Mission Success: Helping Minority Developers Scale Up

Dr. Gina Merritt is the principal of Northern Real Estate Urban Ventures, a company that has more than $300 million multifamily projects in the pipeline. And obtaining financing for all those projects is a major challenge for minority developers, which is why she’s always looking for ways to support her balance sheet. This year she got involved into a unique initiative from the Wells Fargo Foundation. In this episode of Mission Success: Women in Multifamily, Senior Editor Laura Calugar talks to Merritt about why BIPOC developers are still held with different underwriting standards when trying to access capital for their projects, and also touch on how Dr. Merritt's initiatives support affordable housing residents. Here’s a sample of the topics this episode covers: How Merritt developed an interest in affordable housing (01:10) Minority developers and discrimination (2:43) How the GDHD program will help Merritt’s business (4:49) Other developers in the program (8:15) The challenges Black and Latino developers face when trying to access capital (10:52) How the current financial climate is affecting minority developers (17:30) Merritt’s initiatives that help residents (20:29)