Urban Upbound

Urban Upbound is dedicated to breaking cycles of poverty in New York City public housing and other low-income neighborhoods. We provide underserved youth and adults with the tools and resources needed to achieve economic prosperity and self-sufficiency through five comprehensive, integrated programs: Employment Services, Financial Counseling, Income Support Services, Community Revitalization, and Financial Inclusion services anchored by the Urban Upbound Federal Credit Union.

In 2014, Urban Upbound launched a worker cooperative initiative to leverage the opportunity presented by luxury residential and commercial development in the westernmost neighborhoods of the NYC borough of Queens, the same neighborhoods that are home to over 16,000 public housing residents, the vast majority of which are Black, Indigenous, ad People of Color (BIPOC). Historically underdeveloped and overlooked by public sector and private investors alike, the billions of dollars in new development presented both a challenge and an opportunity: how to ensure that longtime public housing residents benefited economically and how to use new developments to create a bridge between these residents and their new wealthy neighbors - rather than reinforce artificial boundaries that create separate cultures and communities.

Since then, Urban Upbound has incubated 4 BIPOC worker-owned businesses, including OnPoint Security NYC, the first black-owned and black-run security services company composed of NYC public housing residents. In addition to our work with cooperatives, we provide 1-on-1 technical assistance to traditional small businesses, including banking and financing services through the Urban Upbound Federal Credit Union, which opened in 2010 and is located across Queensbridge Houses, the largest public housing development in the country.