Volume 84: Holistic Real Estate Development—A Path to Health, Wealth, and Well-being for All
About ImpactPHL Perspectives:
ImpactPHL Perspectives is a multi-part content series that explores the many facets of the impact economy in Greater Philadelphia from the perspectives of its doers, movers, shakers, and agents of change. Each volume is written directly by a leader in this space to discuss best practices and share lessons learned while challenging our assumptions about financial and impact returns. For more thought leadership like this, check out the full catalog of ImpactPHL Perspectives.
Sandra Dungee Glenn, Founding Partner and Convenor of The Growth Collective
Philadelphia is grappling with the challenges of adapting to the changing economic, demographic, and social dynamics of our city while protecting the culture, history, and cohesion of our communities. How do we foster a welcoming environment for innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship for newcomers while simultaneously investing in, nurturing, and promoting the well-being and talent of our long-time residents and families? Change can be good, and real estate development can be positive, however, it can also be uncomfortable, disorienting, and displacing unless you put the health and well-being of people—individuals, families, and residents—at the center of it.
Parts of Philadelphia and its real estate sector are thriving. Yet, low-to-moderate-income residents and business owners are disproportionately at risk of displacement. Most Black and Brown residents live in neighborhoods with undervalued housing, inadequate services, declining homeownership, and little access to capital. Additionally, Black residents are more than 40% of Philadelphia’s population but represent less than 5% of the city’s commercial real estate professionals.
Barriers to home ownership and property retention have led to vast gaps in wealth, education, and health and wellness outcomes in Black and Brown communities. According to a recent Pew Charitable Trusts report on Philadelphia's housing market, the median household income in Philadelphia in 2022 was just under $57,000. For White households, the median income was $81,000, for Asian households it was $62,000, while for Black and Hispanic households, it was approximately $43,000 for both groups. From 2000 to 2021, the median sale price for traditional homebuyers in Philadelphia rose significantly, from $99,000 to $265,000 (adjusted for inflation), an increase of 168%. This rise in home prices has made homeownership less affordable, particularly for low- and moderate-income residents. Renters are also struggling. According to a Pew report, 54% of Philly renters are cost-burdened, spending over 30% of their income on housing. The cost burden is significantly higher for Black and Latinx households.
Low- and moderate-income residents, disproportionately Black and brown, are being priced out of many Philadelphia neighborhoods, and the city overall. Moderate-income residents making between $50,000 and $100,000 per year, have absorbed the largest fall in homeownership (10%) among all income groups over the past 20 years. They are becoming the missing middle. The missing middle include our teachers, social workers, municipal, transit, and health care workers–our essential workers. These residents are core to the city as the customers, community leaders, coaches, library, and school volunteers who have enriched our neighborhoods but can no longer afford to rent or own a home in Philadelphia. Our social fabric suffers.
“Barriers to home ownership and property retention have led to vast gaps in wealth, education, and health and wellness outcomes in Black and Brown communities”.
Powerful Paths Are Developed In Common
We don’t have to continue to travel this path. As NYU Social Psychiatrist, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, states in her book, ‘Root Shock’ – “… each and every one of us has the power to improve the places we hold in common, whether we are concerned with the neighborhood, city, nation, or planet”. Investing in holistic development is the tool for integrating the community, the builders, and developers to solve affordable housing needs with returns for those who see the power of improvement for all residents.
The Growth Collective launched in 2019 to disrupt the tale of two Philadelphias. Like Jane Jacobs, who wrote about urban planning in the 1950s, The Growth Collective champions the idea that cities thrive when they grow organically, from the ground up, with an emphasis on small businesses, diverse populations, and mixed-use development. Through our two companies, The Collective Network (TCN) and The Collective Investment Group (TCIG), our focus is to identify real estate assets in divested communities across Philadelphia and create development plans that establish the land and property as valuable and impactful assets that anchor neighborhoods and accrue to the benefit of long-term residents. We see this as “holistic development”. Holistic practice considers how social, emotional, physical, spiritual, and mental well-being are interrelated. This term is used in many definitive forms such as health, education, or belief systems. Holistic real estate development means considering how the built environment, the physical infrastructure, impacts the visual aesthetics, social infrastructure, economic vitality, cultural connections, safety and well-being of communities, individuals and families in an interconnected way.
