The Impact: Integrating affordable housing, social justice and the environment

Welcome to another episode of “The Impact” on FinTech TV. I spoke to Jonathan Rose, who is the CEO and founder of Jonathan Rose Companies whose mission is to create a more environmentally thriving, socially just world through the development, preservation, renovation and management of green, affordable and mixed-income housing.

Jeff Gittermen: We’re always interested in what got people started on their impact journey. So I’d be curious to hear a little bit about your path.

Jonathan Rose: So I was really lucky. I was born with a calling, actually three callings.

I grew up in the suburbs of New York, and when I was a young child, I really loved nature, I loved being in nature, but I also had this sense of pollution and the negative impact human beings were having on nature, and I wanted to do something about it.

I grew up during the civil rights era, and my mother was very involved in voter registration, et cetera, and I deeply recognized the injustice and I wanted to do something about it.

And the last thing is, my father was a real estate developer, and I loved building, I loved new construction, I just loved the whole creative act of it. And so from a very young child, I wanted to figure out how to bring these three things together.

It wasn’t a really clear path in the late 1950s and early 1960s for how to do this, but 35 years ago, I formed my own company as a mission-focused company. So we were focused. We were founded to be impactful in integrating these three areas of real estate development, social justice and environmental solutions.

JG: If people want to help in driving more affordable housing, what do you think the best thing that they can do is?

JR: The best thing they can do is get involved locally. For a long time, people who wanted to oppose projects had the dominant voice. There’s a new movement called Yimby — Yes, In My Backyard.

And by the way, today’s contemporary affordable housing is safe, it’s green. Actually, there’s a lot of design excellence. These buildings can be quite beautiful. And these are people who were providing housing for people who work in our hospitals, who work in our public schools, the people who work in the retail shops on our main street. We’re providing housing for our own people.

And so if you can support affordable housing development in your communities, it’d be a tremendous value.

Watch the full interview:

Read more: The Impact: Focusing private wealth on impact investing