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A Los Angeles community development corporation

Thriving communities are built four ways.

Serving Los Angeles and its surrounding cities, Tetra Communities invests in the places people live, the people who live there, the prosperity they build, and the resilience that carries them through — because lasting change comes from all four together, not one at a time.

Explore the pillars Our mission
Place People Prosperity Resilience

Our mission

Tetra Communities is a charitable community development corporation dedicated to building thriving communities through Place, People, Prosperity, and Resilience.

Tetra means four. Our name is our method: four pillars, held together, each one strengthening the others.

We recognize that communities function as interconnected systems — housing, education, economic opportunity, health, environmental stewardship, and social cohesion are mutually reinforcing. Lasting transformation comes from integrated investment, not isolated interventions.

Tetra Communities is a California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation organized exclusively for charitable purposes.

A palm-lined Los Angeles street with the Hollywood sign in the distance Native grasses and a garden path leading to a restored historic brick building Aerial view of a Los Angeles boulevard stretching toward the hills

The four pillars

One framework, four commitments

The pillars are our permanent strategic framework — the lens for every program, investment, and partnership we take on.

Place

Thriving communities require thoughtfully designed, safe, healthy, and environmentally responsible physical environments.

  • Affordable & workforce housing
  • Neighborhood revitalization
  • Parks & public spaces
  • Sustainable development
  • Community facilities

People

Communities flourish when individuals and families have opportunities to live healthy, connected, educated, and meaningful lives.

  • Education
  • Youth development
  • Public health & nutrition
  • Arts & culture
  • Aging in community

Prosperity

Economic opportunity is essential to community flourishing — prosperity should be built by and shared with the whole community.

  • Entrepreneurship
  • Small business development
  • Homeownership
  • Financial capability
  • Employment pathways

Resilience

Healthy communities can withstand, adapt to, and recover from economic, environmental, social, and public health challenges.

  • Climate resilience
  • Disaster preparedness
  • Food security
  • Energy resilience
  • Environmental stewardship

Our theory of change: lasting community transformation results from integrated investments rather than isolated interventions. We pursue coordinated strategies that strengthen the interconnected relationship among Place, People, Prosperity, and Resilience — with systems-based planning and cross-sector collaboration.

Our vision

Communities thrive when built spaces are inspiring, nature is preserved rather than removed, people have access to resources for healthy everyday living, intergenerational connection is encouraged, and places feel safe and clean.
Aerial view of mixed-use development, green space, and tree-lined streets in greater Los Angeles

Programs

Where your support goes to work

Six founding programs across the four pillars, designed to deliver visible impact in Los Angeles neighborhoods from day one.

Place

Cornerstone

Real estate is how a neighborhood holds its ground. Cornerstone acquires vacant and underused properties — empty lots, aging commercial corridors, buildings worth saving — and develops them into lasting community assets: gathering spaces, community gardens, and green space at the smallest scale, and full community anchors at the largest, with quality affordable and supportive homes above, community-serving businesses and program space at street level, and campuses where local enterprises can launch and grow. Development doubles as opportunity: participants from our workforce programs help build the projects, and the neighborhoods we build in share in what gets built.

Your partnership and involvement supports: the acquisition fund and predevelopment pipeline — securing sites, planning, design, and the build-out that turns an underused property into a neighborhood anchor.

People

Healthy Together

Your zip code shouldn't decide your health — but in too many neighborhoods, fresh food is a drive away and fitness is behind a paywall. Healthy Together removes both barriers by meeting people where they already gather. Hands-on nutrition education gives families practical skills they can use that night: cooking affordable meals, shopping smart on a real budget, and turning garden harvests into dinner. Free public workout spaces and community fitness sessions make movement part of everyday neighborhood life — no membership, no equipment to buy, all ages and all levels welcome. Healthier habits, built together, in public, for everyone.

Your partnership and involvement supports: a full cycle of neighborhood health programming — nutrition classes and materials, outdoor fitness equipment for a public workout space, and a season of free community workout sessions.

People

Gen2Gen

An intergenerational skills exchange where every participant is both teacher and student. Older adults lead classes in what a lifetime builds: cooking, gardening, crafts, home repair, cultural traditions, financial wisdom, and professional skills. Younger participants teach the digital world: smartphones, social media, digital banking, and navigating online services. Nobody is being "helped" — everyone has something to offer and something to learn, and the trade builds the kind of cross-generational connection that keeps elders woven into community life and gives young people roots.

Your partnership and involvement supports: a full season of exchange classes — space, materials, and the coordination that brings both generations to the same table as equals.

Prosperity

Seed Capital

A program that runs like a venture fund — except the investment is knowledge, and the founders are our neighbors. Seed Capital invests in people on two tracks. The earning track is workforce development for the next economy: practical AI skill-building for youth and adults, from first exposure to job-ready credentials and employment pathways. The wealth track is recurring financial literacy courses teaching money moves participants can make the same week: budgeting that sticks, building credit, saving and investing on any income, and the first steps toward homeownership and business ownership.

Your partnership and involvement supports: a full cohort — instructors, laptops and materials, course cycles, and the career and financial coaching that turns lessons into lasting habits.

Prosperity

Powered by Tetra

Small businesses in underinvested neighborhoods rarely fail for lack of customers — they fail for lack of infrastructure: outdated point-of-sale systems, no marketing, no documented operations, no succession plan. Powered by Tetra gives owners the back-of-house a modern business needs — technology upgrades, marketing support, and standard operating procedures — and connects them to low-interest capital to fund the improvements. And when an owner is ready to retire, we prepare trained community members to acquire the business, so the businesses that anchor underserved neighborhoods stay open, local, and thriving instead of closing for good.

Your partnership and involvement supports: a complete transformation for a small business that has been underinvested in — systems modernization, marketing, and SOPs — and acquisition-readiness training for the next generation of local owners.

Resilience

Project Canopy

Los Angeles neighborhoods with the least tree cover run hotter — and pay for it in health, energy bills, and quality of life. Project Canopy plants area-native trees along sidewalks to fight the urban heat island effect: species adapted to our climate that cast real shade, cool streets for generations, and need less water to thrive. Every tree is planted with the community and cared for through its critical establishment years, so the canopy we plant is the canopy that survives.

Your partnership and involvement supports: a tree from nursery to established canopy — the sapling, planting day, staking and soil, and its first years of watering and care.

Get involved

Help us build what lasts

Tetra Communities is in its founding season — and the partners who join now shape everything that follows.

Give

Charitable support funds the early work: planning, partnerships, and the first programs under each pillar. While online giving is being set up, reach out and we'll connect with you directly.

Ask about giving →

Partner

We collaborate across sectors — builders, educators, health organizations, local government, and neighborhood groups.

Start a conversation →

Volunteer

Lend your time and skills as programs launch — from community events to professional expertise.

Raise your hand →

Leadership

Board of Directors

Tetra Communities is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors.

Ethan Smith

Board Chair · President & CEO

Julian Hylton

Director · Treasurer

Alex Stewart

Director · Secretary

Contact

Talk with us

Whether you want to give, partner, volunteer, or simply learn more about the work, we'd love to hear from you.

Emailinfo@tetracommunities.org

Service areaLos Angeles and surrounding cities.

OrganizationA California Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation.