Create the Village

A year ago, we published an episode of Create the Village entitled, “Has ‘Infrastructure Week’ Finally Arrived?” There was plenty of conversation, rolling into a national election, that supported the idea that the time had finally come…that after years of neglect and procrastinating, Washington was ready to enact a massive program to address crumbling highways, a patchwork of high-speed internet access, and inadequate public transit systems. Twelve months later, we’re still waiting for the federal government to adopt and fund a massively overdue investment in our national infrastructure. This week’s episode is a conversation with David Leininger and Jack Wierzenski, executives with the Dallas Area Rapid Transit. David is DART’s Interim President and Chief Executive Officer Dallas Area Rapid Transit, and Jack is DART’s Director of Economic Development & Planning.

In the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Dr. Calvin Mackie was appointed to the 33-member board of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. In 2009, he was appointed to the Louisiana Council on the Social Status of Black Boys and Black Men. Recently, Mackie was appointed to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Board. In 2014, Dr. Mackie founded STEM NOLA, a non-profit organization created to expose, inspire, and engage communities in the opportunities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). To date, the non-profit has engaged more than 50,000 K-12 students in hands-on project-based STEM activities.

Sherri Powell founded the Rural America Chamber of Commerce in 2021. She's working to empower rural entrepreneurs and to advocate for their economies and communities, and she's not stopping there. Not afraid to dig into the real issues, she's helping them talk about things like racism in America.

Deidre Woollard, an Editor at Million Acres, a division of Motley Fool, returns to Create The Village to discuss the ongoing market confusion and looming problems facing the real estate and banking industries and local and state governments.

President and chief executive officer of the YMCA of Metro Atlanta, Lauren Koontz, discusses her leadership in the midst of a worldwide pandemic and period of national racial awareness.

This week’s episode of Create the Village is a potent conversation about some of the issues of inequality facing the U.S. and some of the policy initiatives designed to raise awareness. Linda Goler Blount is President and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the only national organization focused on Black women’s emotional, physical and financial health and wellness. After one year of pandemic, the conversation between Blount and host Egbert Perry includes a review of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the Black community.

This week’s episode of Create the Village is a potent conversation about some of the issues of inequality facing the U.S. and some of the policy initiatives designed to raise awareness. Linda Goler Blount is President and CEO of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, the only national organization focused on Black women’s emotional, physical and financial health and wellness. After one year of pandemic, the conversation between Blount and host Egbert Perry includes a review of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the Black community.

Mary Means is an award-winning community planner and innovator who has led the movement in Main Street Revitalization for more than four decades. She has been dubbed the Queen of Main Street by her colleagues and industry leaders. Today, Mary is a popular conference speaker and continues to help public interest clients envision and build consensus to make their communities better places to live and work.When discussing Mary Means, The American Planning Association identified her as a “Planning Pioneer” and described her this way:“An award-winning community planner and innovator, Mary Means sparked and has led the movement in main street revitalization for nearly four decades.While working at the National Trust for Historic Preservation in the 1970s as shopping centers were emptying downtowns, Means could see small towns needed tools to bring life back to historic town centers. She conceived of a three-town pilot project, then led the team that took it to scale nationally. Now known as Main Street America, the program provides an integrated framework to help communities transform their economies, leverage local leadership, and improve residents' quality of life.”Through Means's efforts over nearly four decades, the Main Street movement has proved that downtowns are the heart of communities, and communities are only as strong as their core. The program she spearheaded laid the foundation for improving and revitalizing small towns and older town centers for many years to come.”

