We lower the barrier to entry into the real estate development industry for people who have been adversely impacted by racial injustice and/or other forms of social inequity.
We support residents who earn less than the area median income and live in communities that were explicitly targeted by racist housing policies. Our work has reached several disinvested neighborhoods in Chicago.
Our education program consists of an applicable and actionable approach to develop real estate ethically over the span of 10-12 months. We developed these modules with our Multicontextual Design approach and lenses—Economics, Ecology, Technology, Culture, and Ethics—to ensure the curriculum is comprehensive and culturally relevant. Unlike traditional courses, cost is not a barrier to enroll, and we teach in the communities themselves. The classes focus on a practical approach to the feasibility, planning, and financing phases of small-scale projects. We use a variety of digital and physical tools to bring these projects to life and expose students to real-world applications of these softwares. Additionally, we conduct “train-the-trainer” sessions for our partner community organizations so they can deliver the classes independently and scale our network of ethical developers.
This program has supported over 300 Chicago residents to become active participants in the development of their neighborhood, addressing some of the issues that have been pervasive for generations, and opening up new career, jobs, and enrichment opportunities.
By helping participants develop a network within their communities, we foster a circular economy and ensure that local organizations can teach our classes, so they don’t have to rely on us for their ongoing success.
Breaking barriers to entry
It is notoriously difficult to break into the real estate development industry. This largely stems from Depression-era New Deal regulations that promoted private real estate development through explicitly racist policies and barred minorities from accessing the industry’s wealth creating opportunities. As decades passed, relationships within the real estate development industry solidified, and it grew increasingly difficult for people from disenfranchised communities to enter the field—effectively excluding them from contributing their input to real estate projects and decisions that directly impact their lives.
Today, there is only a limited number of ways to enter the real estate development industry. Prospective developers can either obtain a master’s degree (which can be selective and/or expensive), find a mentor, or rely on informal or often unverified information from the internet. This segmentation of knowledge means that only a small fraction of the population is able to take advantage of the industry’s financial benefits to help their families and communities flourish. Additionally, industry newcomers with informal training are at a much higher risk of losing their assets than industry incumbents.
Because of these systemic patterns, communities often rely on developers for their real estate needs without knowing who has their best interest in mind.
Our goal is to democratize the real estate development process by providing communities with all the information and resources they need to take back control of their neighborhoods.
How we do this
We deliver a 10-12-month curriculum covering the real estate development process in Chicago. These classes provide community members with a fundamental understanding of real estate development, its implications, and how they can participate in the industry. This translates into furthering neighborhoods’ economic vitality, education, and improvement of the physical environment in a way that benefits local residents and their communities. Through this process we use a variety of software including CAD, Adobe products and Figma, to help students organize the process, ideate, and create assets that can help to visualize their ideas and communicate them to others.
Learning objectives
1
Understand the fundamentals of real estate development investment and financing.
We introduce real estate terminology, fundamental financial concepts, and financial modeling. We aim to clarify and simplify the math involved in real estate development.
2
Understand how real estate development financing works in practice.
We share financial institutions’ perspectives for financing and underwriting real estate development projects and introduce the concept of identifying and measuring risk in real estate transactions. We also cover some of the legal documents used in real estate transactions.
3
Understand city ordinances and ethical development.
We explain how to identify design parameters for a development project in Chicago using the municipal code, along with the history of zoning regulation, segregation, and gentrification in the city. We also cover the societal impact of current practices in real estate development and the value of ethics, quality design and ownership as a means to remedy these issues.
Get the materials
We believe in an open source environment and share all of our class materials under a Creative Commons license.
Please be aware that real estate development transactions involve risks. The content of our lessons should not be taken in place of legal or investment advice. If you decide to participate in a real estate investment opportunity, please ensure you are working with qualified professionals.
Click on the links to access the class presentations.
Real Estate Development Introduction and Ethical Development by Duo Development is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://www.duodevelopment.org/new-page-1.