Real estate developer Booker Washington, founder of Techie Homes, is set to open Union Park Cottages, a Black-owned micro-home community featuring a technology lab and coffee shop. The project aims to make homeownership more accessible in the area, while also creating community engagement and economic growth. Union Park Cottages will offer smart, smaller homes priced below the current market rates, part of Washington’s broader effort to address the housing affordability issue in metro Atlanta. Community Ownership and Innovation In a unique model, residents of Union Park Cottages will also hold
A new development project will bring over 100 affordable homes and a Black business hub to North Portland. The Williams & Russell project, managed by Williams & Russell CDC, will create 85 affordable apartments and 20 townhomes for sale on a block that has been vacant for nearly five decades. Significant Funding and Community Impact The project has already secured $10.3 million in funding, including $1.6 million recently announced by Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley. An additional $23 million is pending from the Portland Housing Bureau and Prosper
Bryan Young, CEO, and co-founder of Home Lending Pal, an AI-powered software platform, has a mission to use his technology to increase Black and Brown homeownership beyond the rates of the record in the early 2000s when the rate was 46.4%. At the moment Black homeownership is 43 percent. Ogechi Igbokwe, founder of OneSavvyDollar, told The Grio she is also “worried about the lack of ownership rate” in the Black community. She thinks an additional contributing factor to homeownership reluctance is the prioritization of buying stocks rather than investing in actual
