You Don’t Inherit Community—You Build It

One of the things I’ve come to learn through this work—sometimes slowly, sometimes abruptly—is that community isn’t something you inherit. It’s something you build.

You build it in everyday moments: helping your neighbor with the door, checking in on the business owner who’s been on the block longer than the street trees, translating a flyer because no one else thought to. You build it in small talk that turns into strategy, in gatherings that start with coffee and end with a plan. You build it in the in-between.

At Perch, we’ve been lucky enough to walk alongside people who do this work all the time. They aren’t waiting for a title or an invitation. They don’t need a press release. They just start building—with what they have, from where they are.

You can feel the difference when something is built by people who care. It’s not perfect, but it’s layered. It reflects the rhythm of the block. The mix of languages, music, memories, pride, and grief that make up a place.

Too often, things get built around communities without being built with them. That gap—that space between planning and presence—is where so much gets lost. The people we work with live in that gap. They hold it together with flyers and folding chairs and follow-up calls. They’re the ones shaping what community can be, even when they’re not given the tools to do it.

And still—they do it anyway.

They organize, advocate, invite, welcome, and protect. They do the invisible labor that holds neighborhoods together. Not because it’s their job, but because it’s home.

This work isn’t glamorous. It’s not always funded. It’s rarely fast. But it’s where the real stuff lives.

So here’s to the builders. The ones who believe a block can change. Who believe that investment doesn’t have to mean displacement. Who believe that culture isn’t something to preserve behind glass—it’s something to live, to celebrate, and to grow.

We see you. We learn from you. We build with you.