Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

For Chris Miller, it’s all about community capital.

Chris is chair and one of the founding board members of the National Coalition for Community Capital - or NC3.  They are leading the charge to strengthen local economies by empowering ordinary citizens through community investment and ownership.

Chris has been working on community, economic, and entrepreneur development in Michigan for nearly 20 years,  in roles as varied as city official, board chair and Innovation Fellow.  As the City of Adrian’s economic developer he secured millions of grant dollars and matching private investments.  But he also developed a local investor group and championed Michigan’s MILE – an investment crowdfunding exemption that served as a national model.

It’s all about community capital for Chris.

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Early in her career, very early, Katie McCamant visited Copenhagen.  She was an architecture student studying abroad.  In Copenhagen she learned of a new housing model called co-housing -- a small intentional community of private homes clustered around a shared space. Common space usually includes a large kitchen, dining area and other common facilities, but will vary depending on each communities’ wants and needs. This was a brand new concept with just 8 projects built in Copenhagen and nowhere else in the world.

Katie was wowed.  She was interested in housing in architecture and this model made so much sense to her.  So she wrote a couple of books and built a career on helping people build their own cohousing community, advising them from soup to nuts.

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

As mayor of Salt Lake County a decade ago, Ben McAdams was frustrated that there wasn’t $500,000 in a $1.3 billion annual budget for a promising early childhood education program.

Not one to permit defeat, he decided to map the value of the city’s underutilized real estate.  And that  yielded an impressive number: All of a sudden the city had $45 billion on its balance sheet. “I found out there is actually money under our mattress,” Ben says. “It's real estate that is just forgotten.”

Since then Ben has spent time in politics as mayor, senator and congressman. But now he’s launched an incubator to help cities map their public assets, much like he did a decade ago, providing a path to solve issues that need money - like affordable housing and homelessness.

Every city should listen in.

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

This is a long one.  But I couldn’t help myself.  You’ll soon see why.

Enrique Penalosa is an exuberant lover of cities.  Equitable cities. He served as Mayor of Bogota, Colombia not once, but twice, profoundly transforming his city from one with no self-esteem into an international model.

As Mayor, Enrique launched TransMilenio, a bus mass transit system, which today moves 2.4 million passengers daily. He also built an extensive bicycle network at a time when only a few northern European cities had one, along with greenways, hundreds of parks, sports and cultural centers, large libraries, 67 schools and a radical 33-hectare redevelopment in the heart of Bogota, previously controlled by drug dealers. This required demolishing more than 1200 buildings. Recently he published a new book called Equality and the City.  Look for it on Amazon.

Of course, the accolades are too numerous to mention here. Enrique’s work is considered significant and influential by many and the list of awards is long. 

There’s a lot to learn here.  More than an hour of podcasting can hold.

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Lyneir Richardson is building Black wealth through community-owned shopping centers.

He has an audacious plan to buy 16 community shopping centers and invite 1,000 small investors to co-own them with his company, Chicago TREND.  He’s made a sizable dent in this goal with over 340 investors, and five shopping centers in his portfolio. This will be #6.

To accomplish this, Lyneir and his team have developed a rigorous set of criteria for finding and buying shopping centers in majority Black Demographics that are on the cusp of change that might offer added value over a time. His plan is to empower Black entrepreneurs and community residents to have a meaningful ownership stake in the revitalization and continued vibrancy of commercial corridors and Black shopping districts.

But there’s so much more!

Lyneir wants every neighbor to be able to say "We Own This".

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Kirk Sykes is Managing Director of Accordia Partners, a Boston-based real estate investment and development company. Accordia develops large public-private real estate projects. Kirk was previously the head of Urban Strategy America Fund, perhaps one of the first urban real estate equity funds focused on the triple bottom line.

And that brings us to this podcast. 

Kirk has had a highly successful career, but that is not enough for him.  He has always given back, and for Kirk that means helping the Black community he is part of access capital and investment opportunities that have historically been unavailable to them. 

Listen in to learn more!

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

In real estate development, envisioning how future societies will live can often feel like masterminding a high-tech work of science fiction.  Just outside of Houston, a new development of the future is emerging. But instead of flying cars and sky-scraping utopias, this version of Tomorrowland has its roots firmly and sustainably planted in days gone by.

Indigo, a 235-acre community, is being developed by Scott Snodgrass and his partner Clayton Garrett, both farmers. They have thoughtfully gone against the norm in every aspect of this project, focusing first and foremost on people and a human-scale to encourage interaction.  Downsized lots and homes, a working farm, the integration of small businesses, careful attention paid to embracing everyone, all make this project one worth watching.

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Rich Rogers is an urban planner and attorney in Buffalo, New York.

In his practice he focuses on tax credit financing and on creative problem-solving to help public and private sector projects work from concept into financing and implementation. 

Rich is also a real estate developer, with a project in lease-up on Buffalo’s main street.  There he’s put his knowledge to good use, converting a 30,000 s.f. Historic building into modern retail and affordable housing units, and employing every trick in his book to build his super-complicated capital stack, which of course, includes tax credits.

If that’s not enough, Rich has a crowdfunding platform called Common Owner focused on real estate and, you guessed it, crowdfunding tax credits as well.

There’s a lot to learn here.  You’ll enjoy listening in.

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to  RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Adriana Abizadeh is the executive director of the Kensington Corridor Trust (KCT) in Philadelphia.

You might wonder what that is and why it exists.

Kensington was once known as the Workshop of the World with booming manufacturing and a well-employed neighborhood. Then, Kensington Avenue was a bustling local business corridor. Now there is a lack of economic investment and everything that comes with it.  58% of Kensington residents live below the federal poverty line and the average household annual income is just over $20,000.

Formed in 2020, the trust is tasked with reclaiming control of the corridor. They do this through the purchase of property which is placed in trust and governed by the neighborhood.

Neighborhood trusts are fairly new but if Adriana has her way, they will become mainstream.  Listen in to learn more!

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

As we embark on a new year, we’re all thinking about fixing things.  I bumped this podcast up on my list, because Tracy Hadden Loh has a much bigger and more inspiring fix list than most of us do.

Tracy is bi-racial and has experienced inequity first hand.  Even as a young child she knew something was wrong.  Her career has been a purposeful exploration of how to fix things.

As a Fellow with the Center for Transformative Placemaking at Brookings Metro, a branch within the Brookings institution, Tracy focuses on cities, downtown metropolitan areas, placemaking, diversity in cities and reinventing cities post-pandemic. 

And of course, fixing things.  

If you'd like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to RethinkRealEstateForGood.co where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.