Rethink Real Estate. For Good.

Climate

$0 Fares.

“Kansas City’s Zero Fare transit program shows major success – and what still needs to be done. It’s been three years since Kansas City voted to make its public transit free. Can it keep going?” writes Sandy Smith for Next City.  

In 2019 Kansas City council were unanimous in their vote to make pubic transit free, making it the first large city in the US to implement a $0 fare program in an effort to move towards more equitable transit options. Now anyone living anywhere in Kansas City can catch a bus for free. When the COVID pandemic began, Johnson County, Kansas, joined in.

The Public Transportation Association reports that over the last two years there was an annual drop in ridership of 25 – 26%. This may seem like a big loss, but it’s a much lower ridership loss than some other cities. St Louis Metro Transit, for example, lost almost 39%t of its riders in 2020 and more than 55% in 2021. 

According to the 2021 State of Black KC study, Zero Fare provided many riders with greater access to the city. Of the surveyed riders:

  • 90% ride the buses more often 
  • 92% can shop for food more easily 
  • 88% have better access to healthcare providers 
  • 82% can get or keep a job 
  • 86% feel that the city cares about their needs
  • 84% can explore new places

In other words, the program has seen early success. An added bonus are the savings for riders which can go towards groceries, health, education and more. 

As well as increased mobility and financial benefits, nearly 80% of riders also now feel safer on buses, a feeling backed by statistics in the 2021 Zero Fare impact analysis by Mid-America Regional Council (MARC). And let’s not forget the environmental benefits of increased ridership. MARC’s analysis suggests that Zero Fare could eliminate 7,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Of course, there’s still plenty of work to be done. Service frequency is an issue which definitely needs improvement. And more importantly, a continuing source of funding still needs to be found to make Zero Fare permanent. But Zero Fare is a step in the right direction.

Read the original article here.

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

Dump it Right There.

In 1992 Julie Bargmann founded D.I.R.T (Dump It Right There) studio, a landscape architecture firm in Charlottesville, VA. She set out to focus on regenerating contaminated and forgotten urban and post industrial sites. Early on, one of the studio’s first major projects catapulted her work into the spotlight and became the early poster child for D.I.R.T.

The Vintondale Reclamation Park, a 25 acre park on a former coal mine near Pittsburgh, was designed in collaboration with an artist, an historian and a hydrogeologist. An acid-polluted stream was diverted into a series of six pools, where limestone, engineered soil, and plants leeched toxins out of the water. Vintondale became a model for bioremediation and was featured in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial.

Many other projects have followed, like Urban Outfitters Headquarters at the abandoned Navy Yard in Philadelphia, transformed with pathways, lawns, and dog parks. Julie won a 2014 Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for this project. Or Core City Park in Detroit, a collaboration with Philip Kafka of Prince Concepts, converting an abandoned parking lot into a public park. Completed in April 2019 this project was featured in Landscape Architecture magazine.

While studying at Harvard, Julie came under the wing and influence of Michael Van Valkenburgh. “Her energy and enthusiasm made her stand out”, he recalled, and she later worked in his firm. She was also influenced by Frederick Law Olmsted, the 19th century architect of Central Park, and Robert Smithson, the artist-designer known for “Spiral Jetty,” a large-scale earthwork sculpture in Utah.

Julie is a professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia, and was named Professor Emerita this past summer (2022) after teaching there since the 1990s. In 2021 she was named Innovator of the Year by Architectural Record and that same year was awarded the inaugural Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize (described as the landscape architecture equivalent of a Pritzker Prize). In 2001 she won a National Design Award for Environmental Design, and in 2007 was awarded the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Urban Edge Award. She was a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome for Landscape Architecture in 1990, and a United States Artists Fellow in 2008. She was named as one of the most influential people of the 21st century by CNN and Time Magazine.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:07] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo, in order to build better for everyone.

Eve: [00:00:42] Meet Julie Bargmann, the inaugural recipient of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. This prize has been described as the landscape architecture equivalent of a Pritzker Prize, so it’s a really big deal. What makes this most exciting is the work that is being honored. In 1992, Julie founded Dirt Studio, which stands for Dump It Right There. She was intent on regenerating contaminated and forgotten urban and post-industrial sites. And it all began near Pittsburgh at the Vintondale Reclamation Park, a 25-acre park on a former coal mine. The end result became the early poster child of her business, a model for bioremediation that was featured in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Triennial. Today, she is often referred to as the fairy godmother of industrial wastelands, as she crafts amazing new landscapes out of the contaminated and toxic sites she works on. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:01:59] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:20] Julie, it’s really an incredible honor to have you on my show today. Thank you for joining me.

Julie Bargmann: [00:02:25] Yes, I am honored. I love that you chose a landscape architect to enter into this realm of speaking about real estate. I’m actually quite passionate about it in terms of what landscape architecture’s role is within it.

Eve: [00:02:41] So, you know, I agree with you. And too often I think architects think about landscape as an afterthought, but it should really be an integral part of building and design. Absolutely, absolutely. So, I’m going to start by saying you studied to be an artist. So, where did your fascination with degraded and toxic landscapes begin?

Julie: [00:03:05] Well, I often tell the story of driving with my, riding in a station wagon down the New Jersey Turnpike and being completely fascinated by the refineries. I don’t know what it was. It was just kind of this perverse attraction, wondering, like, what is going on there and who’s working in there and what’s it like in there? So, I think that was a little kernel of it. And then I just kept finding myself attracted to working landscapes and working cities. So, off I went to Pittsburgh to study sculpture at Carnegie Mellon, and I love that city. I just, when I was there, the steel mills were still along the rivers. They were still belching smoke. It still smelled, which I thought was great, was all part of it. As an artist, I actually went into the steel mills because I wanted to see how they worked and who was working there, and I think that really did it. I still had no idea what I was going to do with my life. When later I discovered what landscape architecture was and that I could be kind of venturing into all these different types of landscapes, that was it. And not that landscape architecture at the point was kind of working in working landscapes, but I was kind of determined to do that.

Eve: [00:04:39] Yeah, but there’s a lot of very precious landscape architecture out there and what you’ve. And I think you really work in some of the worst and most toxic landscapes to be found. What about that is really interesting to you?

