In this episode, I talk with Ron Homer – Chief Strategist for Impact Investing at RBC Global Asset Management, and one of the earliest architects of community development investing in the United States.

Ron’s perspective was shaped in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where he watched a thriving neighborhood decline not because of its people but because mortgage support and investment disappeared. That experience set him on a five-decade mission to help redirect capital back into places that had been overlooked.

He went from banking in Boston to co-founding Access Capital Strategies, where he flipped mortgage-backed securities into something that actually supported low- and moderate-income communities.

In 1997, he co-founded Access Capital Strategies with the goal of creating market-grade, fixed-income products that were community-aligned. His idea was to use the same mortgage-backed security structure that powered Wall Street, but build it around loans made to low- and moderate-income borrowers.

The model showed that you could structure institutional-grade portfolios that delivered both financial performance and community impact.

In 2008, Access Capital Strategies was acquired by RBC Global Asset Management. When the global financial crisis hit shortly after, Ron’s portfolios outperformed, especially for clients like New York City. “We were the highest performing investment – made 10% – because people who had 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and were buying them for shelter didn’t default.”

Today, Ron leads RBC’s U.S. impact investing strategy, part of a fixed income platform with about $80 billion AUM. His team oversees about $3 billion in community investment strategies. These include customized portfolios primarily composed of agency-backed mortgage securities targeted at low- and moderate-income borrowers, as well as allocations to SBA loan securitizations and municipal bonds.

And the results are measurable: over 50,000 individual homes financed, tens of thousands of affordable multifamily units, and for institutional clients like the City of New York, quarterly reports that track each dollar to the specific mortgage, census tract, borrower income level, and racial demographics, down to the loan level.

But data only tells part of the story. What keeps Ron going is something deeper: the ripple effect.

He believes homeownership and small business act as beacons within communities. “If you have one or two people who take pride in their home, maybe that becomes three people and four people and five people." That’s how change takes root, with visible progress that others want to join.

Ron also sees what he calls “conditioned helplessness”, a kind of behavioral resignation that sets in when people stop believing their efforts will make a difference.

“Some people think the only way to get money is through concessions. But the community doesn’t need concessions. They need access.”

Ron didn’t invent impact investing. But he helped prove it can work, not just morally, but financially. And he did it by choosing reform over revolution, trusting the data, and never letting go of the lesson from Bed-Stuy: that pride and ownership, applied the right way, can change everything.

Tune in.

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Additional Resources:
- Ron Homer LinkedIn

- RBC Global Asset Management