Guest: John O’Callaghan, President and CEO of Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP). Atlanta is famous for the ebb and flow of its real estate market. And, while some parts of the metro area are certainly doing well, some parts of the market are still feeling the impact of the 2008 foreclosure crisis.Atlanta is famous for the ebb and flow of its real estate market. And, while some parts of the metro area are certainly doing well, some parts of the market are still feeling the impact of the 2008 foreclosure crisis.@ANDPINC#2KBY25 ANDP Business Plan - Executive SummaryPrior to the COVID-19 pandemic, metro Atlanta’s housing affordability challenge had already reached a crisis state – rental costs have increased 48% since 2010, far outpacing wage growth in the region, and 72% of metro Atlanta households spend 45% or more of their income on housing and transportation costs. To address this growing crisis, ANDP will develop and preserve at least 2,000 units of affordable housing by 2025, including an anticipated 1,250 apartments and 750 single-family homes. The vast number of multifamily units will be new construction while our single-family work predominantly focuses on affordable preservation for existing homes. ANDP aims to leverage $18 million of charitable grants to draw down $46 million of US Treasury and other nationally competitive funding sources; $177 million of Federal and State Low Income Housing Tax Credits; $38 million of local and state government funding along with below market and market debt to deliver projects totaling $438 million in total development costs.Today’s dialogue on racial injustice and inequities, and the current pandemic highlighted the need to address race-based inequities in our housing system. The combined health and economic impacts of COVID-19 are particularly devastating to the largely African American communities we serve throughout metro Atlanta with a focus on neighborhoods south of I-20 and along the I-85 corridor. Addressing the long-term impacts of systemic racism within housing systems is central to our work. New resources are forming for affordable housing, and our staff and Board keenly feel the responsibilities of this moment. The time is now – and with new investment dollars, ANDP is prepared to execute an ambitious and thoughtful campaign to build and preserve homes, stabilize families and neighborhoods, and invest future resources by again doubling our production over a multi-year period.ATLANTA’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING CLIMATEThe mission of ANDP is to promote, create and preserve mixed-income communities through direct development, lending, policy research and advocacy that result in the equitable distribution of affordable housing throughout the metropolitan Atlanta region. ANDP plays an important role in the affordable housing ecosystem by providing needed production scale through its public and private partnerships and by working collaboratively to support strategies and efforts to address critical housing needs in metro Atlanta.ANDP serves a majority low-income, Black population through its housing development, lending, and policy/advocacy work and is addressing the gap between lagging wage growth and high housing costs by helping to build wealth in disinvested communities. The decline in Black homeownership contributes more than any other issue to the growing wealth gap between Blacks and Whites. The median wealth of White families is ten times higher than that of Black households and the pandemic has the potential to devastate Black homeowners, threatening to further widen the racial wealth gap. Civil rights advocates and political leaders are calling for immediate policy solutions at the federal level to expand Black homeownership and address affordable housing. High-capacity and nimble nonprofit developers, likeANDP, will need to be well-positioned to leverage an anticipated influx of federal funding to meet metro Atlanta’s pressing housing challenges.Prior to the pandemic, Atlanta affordable housing advocates were well-poised to make significant investments in addressing the city’s growing affordable housing crisis. House ATL, a cross-sector group of civic leaders, is shedding light on the importance of subsidizing affordable housing, Atlanta Housing (AH) has resumed multifamily development activity on their properties, and place-based developers such as Westside Future Fund (WFF), Quest CDC, Focused Community Strategies (FCS), SUMMECH and Grove Park Foundation are increasing their production levels as well. Additionally, the number of housing-focused Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) in the Atlanta market has expanded and social impact investors like the Community Foundation’s GoATL fund and the new Atlanta Affordable Housing Fund (AAHF) have also initiated lending in the market. Both funds made their first investments with ANDP to support our single-family development efforts.In a post-COVID-19 environment, metro Atlanta’s housing needs are greater than ever before, but market uncertainties could put nonprofit capacity at serious risk. Under threat of recession, charitable funding is impacted, development pipelines are delayed, rental collections are down, and some nonprofits are showing reluctance to take on debt to finance new projects. The last recession decimated Atlanta’s nonprofit housing sector.ANDP MODELThrough innovative partnerships and financing, ANDP has developed a low-risk model for scaled development of affordable housing and is well-situated to meet the affordable housing needs of the metro Atlanta region. While simple, our model is surprisingly innovative and has informed multiple nonprofit leaders from outside Atlanta.Since 2009, we have significantly increased our annual production from 6 units to 440 units in development today while at the same time reducing staffing and overhead costs. Mission and risk aligned partnerships have been critical to our stewardship, execution, and ability to grow scale. Within our multifamily work, we are utilizing our land assets to build partnerships and increase production from one project every three to five years to three projects in the current year alone. Additionally, our loan fund has tripled in size over the term of our innovative partnership with Reinvestment Fund, one of the nation’s top CDFIs. We’ve significantly grown our single-family work utilizing a risk-sharing partnership model with strongly vetted general contractors that incentivizes positive mission and budget outcomes.It is through strategic partnerships with nonprofits and for-profits with deep business line or geographic expertise that we are able to fill gaps in the region and adapt to changing needs. Where the place-based developers are focused exclusively within specific City neighborhoods like the Westside, historic South Atlanta and Northwest, ANDP covers underserved neighborhoods throughout the City and we often lead in suburban areas like South DeKalb where place-based quarterbacks do not exist. We serve as a single- family developer to two Atlanta place-based leaders including the Annie E. Casey Foundation in the Pittsburgh neighborhood and the Westside Future Fund on the Westside of Atlanta. Our multifamily plan seeks to build in places not normally served by LIHTC and provides permanent affordability.With a broad expertise, set of partners, and business lines, we are able to quickly respond to market changes and act on opportunities as they become available. Capital innovation has