Julie: [00:04:56] Well, I think, first of all, I think the range that I like to be clear about with my work is that it does go to the biggest and the baddest, to the toxic, but also to the degraded. That is part of the kind of repertoire of industry. Right. It can be wicked and sometimes it can be kind of, quote unquote, inert but still impactful, you know. And the toxic ones, for a long time, I did projects with the EPA, and I was working on Superfund sites, which are the sites that are designated as kind of the biggest and the baddest. I think what I brought to that, which was completely unknown right then by the EPA for years and maybe to date, is the kind of cultural and social aspect of these landscapes. You know, they were totally focused on the remediation, right? The quote unquote, cleaning up of these landscapes. But I was like, well, come on, there’s kind of more to it than that. There are generations that still live around these sites whose grandfather probably died, black lung. And so, there are connections there. And I actually stopped working with the EPA because I just felt like I was being in my head against a wall where it was difficult to integrate that kind of factor. They always felt an enormous amount of urgency in kind of doing the fix and getting out of there versus actually engaging the community in what might be an incremental regeneration of that site. So, they’re quite myopic.

Eve: [00:06:45] Yeah, it sounds like they’re focused on fixing a problem, whereas what you saw was a future asset, really, for the community.

Julie: [00:06:54] Correct? Yeah. I don’t know if you remember way back to spell check.

Eve: [00:06:58] Oh, yes.

Julie: [00:06:59] Yeah. When I used to type in remediation, it would say correcting a fault. And then if you type in regeneration, it says creating a new. And I was like, Boom, that’s it. I’m never going to use the word remediation anymore because that’s not what this work should necessarily be about.

Eve: [00:07:20] So, I read somewhere that the Vintondale Reclamation Park, which is actually it’s a 35-acre site near Pittsburgh, was pivotal. But I’d love to know why.

Julie: [00:07:31] Well, you know, at the time I was really, really interested in this work. I did, as part of my academic research, because that’s around the time I started teaching. I did a tour around the United States just to kind of get a sense of what was going on. And I got this call, kind of out of the blue to join this team to work on Eve: Vintondale and. Well, actually to work on acid mine drainage, right. Which is the by-product of coal mining. And we were looking for to actually look at prototypes and models for, you can imagine, there are so many towns, post mining towns, former mining towns, that are plagued by acid mine drainage. So, to be on this team was my dream come true. There’s multidisciplinary. There was an artist, hydrogeologist, historian, who I, historians I love, you know, scientists, too. I love them too. And the community involved and AmeriCorps volunteers. It was just this collective effort to look at basically making the transformation of acid mine drainage visible, not behind a fence. You know, let the community know. One of the by-products, too, is yellow boy. Yellow boy is yellow boy. This is what it is. And this is you being a part of the next evolution of that landscape.

Julie: [00:09:14] Much like I was saying with the EPA in terms of trying to advocate for the community to be involved and not even maybe intensely involved, but at least a participant or a witness to what was going on in terms of the transformation here of acid mine drainage. That was, to me, a breakthrough in projects. And for me, it was a breakthrough in landscape architecture. This coincided, by the way, with a lot of the great projects that are in the Ruhr Valley of Germany. So, what we did was, in essence, make that science visible so that they could say, oh, I get it. You know, the acid, mine drainage is coming from mine number one, and it’s going through this system, and it’s coming out as biologically rich and being drained back into the streams. So, I basically, I call it an ecological washing machine. And that’s what was right near a bike trail. So, lots of folks are able to see it and nicely enough, it remains a model for the region.

Eve: [00:10:29] Interesting. So, when you work on a project like this, how does your work begin? Where does the inspiration come from?

Julie: [00:10:36] Oh, the history. Absolutely. Every time. Every time it’s the history of the site, which means the history of the people there. I just can never think about starting a project without really knowing what happened there before, because I feel that you cannot really propose anything about the future of the site unless you know it’s past, because it is all part of an evolution. It makes the process inclusive. It’s what I was thinking about in terms of private development, infusing the public in it for the public good. It’s the history. It’s the history. The history levels the playing field in terms of everyone who’s working on a project, because there’s a bigger story and a bigger picture. I feel that we want to be responsible to.

Eve: [00:11:35] So, is there an example of a project where the history took you in an unexpected direction or.

Julie: [00:11:43] Well, oh man. I guess I flash right to Detroit and I’m working with a wonderful, wonderful young developer there. And he is doing amazing things of investing in the public realm in the neighborhood, along with his private developments. And it was our like our I call it our first date. We just, I just came out and I was like, okay, you know, let’s look at the site. And we’re standing in front of like a blank, seemingly blank, parking lot covered with concrete. And he said, what would you do? And I knew that there was a historic engine house that was there. And I was like, Hmm. And it was raised in the seventies. And I was like, Hmm. I think that’s when they pushed, you know, the buildings into their basements. And I turned to him, and I said, dig. And he went. Okay. And he had a front-end loader there the next day. And I just was crossing my fingers about what would come up because I wanted to, I thought about integrating it into this public park, this community park we are making. And sure enough, beautiful redstone came up to make these, kind of, scattered little terraces. And then one day up came a giant piece of sandstone that said 1893 on it.

Eve: [00:13:22] Oh, wow.

Julie: [00:13:23] I was like, Oh. I was both very happy and very relieved. I was like, That’s it, that’s it. We found it. We found the material evidence of that history, and the park suddenly became actually quite old. I can’t tell you. I just got goose bumps again. I do every time when I think about it. The developer, he tells the story to everyone and the story kind of spreads. And everyone is knowing an essential part of history of their neighborhood, of Core city. That was unexpected and wonderful.

Eve: [00:13:58] That does sound wonderful. Is this the developer who’s working on the Caterpillar housing?

Julie: [00:14:03] Yes.

Eve: [00:14:04] Very unusual architecture as well. Quonset huts, right?

Julie: [00:14:09] Yes. He is having some architects do a little twist on Quonset huts because he wants to take something that’s very affordable and make beautiful spaces that are not terribly expensive so that they’re accessible for more folks. So, he’s quite adventurous that way and he, I just feel like, you know, his name is Philip Kafka, has his heart so much in the right place. I mean his, the proportion of like, I can’t remember, he loves trees, and I can’t remember what number he’s up to. But he’s very proud of the number of trees that he’s planted in Core City. For instance, the caterpillar. I think we planted 200, maybe 300. I can’t remember. He goes 200 trees and eight units. That’s how he thinks of it.

