Building Black Bed Stuy’s mission is to protect, preserve, and liberate the black community within Bed Stuy and beyond. In order to aid in that goal, our focus is to provide financial aid to existing black businesses and organizations whose initiatives are integral to their communities.  We believe that self sufficiency is key on the journey to black liberation so creating resources for building generational  wealth gives us power and independence. Our aim is to amplify that message by investing in black owned businesses  and organizations to further the independent growth of these communities well into the future. 

Bedstuy, like many other black communities, has been hit hard with the effects of gentrification.  With a widening income gap in Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bed Stuy, populations of all income groups have increased while the income of black populations have decreased. The number of households with incomes below the federal poverty level has increased by 13% since the end of the recession and continues to increase with growing gentrification.  As of 2000, the share of Black Bed Stuy residents was 82%.  By 2018, the Black population in the neighborhood decreased by nearly half to 46%.  And in 2020, the  Covid-19 epidemic only served to magnify the racial and systemic inequalities that already persisted in the United States.