Daryl Settles

“It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind and the earthquake,” Frederick Douglass once said. 

When it comes to Boston housing and affordability disparities, good intentions can only get us so far. Shedding light on our underserved won’t keep them warm, but the heat from a fire will. A gentle shower of good intentions won’t dampen the need for improved circumstances in our underserved, but a thunderous change in our approach to problem solving will. A storm, a whirlwind or an earthquake: This is the level of intensity we need to sustain to make a significant reduction in the wealth gap. 

Achieving, sustaining and maintaining a quality life in our city is exorbitantly expensive, especially for our minority communities. A look at the total assets of Boston’s white ($265,500) versus Black population ($700), as reported by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston’s well-known 2015 study, underscores the difficulty for our minority communities to weather the storm of inflation.  

I applaud the recent dialogue highlighting efforts to reduce the high price of housing but we need to look beyond policies that have produced mixed results. If we want to manifest a big change to our region’s affordability problem, we need a seismic shift in our approach to closing the wealth gap, and we need to produce more workforce housing to support the efforts of minority opportunity. 

Ownership Can Elevate Communities  

As a citizen who calls Boston home, I am fully committed to elevating minority communities and people of color.  

Affordable home ownership is where we start. There is a stark difference between Black (43 percent) and white (70 percent) home ownership rates. Safe homes in vibrant communities, and the tax revenue they provide, cascade into the additional benefits of quality schools, programs and services in those locations – something which serves all of us well.  

The only thing standing in our way of achieving this is the lack of wealth in minority communities. The development community is ready to help in finding solutions to producing more affordable/workforce housing by leaning on our collective expertise and municipal and state resources to unlock the housing challenge in our communities. 

Massport sent the first tremors of change with its new diversity model. By requiring that bidders incorporate diversity and inclusion into their bids, by as much as 25 percent, Massport bidding policies now more accurately reflect the racial makeup of Boston (23 percent Black or African American). The Omni Boston Hotel at the Seaport was the first project developed under this new policy and its success is an example of what can be achieved. Surely, other industries can follow this lead to create a more diverse and representative workforce and bring the benefits of an invigorated tax base to our communities.  

Partnership Can Make It Possible 

Now, it is up to us to start shaking things up. As industry leaders, we can, and should, expand on the gains made by Massport’s diversity policy. With my colleagues Kirk Sykes and Richard Taylor, and in partnership with Basis Investment Group, we are striving to create more investment opportunities for the BIPOC community with BREIF, the Boston Real Estate Inclusion Fund.  

This minority-led real estate investment vehicle, developed specifically to build wealth in minority communities, targets transformative developments in the Boston market, providing investment opportunities and access to communities of color. Massport successfully addressed reflective demographic employment with its diversity policy; BREIF aspires to do the same. We seek to address the foundation of affordability crisis – wealth creation and accumulation in minority communities.  

Imagine a comprehensive effort towards inclusive economic opportunity and wealth creation that is centered on the production of attainable workforce housing. Such a systematic effort would include diversity in project ownership and investment, diversity in ownership among all consultant and contractor team members, diversity in every stage of project employment and true accessibility in homeownership through appropriate product type and attainable financing. It is easy to envision a collaboration at this scale producing more than 10,000 homes over the next 10 years, creating economic opportunity and wealth in the community at every step of the way.  

All these years later, the words of Frederick Douglass still reverberate, although not for the reasons he most likely intended. A steady, unified intensity by industry leadership in its commitment to diminish the wealth gap can have a profound effect on the status quo. We need an earthquake to face these challenging times. Therefore, we challenge like-minded individuals, organizations and institutions to help us narrow the wealth gap by investing side-by-side with us. We can shake up the status quo to deliver an earthquake that will benefit us all for years to come. 

Daryl Settles is the managing partner at Catalyst RCP, the president of Catalyst Ventures Development and a co-founder of both the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts and the Builders of Color Coalition. 

New Investment Fund Will Shake Up Real Estate’s Inequalities

by Banker & Tradesman time to read: 3 min
0