Eve: [00:15:04] Do you find that you need to educate people on this? Because this makes me think immediately of the people around where I live who are who are mowing down enormous old historic trees.

Julie: [00:15:17] Yeah.

Eve: [00:15:18] Because they want a flat piece of land to build their house on. But the tree seems to be the most valuable asset they have. I don’t understand it.

Julie: [00:15:27] Absolutely. I mean, everyone is quite used to a tabula rasa. You know, it’s the kind of easiest way to go. And that’s why, you know, again, I want to emphasize history of the site. Right? The trees are very much that history of the site. And you can’t replace that history, you know? Right. You just can’t. I mean, some history is buried underground like that park in Cork City, and some is just looming large, you know. And so, this is where I constantly go back to history, and I constantly go back to telling stories. Because most people like stories. And most people like to be part of a story. And that’s basically the form of education. Like I’m flashing to working with Ford Motor Company on the River Rouge plant and it took telling the story about the Coke ovens, which they wanted to wipe out. One, say we did our homework and said, you know, that part of it is toxic, that part is not, you know.

Julie: [00:16:41] So we did that homework, the environmental homework. And then when we did the history, we were reminding them that they were looking at a piece of incredible history of this Rouge River plant being the first manufacturing plant in the world. In the world. You know, so it occurred to us and they kind of came to that that was too important a story. You know, it was just too rich and too significant to so many people, so many generations that worked at Fords, they called it Fords, to obliterate. And they didn’t have to. They didn’t really have to. And that was the education part, too. You know, I called it homework and I found that, you know, especially as a woman, I needed to kill them with knowledge and just say, hey.

Eve: [00:17:48] Was it easy?

Julie: [00:17:50] Sometimes more than other. I have to say, I even changed my tone. You know, I think early on I was pretty insistent. And then, I think I was more empathetic, you know, to the folks who were really dealing with the EPA, and.

Eve: [00:18:05] Yes.

Julie: [00:18:06] And a lot of pressure to remediate. And I encourage them, I’m like, come on, let’s talk about this. Let’s show them a careful mapping. Because they didn’t know how to map. You know, they showed the flow diagram of the coke ovens, and we did another map of it and said, look, you know, this is the part that’s harmful. So, we need to deal with it in another way and this other stuff we can deal in another way. So, you don’t need a tabula rasa. You can have your cake, your coke ovens and you’re, there We put remediation fields and remediation gardens, which they just loved, you know, they just whew. You know, they put it on their website in all caps, you know?

Eve: [00:18:49] Yeah. Well, it tells an amazing story. When you work on a very large project, what does your team look like?

Julie: [00:18:58] Oh, wow. Well, sometimes I work with another landscape architect. A DIRT studio is modeled after an artist’s studio. So, the most folks I’ve had been working with me is maybe five. So, if it’s a really large project, I need, I look for a bit more firepower and so, that’s really fun working with another landscape architect. Always engineers are on there, and I think more unusually, is getting scientists on the team. I always insist about that. Like when we’re starting and the client, I’m like, no, we need this scientist. Which they, you know, they didn’t know would be at all necessary. And like I said earlier, I, which is really unusual for a client to hear, is to have a historian on the project. And then when I’m talking about like scientists, too, it’s just not even kind of like one type of scientist, soil scientist, wildlife biologist, you know, that when I had a phytoremediation scientist. And it’s, I have to tell you, it is so wonderful. I mean, my learning curve is always like vertical, you know, on these projects by bringing in. Yeah.

Eve: [00:20:22] Fabulous. So, you know, you’ve done a really broad range of projects. Like there’s some for retail clients and…

Julie: [00:20:31] Yes.

Eve: [00:20:31] …some remediation. What are some examples of the project you’ve taken on, what they were and what they became?

Julie: [00:20:40] The most kind of in a way obvious, because they’re out there, retail client was Urban Outfitters. And, with Urban Outfitters it was really interesting. They were moving from Rittenhouse Square into tight little quarters out to what was really at the time the hinterlands of the Philadelphia Navy Yard. And, you know, I worked very, very closely with the founder, Dick Kayne, which was a blessing and a curse. He’s quite something, but we got along famously. And for a project that was coming from some folks that are so aesthetically based to be kind of more, more like historically based and environmentally based was, you know, that was a challenge. I, quite frankly, learned at some point not to even talk about what I was doing, what I was proposing in terms of history and the environment. It just wasn’t of enormous interest to them. You know, as I say, I snuck sustainability out in the back door and.

Eve: [00:21:59] I hope he’s not listening.

Julie: [00:22:01] Oh, that’s OK. Dick is so cool, you know, he won’t mind. He knows I love him. We used to speak our secret language of Latin, of plants because he loved plants. So, we just got along great. And he was cool, he just was like, Yeah, bring it on. And he never really asked that many questions. There was an amazing amount of trust between us, and that’s something that I can’t speak enough about is, as you probably know from projects, that trust is enormous. And so, with the Urban Project, there wasn’t an enormous amount of remediation that needed to be done. Some lead soils had to be dealt with. And, you know, lead is tricky, man. So, they didn’t want to go through the process of other types of remediation. So, one okay way of dealing with it is actually to encapsulate it. So, it was encapsulated.

Julie: [00:23:04] But the big thing with Urban Outfitters that was tricky was when it was going into like phase four and being built around the historic dry dock that was right in the center of this gorgeous, you know, water body from way back when for the huge ships. I found myself in that precarious place of kind of, I say, I always kind of say, defending the public realm within a private enterprise. That’s when I have to say, I think design gets really tricky, you know, because there was really kind of like a teetering point where literally something that we would do, we were forming, would feel too private, you know. And how is it that we could make this campus that was private, but parts of it could be shared? So that’s, I have to say, a big deal.

Eve: [00:24:04] It’s like pushing against a gated community, right?

Julie: [00:24:07] Yeah. So, I mean, I have to say, that’s what I feel like in landscape architecture, because we’re dealing with ground, and I know this is the case in most development and I’ve had projects where, I’m just realizing I’m picturing a good old fax I sent sometime where it said I quit. Because, you know, the commitment to the public realm wasn’t there, you know, which I’m learning from working with Kafka in, you know, in Detroit is so essential. Maybe I knew it intuitively. So essential in terms of building that quality of common ground that then makes sense for the individual happily living in their private abode. So, yeah.

