How Parity Homes is Rebuilding West Baltimore

Parity Homes owns 40 properties next to West Baltimore's Highway to Nowhere—a remnant of an abandoned highway project from the 70s and a remnant of a community that once was.

But Parity Homes CEO Bree Jones, 33, is on a mission to revitalize and rebuild the community, which was once vibrant but bulldozed to make way for the highway project that was meant to connect East and West Baltimore. What it did was displace more than 1,000 residents in a predominantly Black community.

Parity Homes rebuilds these abandoned homes while retaining as much of the original structure as possible, then they pre-sell to buyers at an affordable price. They teeter the line between custom builder, developer, and remodeler.

"Usually it's only the facade that's standing," explains Jones. "The roof has collapsed, the partition walls have collapsed, and then there's about 23,000 vacant lots. And so the reason that it's really important to acquire and assemble property in concentrated areas is the same for any home builder. You're building a community."

On this episode of Women at WIRC, Jones shares how Parity Homes came to be, how it builds, and how it achieves its mission of revitalizing West Baltimore.

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction 
00:25 Meet Bree Jones of Parity Homes 
01:00 Bree's Journey from Wall Street to Real Estate 
01:37 The Impact of Trayvon Martin's Death 
02:33 Gentrification and Its Effects 
03:39 Starting Parity Homes in Baltimore 
05:23 Challenges and Successes in Affordable Housing 
10:12 The Importance of Preserving Historic Homes 
16:13 Future Goals and Mentorship 
17:16 Final Thoughts and Conference Announcement

Transcript:

Caroline Broderick: Welcome back to Women at WIRC, brought to you by Pro Remodeler and ProBuilder. On this podcast, we talk to standout women in residential construction to share their professional insights and highlight the strong but small share of just 11 percent of the industry. Be sure to rate and review and like and follow our brands on all social media channels to stay up to date on everything women in res.

My name is Caroline Broderick and I'm the editor for Custom Builder Online.

Today, I talk to Bree Jones of Parity Homes. Parity is a different kind of home builder, purchasing abandoned homes to reinvigorate communities through careful building and remodeling of affordable housing.

Right now, Parity owns 40 homes, only starting just a couple of years ago. So those are some very high level details, but you need to listen to Bree on this episode and hear the amazing work she's doing in West Baltimore. So keep listening to learn more about Bree, her work with Parity, including the events that pushed her to ditch Wall Street and move into affordable community and home building at just the age of 26.

Bree Jones: My name is Bree Jones, and I'm the founder and CEO of Parity Homes, based out of Baltimore.  Well, I did not start my journey in real estate development. It's something that I kind of stumbled into out of necessity.

Broderick: Bree grew up in the Bronx living in an affordable neighborhood with her mother and loved it. She went on after college to start a career on Wall Street before, as she puts it, several key transformative moments. 

The first moment being in 2012 when 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed. Reports of his death detailed Trayvon, who was black and wearing a hoodie, had walked to a local 7-Eleven for a snack.  A local had deemed him suspicious, which resulted in an altercation and ultimately the shooting and death of Trayvon.

George Zimmerman, the shooter, was acquitted in 2013. Trayvon's death created ripple effects throughout the country, sparking debates on racism, racial profiling, and self-defense.  

Jones: And that really turned my, that kind of turned my world around. And this was right around the time that I was graduating from college.  I just remember feeling a deep sense of injustice. And as a young 20 something kind of, you know was just trying to find, find justice in that moment.

And for me, Trayvon Martin was kind of like my George Floyd moment. And then the second kind of catalytic event that was happening is that for the first time, my hometown really began to be gentrified and we started to see a big, luxury apartment, luxury skyscraper developers, basically buying up low-income properties and tearing those buildings down and then erecting,,  high capacity, luxury rental housing that was displacing people causing.

Prices causing rents in the community to go up and both of these things happening at once just kind of jarred me and I was angry. I was upset and I was just trying to figure out what I could do  to try to bring back some semblance of. , normality to my life. So that is kind of how I found myself into real estate, because as I could see people being displaced as I could see housing being bought up and flipped and gentrification starting, I asked myself, well, could I do anything to try to change that? Keep some affordable housing.

Broderick: At 26, Bree used that Wall Street salary to purchase an abandoned building in her community. She did a gut renovation, working closely with a contractor, and the result was an affordable rental property for three families, who Bree says is paying well below market rate.  Bree became hungry for more, but found continuing the same effort in New York would prove to be much more challenging financially.

Jones: So I asked myself, well, where else could I do this work at scale? And that's how I found myself in Baltimore, where we have 38, 000 vacant properties in Baltimore City. And for me, I view that as 38, 000 opportunities to create deeply affordable homeownership opportunities. 

Broderick; Eighteen months later, Brie realized she found her calling. It was the intersection between economics, finances, business, social justice, and deeply connected to her own story and own experience, witnessing gentrification and rising home costs in her own community.

Jones: So I quit my job, which in hindsight.  I don't know if I should have quit it that quickly,  but I quit my job and I dove in feet 1st, and I know I couldn't continue to afford to do the work in New York.

Broderick: You just needed to find that purpose and like where that was going to go. Right. And so that was in Parity Homes. And so Parity Homes is a home building company and your mission is revitalizing areas and areas that have been disproportionately affected by certain things like redlining, for example. And so you're rebuilding these homes to make affordable housing and also connecting directly with families to make home ownership a possibility.

So you're extremely involved in that. process as well. So currently Parity Homes owns 40 properties all within four blocks of each other in the same area of Baltimore. And you mentioned earlier, this is extremely purposeful and it directly helps you achieve your mission. So please talk, talk a little bit more about why that is. 

Jones: So as I mentioned, Baltimore City has 38,000 vacants. 15 of 15,000 of those are buildings, vacant buildings that are dilapidated.

Usually it's only the facade that's standing, the roof has collapsed, the partition walls have collapsed, and then there's about 23, 000 vacant lots. And so the reason that it's really important to. Acquire and assemble property in concentrated areas. I guess it's the same for any home builder. You're building, you know, a community.

So you need land That's right next to each other. So we, but the challenge and the difference between what we do in  an urban Intercity environment versus a more suburban environment is that we, if we purchase 40 properties, that means we have to work with 40 different owners.

We have to know 40 different contracts. We have 40 different tax IDs versus, , new construction land developer, purchasing a couple acres and then subdividing those properties. So it's a little bit more complex and assembling 40 units on 4 blocks is no small feat ...

Listen to the full episode above.