Can real estate be a tool for social change? Adre says yes

Real estate development can be a prosperous endeavor. Rarely is it a noble one. Anyeley Hallová, the founder and CEO of Adre, an Oregon-based developer and real estate advisor that strives to be an “agent of social progress,” would like to change that. 

The company’s work is philanthropic in nature. “We’re developing projects for folks that traditionally don’t have access to real estate investment and ownership,” Hallová says. Broadly speaking, Adre’s mission is to help those with a mission--while giving architects an opportunity to get involved. 

Hallová founded Adre in 2021 to advise and build for “mission-driven organizations” and “affordable home ownership,” she says. These two categories tend not to be top priorities for investors looking for guaranteed returns. Of course, this might be considered a self-imposed barrier if investor returns were Adre’s key focus. But this isn’t the case. “I don’t use the word ‘investment,’ because we’re going after grants,” Hallová says. "We’re trying to attract dollars that really care about community benefits.”

Working with different funding sources, the returns that Adre promises are not financial but, rather, those other two pillars of sustainability: social and environmental. In that regard, investment need not be a dirty word. The immediate benefits of, for example, constructing new affordable housing, a residential treatment facility for disadvantaged youth, or a community space for BIPOC artists and culture workers all have residual co-benefits for their larger communities. It’s those types of investments that keep Hallová and her team going. 

Parrott Creek and the Williams & Russell Homes

The very first of Adre’s developments set to open is a new, five-acre campus center for Parrott Creek, a non-profit in Clackamas County, Ore., just south of Portland, that offers residential, health, and treatment services for vulnerable children and families. Slated for completion later this summer, the redevelopment of Parrott Creek, which has been billed as an example of “trauma-informed” design, is truly restorative. The new buildings, designed by El Dorado Architects, are elegant in their massing and restrained footprint, but this project’s real impact is reserved for the landscape. Surrounding wetlands, meadows, and forest ecology lend the campus its character and soul, clearly supporting the client’s mission to be a place of refuge, recovery, and growth.

The next project to open, schedule permitting, will be the Williams & Russell homes, an affordable housing project in North Portland's Albina neighborhood. In the years immediately following World War II, this historic area was home to a thriving Black population and Black-owned businesses. Home ownership, however, was systematically denied to area residents, and subsequent developments around and through Albina, including the construction of Interstate 5, caused widespread displacement. 

Williams & Russell—for which Adre helped secure a $5.1 million construction loan, $1.5 million in equity investments, and a $3.8 million grant for renewable energy, among other funds—is intended to restore some measure of what was lost more than 50 years ago due to the failures of urban renewal. In addition to providing priority access to affordable home ownership for first-time buyers, the Lever Architecture-designed project will also catalyze the creation of the new W&R business hub, offering affordable office and retail spaces for nonprofits and business enterprises. Extensive site remediation work is ongoing to repair decades of pollution and runoff.

Hallová admits that when most people learn about her company, the assumption is that she is strictly a developer of affordable housing. This isn’t so; Williams & Russell is to date Adre’s sole project in that category. Her involvement in Oregon housing policy, however, runs deep. 

“My involvement has specifically focused on missing middle housing and [building] climate friendly communities,” she says. Her work in this arena, she continues, has been about removing barriers and creating incentives to spur new construction. But possibly more so, to “require cities to be more creative” when it comes to building and supporting the production of housing. 

The political will to subsidize affordable housing developments will always be low, even in cities with the collective wherewithal to make it happen. In fact, historically, the will to fund any type of project in Adre’s growing portfolio has been dubious. But to hear Hallová explain it, the needs her company is filling transcend project type and function. “All our projects are about relationships and community,” she says. “We’re serving disadvantaged communities; folks that traditionally don’t have access to good design, sustainable and healthy buildings, resilient buildings, wealth creation and ownership. That’s the premise. Every one of [Adre’s] projects is a relationship.”

Stress-testing an idea while building trust

Most real estate projects are based on trust. If investors and community stakeholders have faith in an owner or developer, things tend to get built and the people putting up the money are made whole. Within this ecosystem, Hallová knows that Adre’s mission-driven mandate is a unique litmus test. But the real test, in Hallová’s estimation, has more to do with the woman leading this charge.

Hallová holds degrees from Cornell, MIT, and Harvard. Prior to founding Adre, she held prominent positions with several design and development firms. With one former employer, she served as project lead for Framework, the first high-rise mass timber building to be permitted in the U.S. (The project was never realized, but its planning informed changes to international building codes that allowed mass timber high-rises to be built in the U.S.) Still, the idea for Adre needed stress testing. Hallová recalls starting with three simple questions: Will people be interested in the concept of mission-driven development? Will people fund projects aimed at restoring equity to historically marginalized communities? “The third one was, let’s see if people will put up resources to back a Black woman developer,” she says.

“Take all Black and Hispanic developers and add them up, they make up less than 1% of real estate developers,” Hallová continues. “Now, add women and that figure drops to about 0.02%. There [are] just a lot of barriers to overcome regarding perception. And real estate development is largely about perception. Can I give money to this individual? And will they deliver?” She’s more than happy to meet those questions head on.

“We’ve [gotten] over $36 million in grants for our clients’ projects, and we have an 80% success rate, which is not normal!” she says. When it comes to attracting funding, Hallová praises her company’s unique position, operating at “the intersection of real estate, sustainability, and social equity … that’s compelling to funders who want their money to go toward such benefits.”

A profound sense of community

The throughline in Adre’s portfolio is a profound sense of community. Each one of the developer’s projects, to varying degrees, embodies multi-layered investments in community equity, cultural heritage, climate action, land stewardship, personal wellness, sovereignty, sanctuary, and more. Having a compelling story to tell also helps. 

Hallová's family is from Ghana on her father's side, and the name Adre comes from the West African Ewe language spoken predominantly in Ghana and Togo, meaning the number seven. 

“Seven is a universal lucky number; it has this sense of completeness and wholeness,” she says. She further cites the Seven Generations Principle, an Indigenous teaching that emphasizes the broader impacts of our choices, how those choices are informed by the past, and what consequences they will have in the future. 

If perception is reality, then Hallová wants her company’s story (and mission) to feel universal. She even wrote a children's book to stress that very point, titled A Kids Book About Real Estate Development. “Anyone can become a real estate developer,” reads the book’s summary, “and everyone can be involved in how building projects impact their community.” This proclamation is refreshing on so many levels. It also distills the essence of what real estate should be, but rarely is: a means to build, lift, and strengthen communities. 

Justin R. Wolf is a freelance writer covering architecture and design. He lives in Maine.