Eve: [00:25:00] That probably touches on my next question. You’ve written about the overlap between poor and minority communities and contaminated soils, and I certainly know of that. I mean, I have to ask, how and why did that happen and how do we fix it? Why is it that poor and minority communities have had the brunt of this mess, basically?

Julie: [00:25:23] You think about industries and how they would kind of most conveniently cite themselves, you know, and when industries were getting up and running before all the environmental legislation starting in 1973, when you think about it, my God, that’s not that long ago. You know, most of the industries started up then, you know, they were looking for floodplains to discharge all of their nasty stuff and they were looking at a lot of land that did not have a lot of value to have people be downwind and downstream from nasty stuff. So, poor soils, poor people, they go together. I mean, it’s just a thing to be conscious of now, which I think a lot of folks are.

Julie: [00:26:14] I mean, there is the kind of whole movement of environmental justice. Industries are being held accountable. I like to think that, you know, the ground that we live on is, and work on, is becoming more just. And I think it is, I think I like to think it is. I should say it should be because I think folks are much more aware. If you asked somebody what a Superfund site was, you know, what, ten years ago, 15 years ago, they wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. The level of environmental awareness has just gone up so high. But the next thing is the action to enforce it and act upon it. And I don’t think that most folks, in what the things that they’re proposing, you know, you look at developers working in Richmond, or any working city and their projects are going to be scrutinized. Yeah.

Eve: [00:27:18] Yeah, I think that’s true. So, there’s been a definite shift, but I always wonder whether it’s still too easy to forget about the poor communities. And you know, and if sufficient funds are being deployed to make those contaminated lands into assets there. Someone has to start a project, right. They have to have the funds to start it and I don’t think that’s equitable yet.

Julie: [00:27:48] Right. So, for instance, you know, I’m flashing back to Detroit where I’ve done these projects and I’m thinking about how, you know, and you probably know about some of these Eve, these deals are being struck with developers where it’s like, okay, we’ll sell you this land, you know, but you’re also going to be responsible for this land, which will be, you have to make something there to benefit the existing, often poor, community. I’m optimistic about initiatives like that. It’s kind of, or it is, forcing developers who I think could very well be just carpetbaggers, you know, in a disinvested, deep populated city like Detroit to make them more civic minded.

Julie: [00:28:49] I was running around Detroit with the former Planning Director Morris Cox. And there’s one man there who’s planting a bunch of tree farms. And I was kind of disgusted, as much as I love trees. And Maurice asked me, he goes, What’s the problem? And I said, I know it maybe improves the quality, the value of the land here, but who is it doing that for and what at all about tt is civic? You know, I’m like, where are the trees along the street where are the. And I just, I kind of went on my rant to just dissect it for what public good a private enterprise was doing, you know? And he was like, oh, and I said, you should insist. You should insist that, yeah, the city will sell you this land, but you need to do this and this for the public realm.

Eve: [00:30:00] I always thought there was just a little bit of a problem with our political structure because someone who has some power to make these decisions may have been an insurance agent in a past life. They don’t necessarily have any training on landscape or architecture or urban design or how to make better civic places. And they’re really given enormous power to control what happens in those places.

Julie: [00:30:28] Yeah.

Eve: [00:30:29] That’s a shame.

Julie: [00:30:31] I’m sorry, did you say planning folks?

Eve: [00:30:35] Well, planning folks are a little bit better because to be a planning person, you’ve got to have some background in planning. No, I’m thinking like a mayor or someone on city council who has.

Julie: [00:30:45] Oh, my God,

Eve: [00:30:46] The power to make a vote and doesn’t really have any of the necessary education or understanding, right?

Julie: [00:30:53] Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I have to jump in here to, I mean, I’m so excited to say this because I always say, like, I have a huge crush on mayors, you know, and that happened from being part of the Mayor’s Institute on City Design.

Eve: [00:31:08] Oh, yes.

Julie: [00:31:10] And I was on many sessions and blah, blah, blah, but regional and national and I just think they’re brilliant. I just really think, you know, having been in there and, you know, just one on one or just the mayors, you know, talking about a specific project, but some more in general. Just everyone I know, I saw that light bulb go up above their head and they were like, we are the architect of this city. You know, if we can’t make an informed decision, we better surround ourselves themselves with somebody who could help them. Yeah.

Eve: [00:31:52] That’s a great outcome.

Julie: [00:31:54] Yeah.

Eve: [00:31:54] So, I want to ask you about this incredible honor that’s been bestowed on you. You’re the first inaugural laureate for the Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize. It’s not just National, it’s international.

Julie: [00:32:10] Yeah.

Eve: [00:32:11] What does that mean to you?

Julie: [00:32:13] Well, it means a lot to me, obviously, but I can’t not be. But for me, it’s what it means to the discipline, my discipline. And that has to do with, I think, what I might represent. And that is, much like Cornelia Oberlander, who it’s named for, I decided I could take risks and I wanted to take risks. I had the advantage of teaching, so I always say I was kept by the university. But what I found is that there was something that the jury was saying in terms of the value of having a critical practice, not a commercial one, having one that was going to get out there. And the other thing was to influence a good many students after 27 years of teaching. So, that was heartening to me about receiving the prize. I’m just enormously proud, and I’m enormously proud of my discipline. You know, I’m hoping that what my getting the prize communicates is for people to go ahead, you know, be fearless, kick some ass, you know, just do it. Don’t be afraid. Yeah.

Eve: [00:33:31] So, I have to ask you, is there anyone following in your footsteps? Anyone who’s coming up young in the ranks, who’s fearless, doing really interesting things?

Julie: [00:33:42] Yeah, there are former students who are doing it. I even swell up with pride right now. My former associate, David Hill, of Hill Works is just doing some amazing projects. He’s based in Auburn, Alabama. And another former student, and also a dear friend of an architect, I’ve known her since she was nine years old, Maura Rockcastle and Ross Altheimer with TEN x TEN architects, Chloe Hawkins. Nicely enough, I think I can list a good number of folks. And also I think that I have kind of a solidarity, a group that is kind of a support group, I think of Kate Orff. Kate is absolutely fantastic and she’s doing unbelievable work and I can’t think of names right now. They’re out there, and I just know that, you know, there are a lot of emails that just say, you go girl, you know?

Eve: [00:34:46] And so, you got a little bit of prize money. What do you plan to do with that?

