Industry Leaders Establish Multifamily Impact Council

A consortium of more than 20 industry leaders from across the commercial residential real estate sector have announced the establishment of the Multifamily Impact Council (MIC), a nonprofit membership organization dedicated to establishing impact investing principles and data-driven impact reporting frameworks for the multifamily housing industry.

“As interest in socially motivated debt and equity capital continues to grow, it is essential for the multifamily industry to come together and develop generally accepted principles and reporting frameworks that facilitate the flow of impact capital and support affordable and sustainable housing investments in the United States,” said Antonio Marquez, managing partner of Comunidad Partners, who will serve as the chairman of the board of the new organization. “The Multifamily Impact Council will serve as the collaborative focal point for property owners, investors, lenders and service providers to work together to create transparency, validity and mutually accepted standards to accomplish this goal.”

“Currently, there is limited investor and operator consensus on what constitutes impact investing in the affordable housing sector in the United States,” said Summer Haltli, principal of ESG and impact at FCP and board member of MIC. “As a result, investors and property owners must either create their own guidelines or adjust to broad enterprise-level ESG frameworks that may not directly apply to multifamily properties. It is critical to develop a common structure for multifamily impact investing in order to unlock a private sector solution to the housing affordability crisis in the United States.”

Bob Simpson will serve as president and CEO of the Multifamily Impact Council. Simpson, who founded the impact advisory firm Simpson Impact Strategies, brings more than 25 years of housing finance and public policy experience to the role — including a 20-year stint at Fannie Mae, where he oversaw the affordable multifamily business and led the creation of the company’s innovative green and healthy housing lending programs.

“Establishing impact investment principles for the industry will require a significant amount of collaboration across our sector. It is critical that our approach to building these principles be open and inclusive,” said Simpson.

Source: Institute for Real Estate Operating Companies: https://irei.com/news/industry-leaders-establish-multifamily-impact-council/