As part of our blog series on how LISC investments dovetail with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, it's only fitting that we would zero in this Women's History Month on the gender equality goal. Gender Lens Investing is a strategic approach to financing that is of particular importance for the CDFI world. Read on to see how it is guiding our work and the projects we support.
This Women’s History Month, we are marking the progress being made towards UN Sustainable Development Goal 5, Gender Equality by highlighting an emerging theme in LISC’s lending portfolio: Gender Lens Investing. A fast-growing impact investing theme, Gender Lens Investing is a strategy or approach to investing that takes into account gender-based factors across the investment process to advance gender equality and better inform investment decisions. These factors can include investing in women-led organizations and/or enterprises serving women and girls; or investing in organizations that promote workplace equity.
It should come as no surprise that gender inequality is pervasive in the real estate development and construction industries. The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts female employment in the construction industry at a mere 11 percent, with some estimates recording just one woman out of every 100 people in frontline positions on job sites. As part of our work with Impact Frontier’s CDFI Cohort, a peer group of CDFIs working to advance impact measurement and management in our lending, LISC is examining how we can promote gender equity in our portfolio. This process will inform where we succeed and where we fall short, setting the stage for future capacity building or technical assistance programs geared at advancing gender equity in real estate.
As part of this work, LISC is looking at the percentage of our portfolio made up of women-led organizations, based on senior management and board composition. We are also looking at the demographics of an organization’s workforce; the organization’s commitment to providing quality jobs; and its commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and justice. In addition, we are measuring companies’ hiring and board recruitment policies, in addition to analyzing inclusive procurement practices for a project’s development team (e.g. what portion of architects, construction inspectors, general contractors, etc. are women).
LISC has a history of partnering with women-led developers to build community-serving projects. One example is our partnership with Women's Community Revitalization Project (WCRP) in Philadelphia. Established in 1986 as Philadelphia's first and (then) only women-led community development organization, WCRP serves low-income women and their families while striving to increase equity through the development of affordable housing, supportive services, and robust political advocacy work. LISC Philadelphia provided predevelopment funding to re-syndicate and preserve the affordability of two existing developments: the Karen Donnally and Iris Nydia Brown Townhomes. You can read more about the project here.
Another example is Ark Restoration Construction, a real estate development company wholly-owned by Ambrea and Kevin Mikolajczyk. Ambrea left her corporate career to pursue her passion of restoring old architecture and creating something special from undesirable properties in underserved communities. LISC provided Ark Restoration with construction financing for the redevelopment an historic three-story, 56,000-square-foot former Wonder Bread factory and industrial building to be converted into mixed affordability housing. Read more about the project here.
For more information on LISC’s portfolio, see our Project Profiles, which highlight several of the investments made to women-owned or -managed real-estate developers:
- Yale Apartments | Los Angeles, CA
- Centinela & Lincoln | Los Angeles, CA
- Lorena Plaza | Los Angeles, CA
- Villa Oakland | Oakland, CA
- Bay Area Community Land Trust Stuart Street Apartments | Oakland, CA
- Bay Area Community Land Trust 12th Avenue Cooperative | Oakland, CA
- Wonder Bread Adaptive Reuse | Toledo, OH
- Women’s Community Revitalization Project | Philadelphia, PA
- Maggie Walker Community Land Trust | Richmond, VA
About the author
Anna Smukowski, Senior Director of Capital Programs, Enterprise Community Loan Fund
Anna Smukowski serves as ECLF’s senior director of capital programs, assisting ECLF’s capital and lending teams with capital raising and fund structuring. Prior to this position, she led LISC’s $200 million retail note offering, coordinated LISC investor relations and positioned LISC’s capital raising within ESG, impact and social bond frameworks. Anna also managed $50 million in LISC’s Paycheck Protection Program deployment and has structured and managed affordable-housing and economic-development funds as well as pay-for-success work through a Social Innovation Fund grant award. Anna is passionate about values-aligned investing from the individual to the institutional level and has worked on updating and implementing missionaligned investment policy statements at LISC and ECLF. Anna started her career as a strategy and operations consultant at Deloitte. Anna holds a bachelor of science degree from New York University Stern School of Business and an MBA from Columbia Business School.