Julie: [00:34:50] Oh, okay. Well, I’m looking outside at my Bambi. My Airstream, Bambi. She’s named Cornelia. And she and I are going to take that cross-country trip that I took, it will be what’s 1993? What is the arithmetic? But it’s a lot of time. That mining tour that I told you about. So, I want to do that again. I want to stop at DIRT projects along the way, see how they’re doing, you know, visit with the old pals that I built it with. Hit some more Rust Belt cities. I have a project in Pittsburgh to stop at. And, you know, I think I’m just going to keep going west and look at some big holes in the ground again. I liked them.

Eve: [00:35:45] So, I’ll be really interested to see what comes out of them.

Julie: [00:35:50] Yeah, I hope so. The Cultural Landscape Foundation who has bestowed the prize, I’m hoping they will put together some sort of blog or some sort of something, you know, of my time on the road. That’d be fun.

Eve: [00:36:07] Well, I really, thoroughly enjoyed talking with you. Your work is fabulous, and I can’t thank you enough. And I can’t wait to see what’s next.

Julie: [00:36:18] Thanks. Great. Thank you.

Eve: [00:36:21] Okay.

Julie: [00:36:22] It’s been a privilege.

Eve: [00:36:30] I hope you enjoyed today’s guest and our deep dive together. You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at RethinkRealEstateforGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. If you like what you heard, you can support this podcast by sharing it with others, posting about it on social media, or leaving a rating and review. To catch all the latest from me, you can follow me on LinkedIn. Even better, if you’re ready to dabble in some impact investing, head on over to smallchange.co, where I spend most of my time. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music. And a big thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Julie Bargmann

Agri-Crowdfunding.

“The world’s population is expected to have grown by over a third from 2009 to 2050, an additional 2.3 billion people. To feed this number of people, food production will have to increase by around 70% from the 2005/07 levels (source: The World Bank). Meeting this world demand for food is going to need innovation in agriculture: selecting what to grow, how to grow it, learning how yields per acre of land can be raised, and by how much can waste be reduced? Innovation and breakthroughs do not have a history for banks and other traditional lenders and investors to weigh up the potential risks and returns. Crowdfunding for agriculture will accelerate the innovation in new foodstuffs and agritech required to feed over 9 billion people by 2050” writes Clive Reffell for CrowdSourcingWeek.

Population growth is expected to impact our future food security directly while increasing livestock numbers will contribute more methane to greenhouse gases. Increasing extreme weather events will affect more crops and more foodstuffs will be used in the manufacture of biomass fuels.

But it’s not all doom and gloom.

There’s still room for a significant reduction in food waste. Hydroponic farming can increase efficiency; improved crop selection and harvesting as well as a reduction in crop infestations can improve yields; and robotics and AI can help with all the above. And equity crowdfunding is playing a significant role in this important emerging sector of the food industry. Some examples of companies that have raised equity through crowdfunding are

  • AKUA, who launched the world’s first kelp burger in 2019;
  • Aerofarms, launched in 2004, now has indoor vertical farms across the US, has been listed on the NASDQ and is valued at $12.2 billion;  
  • Drone Ag Limited, a UK company, improving farming efficiency through automated drone use – checking crops for soil health and infestations as well as spraying crops;
  • Small Robot Company, another UK company, using an autonomous robot and AI software to create a weed map for customers and to apply fungicides and biopesticides with precision;
  • SmartOysters, in Australia, using GPS maps to keep track of every stage in an oyster’s development including scheduling and assigning tasks for management and maintenance of the oyster lease. The data can be used to de-risk farm investment and certify sustainability and provenance;
  • Crover, a Scottish company, which builds robots to burrow into cereal crops in storage or transit, checking for humidity, temperature and pests.

“Crowdfunding for agriculture will accelerate the innovation in new foodstuffs and agritech required to feed over 9 billion people by 2050.”

If you want to learn more about robots and agriculture listen in to Mark DeSantis in this podcast.

Or read the original article here.

Image by Bildet er tatt av DJI-Agras from Pixabay

Before IMPACT was a thing.

In college, Paul Rabinovitch planted almost a million trees. Seeing the clear-cut land in which he was working sparked a desire to center his work around creating change. His career path displays a multitude of avenues towards making an impact – from brownfields redevelopment, to building sanctuaries and parks with the Nature Conservancy, to working as an impact investor in real estate.

Now Paul serves as the Head of Real Estate Investments at New Island Capital, a family office that centers its work around impact. New Island Capital was one of the first investment firms with a focus on impact.Now impact investing has come into the mainstream with more firms and family offices looking to bring positive change with their investments every day. New Island brands itself as being 100% for profit and 100% mission driven. The office prioritizes long term investments that bring meaningful social and environmental change at the same time as maintaining profit and competitive returns. They invest in various sectors including clean technology, health care, renewable energy and of course, real estate. Real estate investments are made in markets where the residents are supportive of sustainable assets, as well as those in need of social equity and workforce housing.

Paul sees real estate as an opportunity to benefit people’s lives in a tangible way. There is longevity in real estate – buildings impact residents’ lives for decades, even centuries – which emphasizes the importance of adaptable, restorative, and regenerative development. In his varied work with both conservation and real estate, Paul has witnessed the organic growth of places. That is his goal – to build change that benefits people and the planet.

Read the podcast transcript here

Eve Picker: [00:00:08] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Rethink Real Estate. For Good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone. I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad, rich or poor, beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo, in order to build better for everyone. If you haven’t already, check out all of my podcasts at our website RethinkRealEstateForGood.co, or you can find them at your favorite podcast station. You’ll find lots worth listening to, I’m sure.

Eve: [00:00:57] Early in his career, Paul Rabinovitch worked as a tree planter in the reforestation industry, personally planting over 800,000 trees in Canada, where he grew up. That set the stage for the career he pursued. First as the executive director at the Nature Conservancy in Arlington and then as founder of TerraCycle Investments, a socially conscious real estate firm. His mother is a real estate developer, and Paul followed her lead, weaving in the social responsibility that so interests him to his real estate career. Now, Paul heads up real estate investment at New Island Capital, one of the largest family offices in the country, and one of the first to focus on impact investment before such a thing really existed. New Island invests in commercial scale, growing companies providing private credit, private equity and project finance. They also invest in farms, forests and of course, real estate. At New Island, Paul gets to invest in real estate with social impact at scale. You’ll want to hear more.

