SCANPH Roundtable: Centering Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Affordable Housing Construction Contracts
What role do affordable housing developers play in ensuring that affordable housing projects have diverse suppliers? In partnership with Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, Executive Director at LISC LA; Denice Wint, Director of Real Estate Development at EAH Housing; Van Scott, Director of Development, Southern California/Jordan Downs at BRIDGE Housing Corporation; Jack Wickersham, Principal at AMJ Construction Management; and Vanessa Carter, Senior Data Analyst at the USC Equity Research Institute and the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing (SCANPH), LISC LA moderated a discussion to explore how the affordable housing field can create more opportunities for BIPOC-led businesses to access project contracts.
To help ground the conversation, SCANPH sent out a survey to their members to see how many of our affordable housing organizations have Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies or goals for how they procure vendors for projects- from pre-development consultants to general contractors to their sub-contractors. According to the developer survey, the majority of nonprofit affordable housing developers do not have procurement policies to addressing supplier diversity, however 100% of survey participants would be interested in such policy.
LISC LA also gathered some data on affordable housing development costsfor the past 5 years to show the potential impact that project spend could have on diverse local businesses. During 2015 to 2019, the affordable housing field in Southern California spent at least $15 Billion to develop over 44,000 housing units. The California Housing partnership estimates a 60% of Low Income Housing Tax Credit housing development costs are dedicated to construction. With the right resources, the industry has the potential to pivot some of its multi-billion dollar financing to further close the racial wealth gap and support BIPOCsubcontractors and suppliersthroughout the development and construction process
Panelist’s and attendees agreed that it is essential that as a field we come together to create shared goals and metrics that center race, equity, and inclusion all throughout the affordable housing development process.
LISC LA is committed to advancing more inclusive procurement systems through initiatives like AscendLA, a program that seeks to provide diverse small businesses with the management education and capital they need to access new markets and contract opportunities. Given the demand for sub-contractors in the construction industry, Ascend LA will be launching a separate track for diverse contractors in 2021.
Check out the data slides on affordable housing development costs here or watch the roundtable conversation below.
Thank you to Capital One for supporting LISC LA’s economic inclusion and small business initiatives across the Los Angeles region.
Related Stories