been particularly critical to our growth. ANDP has pioneered the use of U.S. Treasury Department Capital Market and New Market Tax Credit (NMTC) program funds for scattered-site, single-family homeownership while saving an additional $8,000 per home by utilizing enterprise-level debt from banks and Social Impact Funds.ANDP utilizes local and national connections to not only fill gaps but affect systems change. Working initially with The Home Depot Foundation and the Federal Reserve Bank, ANDP coordinated a community wide response to the foreclosure crisis and was the first nonprofit producer to shift its production to acquisition and rehab of foreclosed homes. Last year, we partnered with the Urban Institute, National Housing Conference and local stakeholders to focus coordinated attention to metro Atlanta’s Black homeownership crisis. We support the City’s growing place-based infrastructure through our lending and single-family development and provide unique leadership in places like South DeKalb, where we have partnered with the County CEO and multiple stakeholders as part of our $20 million 100- home South DeKalb investment plan.SINGLE-FAMILY DEVELOPMENTThe power of ANDP’s model of coupling capital innovation with mission and risk aligned partnerships is most pronounced in our single family development work. Having grown our annual production from 6 homes in 2009 to 120 homes today, ANDP is now one of the largest local nonprofit producers of affordable single family homes nationally. Over the past decade, we have been the largest developer of quality rehabbed and new construction homes at price points of $170,000 or less in the largely Black communities we serve. We have documented an average wealth creation of $88,797 for ANDP homeowners and larger benefits to neighborhoods. Widening homeownership gaps are key drivers of race-based wealth, family stability, health and other inequities.Over the next five years, ANDP will develop or preserve 750 single family homes. We anticipate 500 homes will be sold to low-and-moderate income homebuyers and 250 homes will be initially used for single-family rental. Single-family rental units owned and managed by mission-oriented, nonprofits help to preserve long-term affordability, particularly in rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. Our three program channels for the 500 homeownership units include 102 homes funded by Federal HUD dollars allocated through 7 local governments, 85 homes developed for and funded by place-based quarterbacks like WFF and the Annie E. Casey Foundation and 313 homes with our private-sector contractor partners.ANDP has a strong history of successfully raising public subsidy sources and has successfully competed for $20 million in NMTCs. Working in partnership with others, we have implemented a plan to develop additional NMTC funding streams for single-family homeownership projects and anticipate winning awards totaling $35 million over the next five years.MULTIFAMILYANDP will develop 1,250 apartments through development partnerships with proven private sector LIHTC developers. Partners are selected based on their respect for ANDP’s role, shared mission objectives and extensive property and asset management background. ANDP minimizes operational and financial risks by placing most financial risks, including assumptions of all financial guarantees, on our private partner. Ninety percent or more of the multifamily rental units will meet LIHTC rent and income guidelines which allow income averaging up to 80% AMI with mean income of 60% AMI or less.Lessons learned from swift market increases in land and unprecedented displacement of low-income renters in the City of Atlanta have forged ANDP’s increased resolve to ensure longer term to permanent affordability for its multifamily rental projects. We plan to extend affordability and ensure long-term use of land to support affordable and mixed income housing by requiring a nonprofit right of first refusal and through a 65 to 99 year ground lease.ANDP is targeting two-thirds or more of its multifamily rental production (934 units) for the City of Atlanta. The City has experienced the region’s largest percentage drop in affordable rental homes as nine out of ten rental units produced in 2017 were classified as luxury. Our multifamily rental residents rely heavily on MARTA which has the majority of its rail and bus connections in the City. The City is also at high risk for future land appreciation and resulting displacement of low-income residents and will benefit most from our efforts to ensure longer term or permanent affordability of the land.ANDP has worked to better connect its residents to services offered by other nonprofit and governmental partners at its Delowe Village and Stanton Crest properties located in the City of East Point, and at Martin House Apartments in the Adamsville neighborhood (Southwest Atlanta). As we expand our multifamily portfolio, we will enhance our resident services strategy to link service providers to our properties in a more comprehensive wayANDP LOAN FUNDLeveraging ANDP’s CDFI Loan Fund (ALF) and underutilized FHLB grants is central to our strategy. ANDP’s ability to leverage low-cost bank and impact fund debt for its scaling single-family production relies heavily on balance sheet strength. ALF’s net assets are critical to ANDP’s overall financial strength. This strength was critical to developing the internal single- family rotating fund needed to reduce construction lending costs and access the US Treasury CMF and NMTC programs.ANDP will utilize Down Payment Assistance (DPA) is to ensure first mortgage payments are affordable for ANDP’s home buyers. Our membership in the FHLB now provides us with the opportunity to deploy up to $1 million per year in $5,000 - $10,000 forgivable grants through the ANDP Loan Fund. We are budgeting $600,000 to cover overhead costs (likely third-party provider costs) needed to secure and deploy $4M to $6M of FHLB nonprofit project grants and homebuyer down payment assistance.STAFFING AND FUNDRAISINGANDP’s 5-year plan is predicated on our ability to incrementally grow our lean and highly efficient staffing structure. Through the growth of our private sector partnership model and partnership with Reinvestment Fund, we have increased our organizational production and capacity despite downsizing from a full-time staff of 21 employees in 2006 to 15 full-time employees today. We foresee hiring four new staff in the Housing Development department and an additional employee in our Accounting department throughout the plan period.ANDP’s $438 million investment plan to produce and preserve 2,000 units of affordable housing by 2025 entails leveraging $18 million in philanthropic capital. We anticipate early commitments from existing, historic funders for the philanthropic campaign. ANDP has long-standing relationships with several banks which share a CRA focus on affordable housing and veteran housing organizations. Local health systems that have recently made a commitment to housing will also be key prospects. We have been identified as a key recipient of the Beloved Event which was delayed until 2021 due to COVID-19. The inaugural Beloved Benefit raised over $5 million to directly benefit selected nonprofits. In addition, we anticipate commitments from family foundations and trusteed-foundations in additional to philanthropic partners that have been keenly focused on displacement in the City of Atlanta as well as racial disparities across metro Atlanta.