Eve: [00:02:15] If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do: share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:37] Hi, Paul. It’s really great to have you on my show today.

Paul Rabinovitch: [00:02:40] It’s great to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Eve.

Eve: [00:02:42] So I wanted to ask you about New Island Capital, where you work, and the company defines itself as both 100% for profit and 100% mission driven. And I wanted to just ask what that means.

Paul: [00:02:57] Sure. That’s a great question. New Island Capital was formed a couple of decades ago almost, and it was formed on the premise that we can invest towards triple bottom line returns where profits do not exclude creating environmental or social benefits. And really, the company was formed around that thesis that we can do both and there are meaningful opportunities for us to invest in things that make a profit that would be equal to what you would make in a conventional or traditional type of investment, but also drive really great social results. And that’s what our company is all about. We are 100% what’s called now impact investors. Back then it was double or triple bottom line investing. And we invest in real estate, and in businesses, companies as well as being active lenders across a lot of different spaces, ranging from health care to real estate to health and wellness and renewable energy, clean tech, a lot of different sectors.

Eve: [00:04:11] So you mentioned returns. And I’m wondering like, do you do you get as good returns as regular non-impact investment? Is that really possible?

Paul: [00:04:23] Yes, it is Eve. And I’d say there’s one important distinction to keep in mind, which is that we are long term investors, and sometimes we call that being patient capital. And so, our usual investment horizon is ten or fifteen years, and we do that intentionally as long term investors. One reason is because we invest on behalf of the family office. So, we’re investing for multiple generations, and we can think longer term. That’s one reason. The other reason is that we invest a lot of capital upfront in some of those social benefits. And an example I would use would be solar panels. So, we would invest in putting solar panels on the building right up front. And we know it would take seven or eight years before we’re at a break even on that investment. But then every year after that, it’s accretive to our bottom line. So, when we compare ourselves to other investors, we compare it on a ten- or fifteen-year horizon. And then we’re very competitive because by then, by the tenth or twelfth or fifteenth year, some of those upfront investments are beginning to bear fruit, so to speak. And we are outperforming what people are doing on the shorter-term horizons that that are more in vogue these days.

Eve: [00:05:41] Interesting. So, I’m going to go back to New Island Capital. Why does it exist?

Paul: [00:05:48] New Island Capital really exists because it was the experience of our family office that started us who was really interested in investing in alignment with their core values and their beliefs. And they had been shown a number of ESG screened kind of investment opportunities to invest their wealth in alignment with their values. And really their drive was not so much how do I do less bad in the world? Their drive was, how do I do more good in the world? And there weren’t at that time, this is going back a couple of decades, a whole lot of opportunities to invest with that kind of an idea. And so, our firm was born out of that idea. Now there’s a lot more impact investing firms that are out in the marketplace. It’s been really a pretty rapid rise of impact investing as a practice, which I think is really encouraging and exciting.

Eve: [00:06:47] So what’s your role at New Island Capital?

Paul: [00:06:51] So my role here in New Capital is I’m the Head of Real Estate, and responsible for all real estate investments for the company, as well as part of the senior leadership team in the investment committee and overseeing all the investments across all the various specialties that we have here.

Eve: [00:07:11] And I’d love to know, first of all, how you find triple bottom line impact real estate investment opportunities. And a second part to that is what percentage of the opportunities do you look out really kind of meet your goals, and what are some of the examples of the types of investments that New Island has made?

Paul: [00:07:32] Well, let’s talk about how do we source opportunities first, and you know, our approach to sourcing opportunities, projects where we want to deploy capital into is sort of the reverse of many other capital allocators that are in the market. And what I mean by that is that many other capital allocators, family offices or pension funds or what have you go through a sort of a research driven approach to say, well, where is the best market in the United States or in Europe or wherever they’re working? And where do we want to invest? They may pick an area like, let’s say, Pittsburgh, just out of the blue or some other wonderful city like that. And then they go look for a good sponsor that is an expert in developing in Pittsburgh or whatever geography they’re working in. We’re the reverse because we are 100% impact oriented. The bottom-line returns, the impact outcome is just as important as the financial outcome, and not all sponsors are the same. They’re not all equal because we need one, a partner who we believe, and trust is in alignment with our goals. So, our process is go find the best impact developers in the country and then underwrite them and the market that they work in. So, we come at it backwards. We go sponsor first, who are the best sponsors, what are their markets? And if those two circles intersect and we like the developer sponsor and we like the market, then we have a place that we can really have a conversation around.

Eve: [00:09:08] So I’m wondering if that’s the way you look at it. Are the markets that you generally end up in not the hottest markets in the country?

Paul: [00:09:16] It’s an interesting question. Not necessarily. No, I wouldn’t say that, Eve. I would say that the markets that we are ending up in right now are some of the fastest growing, most progressive markets in the country. And the reason I say that is one of the themes that we work in is sustainability and building net zero energy, operating buildings, low carbon buildings, buildings that perform at the highest levels of resource efficiency, water and energy efficiency and all those sorts of things. And so, if you’re going to build a building like that, you need to have a market that accepts it and might be willing to pay a little bit more in rent or might be really attracted to a building product that’s like that. So, we tend to be in markets where there’s a more progressive market tenant base that would be attracted to those kind of assets. So, we’re in markets like Seattle, Boulder, Colorado, and we’re not in markets that are less interested in those kinds of products. So, sustainability is a good example. And then, we also do a lot of work in social equity and workforce housing. And so, we’re also in some markets where workforce housing is in short supply and so, and high demand. And so, we work in those areas as well and some of those markets are really terrific as well.

Eve: [00:10:44] Oh, that’s interesting. And so, what are some examples of the types of investments that New Island has made?

Paul: [00:10:51] As I was saying earlier, we’re really interested in accelerating and supporting a transition to a low carbon economy. And so, we work in investing in buildings that have the lowest carbon footprint that you could design towards. So, there’s a couple of projects that we have that are CLT Cross Laminated Timber construction. That construction type is about 50% lower embodied carbon than a steel and concrete building, for example. So, those, we think that’s sort of the future of where we want to, if we want to try to become a low carbon and we want to try to combat global climate change, that’s the kind of buildings that we need to be building. And so, we invest in buildings like that. We also invest in buildings that have high solar or renewable energy components to them. And so, they’re in sunnier places. We’re investing in a project in Huntsville, Alabama, that will be net zero energy from solar contributions. We also invest in the workforce housing, as I was saying, and trying to figure out how we can create without government subsidies, housing that is affordable to what used to be called the middle class, the population that is usually comprised of schoolteachers and firemen, policemen, the essential economy of our society who are having a harder and harder time finding places to live in that don’t burden them for, the housing cost does not burden their family budget. So, our goal is to try to develop properties where a middle-income, middle-class family can afford to live without spending more than 30% of their budget for that housing.

