Part III - From Capital to Control: COPA, Nonprofit Asset Growth, and the Quiet Return of Collectivization
A 3 Part Series on NY City's Slide Into Communism by Kim Hermance and Danielle Cassase, Co-Founders & Co-Director's of Project CIVICA.
For decades, nonprofit organizations in the United States were understood primarily as service providers, institutions created to educate, assist, advocate, or care for the vulnerable. Quietly, however, the nonprofit sector has undergone a profound transformation. Today, nonprofits are not merely mission-driven organizations; they are among the fastest-growing and most durable asset holders in the American economy.
This transformation provides essential context for understanding New York City’s recent debate over the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA): a bill passed by the City Council but vetoed by Mayor Eric Adams. The veto matters. But so does the fact that the bill passed at all.
The Rise of the Asset-Holding Nonprofit
Federal Reserve data tracking nonprofit assets over the past three decades makes this shift unmistakable. Since the mid-1990s, nonprofit assets have grown from roughly $1.5–$2 trillion to well over $13 trillion today. This growth is not concentrated in classrooms, shelters, or community facilities. It is overwhelmingly concentrated in financial assets and real estate, capital that compounds, persists, and is largely insulated from market exit.
The data reveals three structural realities about the modern nonprofit sector.
First, nonprofit assets grow faster than the broader economy. Even during recessions: 2001, 2008, and 2020, nonprofit balance sheets dip briefly and then rebound sharply, often emerging stronger than before.
Second, the sector has become increasingly financialized. Operating nonprofits and private foundations now hold vast investment portfolios, benefiting from asset inflation, preferential tax treatment, public subsidies, and access to low-cost financing.
Third, nonprofit capital is uniquely permanent. Unlike private firms, nonprofits do not distribute equity, dissolve through market exit, or unwind naturally. Assets accumulate inside institutions that face no ownership turnover and minimal external accountability. In effect, nonprofits have become durable containers for capital.
What COPA Would Have Done
COPA was designed to give qualified nonprofit organizations a statutory right of first refusal when certain multifamily rental properties were offered for sale in New York City. Supporters framed the policy as a housing-stability measure. Structurally, however, COPA would have done something more consequential: it would have systematically shifted ownership of private property into nonprofit hands.
Once acquired by a nonprofit, property is typically removed from the property-tax base or heavily subsidized, held indefinitely rather than resold, governed by self-selecting boards rather than voters, and integrated into larger portfolios of institutional ownership.
Mayor Adams vetoed COPA in part because of concerns about housing supply, financing constraints, and unintended consequences. But the broader issue remains. The policy logic behind COPA reflects a deeper ideological shift about ownership, control, and governance.
Where the Data and COPA Converge
The Federal Reserve data shows the fuel. COPA would have built the pipeline.
Nationally, nonprofits already possess unprecedented levels of capital. COPA would have provided a local legal mechanism to convert that capital into permanent control of land and housing. This is not mere redistribution; it is institutionalization.
Financial assets become real assets. Real assets become tax-exempt. Ownership becomes permanent. Control shifts from individuals to institutions. Over time, the city’s economic and civic landscape would tilt away from dispersed private ownership and toward centralized, nonprofit-managed property regimes.
Ownership, Consent, and the Constitutional Design
The American constitutional system treats property ownership not merely as an economic interest, but as a core safeguard of liberty. Widespread ownership disperses power, anchors accountability, and links governance to consent.
Nonprofit ownership breaks that chain. Nonprofits are not governed by voters. Their boards are not elected and cannot be removed through democratic processes. Leadership priorities are shaped by donors, foundations, and government funding streams rather than local residents.
As ownership shifts, so too does governance—away from the people most affected by decisions. The Constitution presumes a civil society composed of citizens, not clients; owners, not wards. Policies that permanently transfer ownership from individuals to institutions challenge that presumption.
Historical Echoes: Collectivization Without the Rhetoric
The historical record of collectivization offers a cautionary parallel. In the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other collectivist systems, the state did not initially abolish private property through sudden confiscation. It proceeded incrementally—through preferential treatment for collective entities, regulatory pressure on private owners, financial incentives that made private ownership untenable, and gradual normalization of institutional control.
The rhetoric was always moral—fairness, stability, equity. The outcome was consistent: concentrated ownership, diminished individual autonomy, and governance without meaningful consent.
COPA is not communism. But it reflects a familiar pattern: the belief that institutional ownership is inherently superior to individual ownership, and that permanence without accountability is a feature rather than a flaw.
The Question New York Has Not Answered
Mayor Adams’s veto halted COPA—for now. But the ideological framework that produced it remains embedded in housing policy debates, nonprofit advocacy, and municipal governance.
The central question facing New York City is not whether nonprofits do valuable work. Many do. The question is whether a democratic society should steadily transfer its land, housing, and economic foundation to institutions that are permanent, tax-advantaged, non-electoral, and largely unaccountable to the public.
The Federal Reserve data shows where the country has been heading for decades. COPA revealed how easily that trend can be converted into law.
If history teaches anything—from constitutional design to the failures of collectivization—it is that ownership determines power, and power without accountability rarely ends well.
Part 1, When Ownership Becomes Conditional, of this 3 part series can be read here. Part 2, Soft Collectivization, can be found here.
" Since the mid-1990s, nonprofit assets have grown from roughly $1.5–$2 trillion to well over $13 trillion today" It is a Marxist strategy to give names to organizations that disguise there real intent. "non-profit" is a euphemism for a much more sinister plan. This series has highlighted that very well. Thank you.