Hampshire indicated they are white.

“We’re planning on working with white community members and trying to dissect the traditional definition of ‘who is a Vermonter?’” said Dupre. “We’re trying to break that down so we can be more imaginative about what our communities look like because diversity is so important for our communities to thrive.”

The project is the brainchild of Conicia “CJ” Jackson, owner of the Boloco restaurant in Hanover, and Julius Turner, a board member of Twins Pines Housing.

Jackson and Turner met at a Juneteenth picnic in 2021 where Jackson spoke about the housing crisis. In 2023, the two sat down with members of the leadership team at Mascoma Bank to discuss their project idea. Mascoma Bank connected the duo with Vital Communities, which hired Dupre in June to spearhead the project.

“This work is really to fight back against the discrimination that’s occurred for generations,” said Jackson who moved to Lyme five years ago from East St. Louis, Ill. “Ownership is the foundation of building generational wealth in this country.”

In New Hampshire, 72.5% of white households own the homes they live in, while people of color have a home ownership rate of 45.4%. Vermont has similar rates with 71.6% of white households owning their homes 48.6% of people of color owning their homes, according to a 2023 study by Harvard’s Joint Center of Housing Studies.

Turner moved to Lebanon from Texas in 2020 and said it was hard for him to find resources on where he would and wouldn’t be welcome as a Black man.

Turner said many of his friends of color have left the Upper Valley because they could not buy a home or expand their businesses.

“People of color like the area and come here just as much as any other people and we want to give them reasons to stay,” he said.

Down the line, Turner hopes the project can acquire land and build homes for families to move to the area. If successful, the goal is to eventually expand to meet the needs of everyone not just BIPOC members of the community, he said.

Registration for Friday’s breakfast is online at: vitalcommunities.org/events/bhbo-community-kick-off/.

Emma Roth-Wells can be reached at erothwells@vnews.com or 603-727-3242.

CORRECTION: The donors supporting a Vital Communities  project to encourage BIPOC home and business ownership in the Upper Valley are Mascoma Bank, a private party and Think Vermont, an initiative of the Vermont Department of Economic Development to help newcomers to the state. A previous version of this story mischaracterized the groups’ role in the project.