Plamedie Ifasso

Dallas Business Journal | September 7, 2022

Dallas-based real estate development firm Innovan Neighborhoods is establishing a community developers roundtable aimed at creating and supporting more affordable housing in Dallas. 

Partnering with BCL of Texas, the roundtable will act as a collective learning, funding and networking opportunity for developers and nonprofit organizations and provide resources needed to lead affordable housing and community-based real estate projects. 

“For me, Innovan is successful when I can help position other people to have the same opportunity that I'm having, which is to take on community-based projects with patient capital and with really great partnerships,” Innovan Neighborhoods founder and managing partner Maggie Parker. “The roundtable is a foray into completing that mission because we are ensuring that those who are already doing the work have increased capacity for doing more impactful work. That (work) includes not just us meeting and having conversations (but as well as) putting strong partnerships around them (and) ensuring that we have really flexible funding around them.” 

The roundtable will start as a two-year pilot, and members will meet monthly for about nine months to get updates on local policies, network with other developers and get connected to resources including a projected $1 million dedicated pre-development fund, staff capacity stipends and financial resources for technical assistance such as project feasibility studies and professional coaching. 

Innovan is currently accepting applications to the CDR, and Parker said the firm is looking for developers who already have community-focused projects in their pipeline. 

“We target that via product types, so either they’re working on single family for buyers up to 120% of AMI, multifamily for up to 80% of AMI or building commercial real estate that is located in an underserved or distressed area,” Parker said. “We are primarily focused on people of color that are leading these organizations because these are the folks that are often representing and are from these underserved areas, so how do we support people building in their own communities as well? Those are the key criteria that we’re looking at, but we do have a three-phase selection process.” 

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