Ten years ago, Ken Weinstein set out to answer a question: what happens when you teach neighborhood residents to develop blighted properties and then give them the money to invest in their own projects? Would it help residents resist displacement by enabling them to build wealth and produce naturally occurring affordable housing for the neighborhood, in the process? Could it help diversify real estate — a field that is notoriously White and male?
That’s what happened when Weinstein started Jumpstart Germantown, a training and loan program, designed to help residents take part in and benefit from the revitalization that was already occurring in the neighborhood, where his commercial real estate company, Philly Office Retail, is located. Since the program was founded in 2015, it has given out almost $60 million to developers, 95 percent of whom are from the Philadelphia region. Eighty-three percent of the people who’ve received loans through their program are Black and 51 percent are women.
On Monday, February 10, The Citizen hosted Weinstein and Jumpstart grad Jordan Parisse-Ferrarini, a developer and founder of the nonprofit Trades for A Difference, at Development … for Good: The Opposite of Gentrification. Citizen Executive Director Roxanne Patel Shepelavy moderated the conversation between Parisse-Ferrarini and Weinsten at Fitler Club for an audience of more than 225 people — many of them grads of the program or aspiring developers themselves — about how development programs can help neighborhoods resist gentrification.
Watch a video of the event below.
Making development careers more accessible
Weinstein kicked off the event with the oft-told story of Jumpstart’s founding. As a commercial real estate developer in Germantown and Mt. Airy, he was constantly being approached by neighbors asking how they could launch careers in real estate. Instead of meeting with people one-on-one, he decided to put what he knew into a 16-hour training program. He started off teaching two people in his office, but the sessions quickly ballooned beyond that. Now, Jumpstart is in 15 other communities and has plans to launch in 11 more, including Pittsburgh and Gary, Indiana.
Once people complete the training program, they’re eligible for the loan program, which gives out below-market rate financing so graduates can complete their own projects. Jumpstart also pairs them with a mentor so they can avoid common mistakes.
During the event, Weinstein explained that he didn’t specifically try to recruit women and people of color to his training programs, but they showed up, in part because Jumpstart was offering them opportunities that they had traditionally been excluded from.
“I came into [Jumpstart] in the beginning of 2015 and I looked around the room and it was people of color,” Parisse-Ferrarini says. “They came from communities like mine. And fast forward 10 years, I’ve seen brothers, I’ve seen sisters, I’ve seen women grow and thrive and become bigger developers, become more civically engaged and be able to lead the change that we want to see in our communities.”
Since then, more than 3,000 people have graduated from its programs. Many go on to mentor other aspiring developers via Jumpstart’s mentorship program. Others, like Parisse-Ferrarini, start their own nonprofits that help people break into the real estate and construction industries.
Ripple effects for affordable housing
Jumpstart works in middle neighborhoods — those that aren’t development hotspots, but also aren’t in complete disrepair. Because of that, it tends to produce housing that the typical Philadelphian can afford, also known as workforce housing. The typical home rehabbed by a Jumpstart grad sells for $202,000.
“We are not an affordable housing program, but we have ended up producing lots of what we call NOAH, naturally occurring affordable housing,” Weinstein says. “We are producing rentals at less than 70 percent AMI (area median income), and for sale properties at less than 90 percent area median income.”
“I’ve seen brothers, I’ve seen sisters, I’ve seen women grow and thrive and become bigger developers, become more civically engaged and be able to lead the change that we want to see in our communities.” — Jordan Parisse-Ferrarini
The developers often come from the communities they’re investing in, so they care about keeping things affordable and making things better for their neighbors. About 20 percent of Jumpstart’s loans go to developers who are working within their own zip codes. These developers are more likely to hire people from their communities, spreading the wealth that they build.
“We need development. We deserve development. The challenge is, how do you develop in a way that includes us, that doesn’t exclude us — that’s gentrification,” Parisse-Ferrarini says. “Every dollar that comes to a Black developer, Brown developer, woman developer, somebody from the neighborhood, that dollar touches our hands. And if it touches my hands, it’s likely that it’s going to touch somebody else’s from my community.”
Development … for Good, a series that looks at how public placemaking and private development can reshape our city, is a partnership between The Citizen, Drexel University’s Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation and Fitler Club, where Monday’s event was hosted. Chestnut Hill Local, which co-published a deep dive into the last 10 years of Jumpstart, partnered on this event as well.
The series is sponsored by The Bellwether District–an HRP Project, Brandywine Realty Trust, Campus Apartments, Clarke & Cohen Property Loss Consultants, Darco Capital and Firstrust Bank.
Correction: A previous version of this post misidentified Judy Weinstein.