This week's episode of Create the Village asks the question, “Are we living through a temporary bubble where low-income children stop attending school or underperform, or are we seeing a trend that will live with us for decades?”Jill Barshay and Egbert Perry discuss the barriers to educational attainment for children from modest-income households during the pandemic and the lasting impact of a lost generation of students.Barshay is a staff writer and editor who writes the weekly “Proof Points” column about education research and data for Hechinger Report. Topic: During a worldwide pandemic, educational contrast between wealthy and modest-income families and between the races.Select readings include:https://hechingerreport.org/white-and-female-teachers-show-racial-bias-in-evaluating-second-grade-writing/https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-black-college-enrollment-sharply-down-during-covid-summer-of-2020/https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-how-deep-coronavirus-school-budget-cuts-are-expected-to-harm-student-achievement/https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-survey-reveals-stark-rich-poor-divide-in-how-u-s-children-were-taught-remotely-during-the-spring-school-closures/https://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-poor-divide-in-education/https://hechingerreport.org/another-way-to-quantify-inequality-inside-colleges/

Egbert Perry, CEO of Integral, and Hollis Towns, VP of local news at Gannett, discuss the recent Georgia special election, the assault on the US Capitol, and what the public can expect from media companies during this era.

Susan K. Thomas, president of the Melville Charitable Trust, where she oversees the Trust’s grantmaking strategy, philanthropic partnerships and administration.

We’re living in the midst of a technological revolution and the Digital Divide is leaving millions behind. Autumn Glover, an urban planner passionate about “The Intersection of Race, Place and Health” joined Egbert Perry on this week’s episode of Create the Village. Also joining the conversation was Eric Pinckney, the Project Executive responsible for the implementation of Assembly in Doraville, GA, which is a 145 acre, 10 million square foot redevelopment of the former General Motors plant in metro Atlanta.

