Celebrating a 15-Year Partnership With U-Haul

In 2013, U-Haul began supporting urban greenspace restoration projects that also help to build more sustainable and “greener” economies in communities of color impacted by historic inequities. These efforts began at Rouge Park in Detroit where 1,600 trees were planted over 2 acres in partnership with Greening of Detroit. To support green job creation, we also launched the Growing Detroit’s Green Economy Fund, which made small grants to Detroit organizations that support entrepreneurs who use natural resources responsibly. This small grant program has since provided resources to community-based partners and entrepreneurs in Atlanta, Durham, and Kansas City, and will soon offer support to partners in Baltimore and Washington, DC.

U-Haul and its customers played a key role in helping to launch our Parks with Purpose program, which focuses on creating new and expanded parks and greenways in historically Black and disadvantaged communities that suffer from a variety of economic and social vulnerabilities. With principles and strategies rooted in equitable development and a commitment to a community-centered approach, the Fund and local partners work together with residents to transform underutilized and often neglected urban spaces into new parks and greenspaces. These improved natural areas provide much needed greenspace in highly urbanized communities where residents often lack access to nature. New parks not only provide places where kids can play, families and friends gather and community members come together, but they also provide critical habitat for urban wildlife, capture stormwater runoff that might otherwise flood nearby properties, and provide opportunities for environmental education and workforce development.

The first Parks with Purpose project—Lindsay Street Park—was completed in 2015 in Atlanta, and since then 12 more Parks with Purpose sites have been completed or are underway thanks to support from U-Haul and its customers in Atlanta; Chicago; Detroit; College Park, GA; Durham, NC; Kansas City, MO; Raleigh, NC; and Richmond, CA.

Most recently U-Haul customer giving is supporting the creation of a much needed seven-acre nature preserve in the shadow of the world’s busiest airport, just one mile north of Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International, in the city of College Park. The Flint River Headwaters Nature Preserve will provide critical access to nature for neighbors and nearby wildlife, which have been severely impacted by decades of airport expansion and other industrial activities in the area. In addition, U-Haul support is helping a community development organization in East Durham, North Carolina, transform an overgrown and underutilized greenspace into a community garden and food forest that will benefit nearby residents in need.

U-Haul customer giving has also helped the Fund to support local economies in rural areas. This includes communities throughout West Virginia where innovative financial assistance has helped grow small business entrepreneurs who focus on sustainable use of natural resources.

Finally, thousands of acres of critical working forest landscapes across the U.S. have been secured in part thanks to U-Haul customer giving, including projects in New Hampshire, Tennessee, Georgia and Maine. These forests are sustainably managed for timber production, supporting local jobs and providing forestry products for a variety of needs, while also protecting habitat for threatened species, providing access to nature for nearby communities, and supporting long-term climate resiliency goals. This year, support from U-Haul customers will help to protect additional forestland in Vermont that is part of the 30,000-acre Four State Working Forest.

Conservation outcomes like these are only possibly when we work together. The Conservation Fund is exceptionally grateful to U-Haul for its vision, trust and partnership that has allowed us to create lasting benefits for people and the environment.