How to Revitalize a Neighborhood -- Without Gentrification | Bree Jones | TED

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.

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)