Edward Golding, Executive Director of the MIT Golub Center for Finance and Policy, discusses "The Unequal Costs of Black Homeownership" with Egbert Perry.

Egbert Perry discusses the lasting effects of structural decisions made by political governance, governance that is emerging in the wake of decades of policies that intentionally advantaged some over others.

In this episode of Create the Village, Egbert Perry explores how market forces can be leveraged to diminish systemic inequities that are rooted in existing social dynamics and public policies.

In this episode, Egbert Perry and Rick White discuss the origins of Integral and the philosophy that undergirds the company’s approach toward Community Development. The discussion revisits an afternoon conversation in Harlem, New York in the early 1990’s when two friends made a commitment to build healthy communities that did not discriminate along racial or economic lines and where families could be nurtured.

The podcast’s second season launches with what is summed up best by host Egbert Perry, “There is no question that a lot of people have been awakened to the disparities (in the US), the inequities that are drawn along racial lines. Now, the question is are we prepared to change enough in our system, you know economic system, to deal with the reality that we just discovered.”

Egbert Perry’s thoughts about where we are roughly 120 days into this new era.

How the COVID-19 pandemic will impact architecture, public spaces, and real estate.Guests: Eugénie “Genie” Birch FAICP, FAcSS, RTPI (hon), the Nussdorf Professor of Urban Research, Department of City and Regional Planning, Weitzman School of Design, University of Pennsylvania and co-director of Penn Institute for Urban ResearchSusan M. Wachter, the Albert Sussman Professor of Real Estate and Professor of Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of Penn Institute for Urban Research 

How COVID-19 is impacting our educational system. Guests: Dr. Harris Cooper, The Hugo L. Blomquist Distinguished Professor of Psychology & Neuroscienceat Duke University; Dr. Raymond Hart, Director of Research for the Council of the Great City Schools.

Local governments' approach to providing relief for renters unable to pay due to the impact of COVID-19 & impact of revenue loss on states. Guests: Margaret Abe-Koga, mayor of Mountain View, California; Lucy Dadayan, senior research associate with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

Guest: Nicolas Retsinas, Director Emeritus of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. The most important stats that you think that all Americans should know in order to best understand the challenges and opportunities surrounding the housing crisis that we hear so much about.

Guests: Linda Goler Blount, Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones. A conversation with two professionals on the front lines designed to get everyone on the same page.

Guest: Eric Letsinger, founder and CEO of Quantified Ventures. To Save Local Governments, It’s Finally Time for Infrastructure Week.

David M. Dworkin - President, National Housing Conference. His call for a long-term federal policy for renters affected by COVID-19, including a national rental assistance program.

Deidre Woollard, Editor/writer at Motley Fool, has researched and written about the state-by-state responses to COVID-19’s impact on renters.

Mark Calabria, Director, Federal Housing Finance Agency. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offering multifamily property owners mortgage forbearance with the condition that they suspend all evictions for renters unable to pay rent due to the impact of COVID-19.

Cities across the United States are experiencing an urban Renaissance. More people want to live in walkable communities near amenities that don’t require a car trip. But as Baby Boomers and Millennials compete for some of the same real estate, housing costs are going up, contributing to the affordable housing crisis. (Perry) “What it costs to develop housing right now produces a product that is affordable to a smaller and smaller and smaller segment of the population.”(Voiceover)That’s Egbert Perry, founder and CEO of the Integral Group, a real estate developer focused on creating value in cities and rebuilding the fabric of communities. His new podcast, Create the Village, goes in search of solutions to the problems that stand in the way of transforming communities that have long been ignored.(Perry) “I'm speaking to anyone that actually cares about creating environments where young people, old people, middle of the road people can thrive and fulfill their potential.”(Voiceover) Each week, Create the Village will take a deep dive into one of the competing factors that determine the health of a community, including what it takes to encourage investment from the outside.(Perry) “When they’re looking to locate a store in a particular place, they don’t say, well, let me go find a place where the people have no disposable income so I can locate my store. They’re looking for communities that have sustainability.”(Voiceover)Join Egbert Perry and his long-time collaborator Rick White and their guests on a weekly journey into the depths of urban development policies and strategies that will chart the future of our cities for decades to come.Create the Village is a production of The Integral Group, LLC. Subscribe to Create the Village wherever you listen to podcasts.