Picture this.
You have the opportunity to own a beautiful home
in a historic neighborhood with deep cultural roots
designed by some of the best urban planners in the world.
all in a charming waterfront city.
You'd want to live here, right?
But what if I told you that this home was in an area of Baltimore
called the Black Butterfly,
where block after block of these beautiful historic row homes
sit vacant and are negatively valued,
meaning that the cost to repair each home
is actually more than what the market says it's worth.
Somehow the market must be broken. Right?
What's going on here?
I’ve been studying the way housing markets work -- or don’t work --
for the last decade.
I started my career in investment finance on Wall Street,
but when my hometown on the outskirts of New York City
began to be gentrified,
it pushed me into becoming a housing advocate.
I learned more about the racist policies
mandated by federal and local governments
like redlining and urban renewal
that gutted once thriving Black communities across the country
and prevented Black citizens
from building wealth through homeownership.
These communities typically face two trajectories.
The first is a downward spiral,
where political and financial disinvestment
causes hypervacancy and decay
that pushes people out of a neighborhood.
Big banks see this exodus as confirmation that these neighborhoods are risky,
defeated, unredeemable.
And so without investment, the cycle of distress continues.
The second trajectory is gentrification,
where developers are able to capitalize off of this distress
by buying undervalued properties,
pumping money into them
without considering the needs or wants of legacy residents,
and then renting or reselling them at much, much higher costs,
causing displacement.
So my question became:
Can we do development without displacement?
Is there another way?
I quit my job on Wall Street and moved to Baltimore,
the city that birthed redlining,
with a single suitcase to find out.
My first inclination was to meet with investors
and, you know, to raise funds for my idea.
And I was literally laughed out of the room.
They said that my idea was impossible
and that we would build homes that would sit empty for lack of demand.
But I knew in my heart of hearts that that wasn't true.
Unexpectedly in that moment,
being rejected by investors was the most important moment in my journey,
because I realized that we didn't need big institutions
to affirm the value of our communities.
We’d affirm our own value through social capital.
And so I started my non-profit, Parity,
which creates upfront demand for homeownership opportunities
in neighborhoods experiencing hypervacancy
simply by tapping into existing social networks.
What started as an idea from just one
has grown into a collective movement
of eight, then 19 and now 44 future homeowners.
All through word of mouth.
And we have a waitlist of over --
(Applause)
Thank you.
And we now have a waitlist of over 100 people
wanting to join our intentional community.
Like Yolanda,
who's ready to buy a home to leave a legacy for her daughters.
Or Jenee,
a fourth-generation Baltimorean
whose father vividly remembers the demolition of black homes
to make way for a highway to nowhere.
Ako, whose family left West Baltimore when he was just a baby
but now is coming back home to his origins to be part of the revitalization.
And Modinat, who like me, came to Baltimore from New York
to settle down and build a future.
There are three key reasons why our work is transformational.
The first is that we are leading the purchase and renovation
of dozens of decades-long abandoned buildings
and reselling them at deeply affordable price points.
The second is that we not only support our homebuyers
to become credit-qualified and mortgage-approved,
but we're creating the opportunity for folks to build deep social bonds
and friendships with their future neighbors.
And three, we're preventing the displacement of legacy residents
by ensuring that they have the resources that they need to stay in their homes
and transfer their wealth to the next generation.
We're healing the social fabric of the neighborhood
as we're rebuilding the built environment.
Contrary to the dominant narrative,
there absolutely is demand for housing in historically Black neighborhoods
devastated by racist policy.
We've tapped into a hunger and appetite
hiding in the blind spots of the traditional capital markets.
Remember those folks that laughed me out of the room?
Well, we have more --
Within just two years' time,
we now have more demand for our homes than we have homes.
We're sold out.
And so can we do development without displacement?
We absolutely can.
Thank you.
(Applause)