Social Spin takes on extra load with push into affordable housing

It stank to high heaven.

The purpose-driven Social Spin laundromat that quickly became a community hub in a central Phoenix neighborhood was displaced after three years in a lease situation that founder Christy Moore described as “extremely traumatic.” 

“We knew that we didn’t want to ever go through that experience again,” Moore said.

In the search for a central Phoenix location to call its own, Social Spin found a bigger purpose. In 2021, the social-impact startup established a nonprofit foundation to manage its charitable work and bought property at the northeast corner of 24th and Portland streets that will be the site of its major push into affordable housing development.

“I’m so psyched that Christy was able to get that property,” said Terry Benelli, executive director of LISC Phoenix, which is heavily involved in addressing the affordable housing crisis in Arizona. “It’s very cool.” 

Social Spin is a benefit corporation created to build dignity and respect in underserved neighborhoods. The startup is disrupting the laundromat industry in ways that improve the way laundromats look and feel to customers and neighbors. 

Moore’s professional background as a social worker and nonprofit leader helped her see laundromats as natural gathering places for the kind of activities and interactions that build communities and help vulnerable people, including the unsheltered and youth aging out of foster care. She and her team believe clean clothes are a human right. From social and business perspectives, they’re right on the nose.  

“We get a lot of acknowledgment for the fact that people didn’t think about how important clean clothes are,” Moore said. “There’s tons of statistical data that show that. For kids in school classrooms, for example, there is less bullying, better attendance, better grades with clean clothes. We know that the human nose triggers.”

Social Spin successfully implemented its community-based business plan at its first location in Phoenix and a second location in Mesa. Business was good enough for Social Spin to provide 3,500 free loads of laundry and other assistance to neighbors in need. 

The robust charitable activity of Social Spin is a primary reason for establishing the foundation. It allows Moore to focus on the conscious capitalism side of Social Spin. Chief Changemaker Glynda Henderson, who came to Arizona four years ago to retire after a career in information technology, leads the new Social Spin Foundation. She oversees activities like “Wash with Care Wednesday,” the weekly event at Social Spin locations that, in addition to two free loads of laundry, is some parts social hour, some parts respite, some parts referral service, all parts in service to humanity. 

The new location in a vacant church opened on Dec. 1 with a Wash with Care Wednesday that featured showers, shoes, hot meals and coffee provided by local food truck vendors, and a DJ. By the end of the month, Wash with Care Wednesday in the north Gateway area of central Phoenix was already a thing among neighbors.

Now Social Spin is taking its practice of investing in employees and customers to entirely new level. With the help of some angel investors who provided a two-year loan at a fair interest rate, it purchased the church and adjacent property.  

Initially, Moore and her team’s vision was to renovate the church into a laundromat and a few housing units for employees. Social Spin was encouraged by a funder to think bigger with a plan that involved razing the church. That idea took some getting used to.

“We were attached to the building,” Moore said. “But to get to the volume (of housing units), we had to tear the building down. I think we may be too close to the need sometimes. We see employees and customers who need housing now, and this seemed like an easy way. But now we’re looking at a two-year project.”

It’s a remarkable turn of events considering only four years ago, Social Spin received a $5,000 Kiva loan, an online crowdfunding platform that partners with LISC, to renovate its first space in a strip center at 24th Street and Thomas Road. Today, a $1.5 million Social Spin capital campaign is underway to repay its loan for the land purchase and to build a new laundromat and other retail uses. 

A relationship with a funder with access to development funds allows Social Spin to dream bigger about its goal to build dignity and respect in underserved neighborhoods. Now an original thought of a few units has grown to dozens of units to help address the affordable housing crisis in Phoenix.

“There is no way that Social Spin would ever be eligible for affordable housing dollars because it’s based on experience and expertise, and we have zero,” Moore said. “So, we had to partner with a developer who had the credentials to get the funding.”

The mixed-use development will be built differently than the standard practice of retail following housing. Social Spin is intentional about no repeating the patten, for example, of high-rise projects in the Valley featuring housing built atop retail spaces. Those spaces remain empty years after residents moved in. 

Social Spin’s tentative plan calls for 3,000 square feet of retail space, with about 1,800 square feet occupied by the laundromat. A community kitchen and a barista station staffed with like-minded businesses or entities will fill out the space. 

“What’s so unique about our process is that we have the retail filled first based on the community need,” Moore said. “We put a flag down and said we’re building this and around us will be the housing.”

Housing units will be designed with Social Spin customers in mind. 

“We primarily serve single, unsheltered individuals,” Moore said. “The unit mix that we’re proposing is a co-living environment. Each unit would have four individual rooms that are full contained with a bedroom, a bathroom and then there is a shared small kitchen and living room. A roommate situation.”

Co-living will be half of the housing units at Social Spin; the other half will be studio apartments. Moore said the housing is expected to be temporary, with residents staying no more than a year. 

In 2018, Moore was taking in the sight and sound of her new venture, a laundromat with a social purpose. “This is beautiful,” she said of the renovated space and the new vibe created by Social Spin.

More than three years later in a dramatically different time, marked by a pandemic that reveals how fragile and tenuous life is for so many of our neighbors, and in a different place, Moore surveys the new Social Spin location and sees a big future upon which to build more dreams. 

“It’s amazing,” Moore said. “I love this space.”