Eve: [00:12:36] And without spending 2 hours commuting to their job, right?

Paul: [00:12:40] Correct.

Eve: [00:12:41] Is that really horrible issue.

Paul: [00:12:43] Yeah, that is part of the issue.

Eve: [00:12:47] Go ahead.

Paul: [00:12:48] Well, the last part of it, which I also think is an interesting part of our work and because we are long term holders of real estate, as I was saying earlier, where we’re holding assets for ten plus years, we also think about how can we layer on additional impact to a project over time, maybe we can’t afford it when we build it to put on solar hot water, but we could put that in in year three. Maybe we identify that the area that we, that our building is going up in is a food desert and really needs to have an organic co-op on the ground floor and we can put that in, or is a banking desert and needs to have like a co-op or a community bank on the ground floor. So, we think long and hard about how do we improve the communities in which we’re investing, and that is a tangible impact that we measure. And then the last part is who are our partners, and can we diversify our partners so that they’re representative of our society, that we have women developers, we have developers of color, we have all the developers who are trying to emerge into the field. So that’s another part of our impact as well. That is part of what we’re trying to create.

Eve: [00:14:11] So going back to family office operations, which impact operations were pretty rare, as you said, 20 years ago, but tremendous private wealth is consolidated around the world and family offices. How much wealth do they hold?

Paul: [00:14:28] It’s in the trillions, Eve, but I don’t know specifically. Family offices to be candid about, I’m not necessarily tracking, I happen to work within, for a family office, but I don’t necessarily track the sector. But you’re right, they’ve been growing rapidly. But there’s also not necessarily like a registration or a way of tracking how much money is actually managed there or, it’s a little bit I don’t want to say shadowy, but it’s a little bit you know, it’s not something that is out in the open where everyone knows the number of family offices and how much wealth do they have under management. It’s a little hard to track.

Eve: [00:15:08] One of the articles I was reading is that why some people with wealth have tended towards family offices because they have a little more leeway in what they can do with their funds than, for example, a hedge fund or a venture capital fund or something like that.

Paul: [00:15:28] Yeah, that’s true. And, you know, it could be to the best. You know, the story that I told you about New Island Capital is around a family who has wealth that wanted to do more good work with their capital and their wealth. And so, I think that there are many family offices. I know there are, because I speak to them frequently about cooperating on projects that have similar ideas. And I think there’s a lot of encouragement to be had from the next generation of family wealth. Perhaps the founders may not hold some of the same values, but this next generation that’s upcoming is from everything that I read and everything that I hear is very desirous of seeing a world that works better for the environment and for social justice and for other issues and equity. So, there’s more and more family offices that are looking at the same way that we are.

Eve: [00:16:25] So yeah, we generally seem to be experiencing the mainstreaming of impact investing. And I’m wondering, you’ve been in this world for a while and how much has it changed over the last decade?

Paul: [00:16:39] Well, you know, that’s very interesting. It has changed a lot is the short answer to it. And I think that has changed, you can measure it and think about it in a lot of different ways. One way is how much money is there that’s in the sector and that has certainly grown. How many other companies are there? It’s been a long time since I started in this work, since I had other colleagues that I can talk to. Now there’s a lot, and there’s conferences and there’s more and more people who are doing this kind of work and thinking about it. And I think even though you didn’t ask me about this, particularly as a lot of the work that family offices have done to invent and think about impact investing has now kind of evolutionarily moved up the ladder into institutions. So now, you know, Goldman Sachs, Nuveen, any of the major banks and financial institutions you can think of, as well as many life insurance companies and pensions have impact investing shops. Larger capital providers are also sort of following the trend and building out that sort of, that strength and that practice, which I think is really encouraging.

Eve: [00:17:54] It is. And I was just going to say, like when you did your degree, it was probably unusual. But now I hear about more and more impact investing programs and students emerging who want to work in that world, right?

Paul: [00:18:09] Yeah, absolutely. I’m ancient, so there was no such thing as this when I was in school. But you’re right, now it’s being taught at school. You know, like on this podcast, I’ve been asked to speak to students and tell them about what I do for a living and why it could be a good career choice for them. I just did that for a group of students at University of Colorado, Boulder and they were, they were fascinating and fascinated. And I thought it was great.

Eve: [00:18:41] That’s really cool. So, I have to ask, there are clearly areas that are receiving a lot of attention from impact investors, but do you feel like there are some big holes that still need to be plugged? Some areas that really need help?

Paul: [00:19:00] The leading component of impact investing would be the environment sustainability. And I would say that that is by far the, the bigger appetite that I see people investing towards. You know, that could cross a lot of different areas, it could be clean tech, it could be green buildings, it could be sustainable food and our food supply chain. So, if you think about it as ESG, there’s a lot of “E” that people invest into. And I think it may also be that that is the part of impact investing world that may be the easiest to track and has the longest, it’s got the greatest longevity. We’ve been talking about it for 20, 30 years, and so it’s finally got some traction. That would be sort of the top of the list. I would say the second most emergent that I’ve noticed has been social equity and diversity, mostly driven out of the racial unrest that we saw over the last few years and just a great drive together with opportunity zones in some way to create greater economic opportunities for diverse populations, and populations that have been overlooked for decades and decades, or have lost the opportunity to create wealth for themselves through institutional racism and other institutional barriers to advancement. So that, I would say, would be the second largest. Your third question is, are there areas that are not being addressed?

Eve: [00:20:42] Those two actually encompass a lot, don’t they?

Paul: [00:20:46] Yeah. You know, the one area that I think I’m really interested in and our family has been talking a lot about and which I think is really interesting, is community ownership and different ways in which, and your, Small Change is a part of the solution to that is how do people invest in real estate or invest in their own communities? How do they make, how do you build up your community around you and also profit from it and create wealth? And how does that work in our society? I think that’s an area that has, there’s a lot of people thinking about it and not a ton of examples. Your Small Change is one example, but there’s also ideas about neighborhood rights. There’s examples about community land trusts. There are other examples that are out there of different ideas about how do we structure these kinds of opportunities.