A holistic approach to real estate development means designing projects that deliver quality housing products across the spectrum–deeply affordable, workforce, and luxury housing–along with the neighborhood amenities that allow people to live well and age in place. It is development that delivers social benefits and financial returns by adding assets without displacing residents.
“Holistic real estate development means considering how the built environment, the physical infrastructure, impacts the visual aesthetics, social infrastructure, economic vitality, cultural connections, safety and well-being of communities, individuals and families in an interconnected way”.
Shaping the Health of Community Wealth
The Growth Collective’s mission is holistic development. We keep the strong connection between the social determinants of health and real estate development at the forefront of our work. According to a 2021 report, on the fifty-seven blocks where gun violence was concentrated the poverty rate was double the city average, the vacant housing rate was three times the city average, and nearly all the blocks were in neighborhoods that were historically redlined. Thoughtful investment in these neighborhoods can be the transformational catalyst that improves the life-chances and well-being of residents.
The Growth Collective is cultivating a cadre of real estate developers who are sensitive to the role they play in shaping neighborhoods. They are intentional about designing projects that enhance the health, wealth, and wellness of residents. Our eight companies have completed close to $1 billion in single and multi-family housing, mixed-use, and commercial projects; with another $500 million in the pipeline. The companies are led by accomplished, innovative, experienced businesspeople, who have the added value of being Black developers with the cultural competency to work successfully in and with communities that are often overlooked.
For example, TPP Holdings has designed Healthy Town, a four-square block project in Tioga that is bringing senior and mixed-income housing, enhanced streetscape, commercial space, and a health-care hub to a neighborhood where 45% of the residents have high blood pressure, 19% have diabetes, and unemployment is well above the city average. A similar project, Thrive Village, is a holistic equitable development investment by Ujima Developers in the East Parkside section of West Philadelphia planned as a food and health justice concept that provides access to affordable housing, health care, and healthy foods.
The Growth Collective is advancing a holistic approach to development that incorporates the needs and vision of residents through the hands of experienced developers who understand their values. Then connecting those developers with the appropriate capital and advocacy that gives them the capacity to impact and shape our city through real estate development that delivers measurable community benefits and financial returns.
Collective Growth Strategy
The Growth Collective is a unique intermediary in a holistic real estate development strategy. We are a facilitator of development, aggregator of capital, and investment manager for inclusive urban development, fostering partnerships that drive economic empowerment, cultural richness, and equitable change.
We offer actionable solutions for investing in safer, cleaner, and greener neighborhoods through inclusive and sustainable development practices that hold impact for all. Join us on this journey. We are looking to partner with people to move capital, with responsibility and courage, in the best interest of our greater community.
Sandra Dungee Glenn is a founding partner and convenor of The Growth Collective, an intermediary that uses real estate development as a solution for producing measurable improvements to the life and health of residents in marginalized neighborhoods. With over forty years of experience in community development, education, public policy, and electoral politics, she is an experienced convener who brings diverse stakeholders together to address urban issues. Sandra has served in executive-level positions and has been recognized for her commitment and effectiveness. She has held roles such as Senior Policy Advisor to State Senator Vincent Hughes, CEO of Harambee Institute of Science and Technology Charter School, President of the American Cities Foundation, Chairwoman of the School Reform Commission, and Commissioner to the School District of Philadelphia. Sandra has also been involved in political and community organizing and has received numerous awards for her contributions. She holds a certificate from the Kennedy School of Government Executive Program in Leadership in State and Local Government at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science degree in Health Planning and Administration from Pennsylvania State University.