Flint, MI — Flint residents could have the opportunity to learn how to become property developers after Flint City Council voted to approve $300,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for a new program.
Council voted 6-0 on April 22, 2024, to approve ARPA dollars for a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) Emerging Developer program in partnership with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Flint Office.
Founded in 1979 by the Ford Foundation, LISC is a non-profit community development financial institution that supports community development initiatives across the country.
Councilmembers Jerri Winfrey-Carter and Dennis Pfeiffer were not present. Councilwoman Tonya Burns is currently serving a 30-day suspension.
Director of Planning and Development Emily Doerr told council during an April 17, 2024, committee meeting that the program would allow 15 Flint residents to learn how to participate in the city’s development by helping them become developers.
“One of the things we hear often in Flint is that we need more Flint residents who are able to know the process of being able to acquire property and a loan and then build a house or a duplex or an apartment building,” Doerr said. “As well as acquire an existing property and a loan to be able to renovate it.”
According to the resolution language, the BIPOC Emerging Developer program would allow LISC to build the capacity of 15 developers, 5-10 of which would be of color, and provide capital products to these developers so that they can participate in “the revitalization of Flint.”
“This partnership will ensure that Flint emerging developers at all points of the continuum of experience would greatly benefit from an ecosystem of supports that span real estate development finance, training, technical assistance, operations support, coaching, and deal access,” the resolution language states.
The one-year program would be conducted through online modules and monthly face-to-face trainings. Doerr said the program is designed to prepare the participants for submitting loan applications and teach them about planning and market studies, design work, environmental reports, structural assessments, and other tools.
BIPOC Emerging Developer program participants will have expanded access to capital, be offered holistic training and capacity building, and be provided with technical assistance and connections in the industry.
Juan Zuniga, executive director of the LISC Flint office, said LISC is in the process of figuring out exactly what the program will look like in partnership with the city.
“The City of Flint ARPA funding award to launch the LISC Flint Emerging Developer Program is a testament of building upon public and private partnerships to remove barriers to equitable growth, by providing training coupled with access to predevelopment funding, to address the shortage of developers in Flint who are prepared to develop significant real estate projects, typically due to systemic racial discrimination, lack of access to the relationships, knowledge and information needed to successfully maneuver development processes and lack of access to capital,” Zuniga said.
“LISC, in partnership with the City, is well positioned to address these obstacles and comprehensively support the growth of emerging developers, drawing upon our years of experience in affordable housing, as well as our established national training programs to support our Flint program objective to facilitate development in a way that does not reinforce a history of exploitation, but rather centers on the assets of these small non-profit, for-profit, and faith-based anchor institutions in the development process and unlocks value for them and the Flint community we serve.”
Applicants must be Flint residents or own property within city limits to participate.
“We want more residents who learn how to do this process,” Doerr said. “We don’t want it to be the same four non-profits or the same one developer whose name is all over everything. And so how do you do that? You have a training.”
Doerr said the program aims to create and keep generational wealth in Flint.
“It would build a pipeline of small-scale developers,” she said. “By doing this, you would get to see a lot more housing development and a lot more generation of actually keeping the wealth here in the city.”
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