Eve: [00:21:40] So, I think for me the big difference is that the environment is and the issues that environment are really mainstream now. Everyone knows they can, they understand, even if they don’t want to do it, that they can have a small part in making a difference whether they recycle or put a solar panel on their roof or, you know, whatever small step they can take, it’s really at the level now that everyone can grasp. Right. But I think that creating equity for people is not something that most people can grasp and not something that most people understand how they can help. Does that make sense?

Paul: [00:22:18] I think it does, yeah. We’re tactile people and it’s very tangible when you see a solar panel on a roof or rain barrel or something like that, you you get it. Some of the other things that you mentioned are kind of more a little bit more conceptual. They’re not as tactile.

Eve: [00:22:37] Yes. Yeah. So, I want to go back to your background, which is really interesting Paul. What led you from planting trees, which is where you started, I think, to directing impact investments in real estate?

Paul: [00:22:50] So, yes, you’re right. I started planting trees when I was in college. I’m Canadian and one of the best ways for Canadian students to make money for their beer budget for the next year is to go north and plant trees. The Canadian government set up this regulation that any tree that’s cut in Canada has to be replaced at the cost of the timber company. So, they hire these legions of undergrads to come and plant trees. And I’m proud to say that over my lifetime I planted a million trees.

Eve: [00:23:25] Oh, wow.

Paul: [00:23:27] I can breathe easy, I suppose. I’ve created my own oxygen budget. But, you know, part of that experience was if you’re going to be a tree planter, you’re going to be sent to an area that was clear cut and you’re going to have to reforest it. And so, it just really impacted me at that young age to be in these clear cuts all summer long and seeing moose wandering around lost and birds and what, where the forests go. And it would be hectares and hectares of just nothing. And it was, it changed my mind about what I wanted to do. And I had the good fortune of being raised by an architect mother who taught me the business of real estate. And I sort of put those two things together and said, well, I can use what my mom has taught me about real estate and start building green buildings and recycling land. And so, I started off as a Brownfields redeveloper, and learned the business of green building. And then along the way, I also learned about low-income housing tax credit projects and historic tax credit projects and have done all those kinds of projects over the course of my career, mostly in cities, almost entirely in cities. For one part of my career, I also took about a 9 to 10 year hiatus to go join the Nature Conservancy and use my real estate skills to help the Nature Conservancy build more nature sanctuaries and parks. And so, that’s been my career as an impact real estate developer, a conservationist, and now an impact investor.

Eve: [00:25:06] It makes a lot of sense. So, a couple of final questions. What do you like best about the work you do?

Paul: [00:25:14] The way I look at the world is real estate is this opportunity where you can really have a beneficial influence on people’s lives in a very tangible way, whether it’s where they live or where they work, they are spending the majority of their time there, they’re raising their families there. They’re experiencing these places that are being built every day. And so, the process of thinking about that and how these assets that are long term assets they could stand for 40, 50, 6000 years can be adaptable and restorative and maybe even regenerative, I think is a fascinating question and a really worthy place to work. But for me, that’s really gratifying work. It’s hard. There’s not easy solutions. There’s a lot of trade-offs. But if I’m going to work somewhere, working somewhere where I can benefit people and planet is just super gratifying to me. And if I get to make money along the way, too, that is awesome.

Eve: [00:26:19] That’s the triple bottom line, right?

Paul: [00:26:21] Yeah. And I also, you know, I really enjoy watching the organic growth of places. Most of the projects that I’ve done in my career have been in places that are distressed in some ways or have some environmental contamination. They’ve been derelict, things like that. And to watch them come back to life and then spur other life, it’s sort of like seeds being cast from a from a tree and then new sprouts coming up. I find that super gratifying and exciting.

Eve: [00:26:51] Well, thank you very much for talking to me today. I really enjoyed it and I hope I get to hear more about what you’re doing.

Paul: [00:26:58] Absolutely. This was a ton of fun. Thank you, Eve, I appreciate being on.

Eve: [00:27:06] Paul holds an enviable position as the director of real estate investment at New Island Capital, one of the largest family offices in the country. Here he has the opportunity to focus on impact investment in impact at scale into farms, forests and of course, real estate.

Eve: [00:27:33] You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at our website RethinkRealEstateForGood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Image courtesy of Paul Rabinovitch

Impact investing. More than a fad.

“Impact investing is a major topic on investors’ radar screen, boasting huge growth, and widespread acceptance among those seeking to align their portfolios with their personal values. But impact investing has always been more than a fad.” writes James Lumberg for Investopedia.

Impact investing, or socially responsible investing (SRI), has been around for longer than you might think. The Jewish concept of Tzedek, referred to in the earliest books of the Bible, aimed to correct imbalances between people, and referred to the benefits derived from ownership. Included were criteria for the rights and responsibilities of ownership and for generating financial returns ethically and sustainably. A few hundred years later, the Qur’an also established guidelines. These have evolved to become Sharia-compliant standards which prohibit the use of money for profit or exploitation.

In the United States, socially responsible investing began with 18th Century Methodists. They renounced the slave trade, smuggling and blatant consumption and they resisted investing in liquor, tobacco and gambling. The Quakers also forbade investment in slavery and war and founded the first publicly offered fund, the Pioneer Fund, with similar restrictions. These early investing strategies were intended to eliminate “sin” industries.

Leap forward to the 1960s when Vietnam War protesters demanded that University endowment funds stop investing in defense contracts. And in 1985, apartheid protestors demanded that Universities no longer invest in South Africa. These student protests along with environmental disasters brought the issues of the day to the attention of investors and in turn, pressure from those investors led to institutional and legislative change. In 1977, the United States Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act which prohibited discriminatory lending practices in low-income neighborhoods. In 1984 the U.S. Sustainable Investment Forum (US SIF) was founded. And from 1985 to 1993, $65M of investments were redirected from South Africa.

While socially responsible investing in the United States initially focussed on stopping investment in products that conflicted with our personal beliefs, the impact investors of today focus on a variety of environmental and social issues and proactively seek investments that create positive change.

Read the original article here.

Image by Eve Picker