Giving Back, Building Forward

One Real Estate Firm’s Model for Socially and Environmentally Responsible Development

When Anyeley Hallová founded Adre, she envisioned a new kind of real estate development company that advances social and environmental justice and gives generously to the communities it serves.

Less than five years later, Adre is indeed doing things differently.

The firm has applied innovative trauma-informed design principles to the expansion of a residential treatment center for youth. Hallová’s team is developing the first U.S. commercial building to use mass timber and technology that enables it to rock and recenter after a major earthquake with little to no damage. It will house four culturally specific business incubation and economic development organizations.

And Adre has committed to donating at least 1% of its profits to environmental causes and communities of color.

We sat down with Hallová to talk about giving, her vision for equitable development and the reasons she’s forging a new path.

Adre is a socially responsible real estate company, and you built corporate giving in from the beginning, joining the national organization Pledge 1% and establishing a Corporate Donor Advised Fund at Oregon Community Foundation. Why did you choose to give through OCF?

Anyeley Hallová

The idea is that 1% or more of our profits go into the Donor Advised Fund, and that goes back to the communities we serve. The awesome benefit of a Donor Advised Fund is you can give today and take your time to decide who you want to give it to, which is important to me because I want to make the decision with my employees.

Secondly, why would I pay fees to some national why-do-I-care-about-Oregon company if I could pay them to an organization that knows and cares about Oregon? Most of our clients are nonprofits and foundations. We're all part of this ecosystem of fundraising and using funds to benefit communities. The products we make are a shared resource. It made sense that we would give with Oregon Community Foundation through a Donor Advised Fund.

Adre focuses on equitable development. What does that term mean to you?

It’s about who owns the land, who is the developer, who designs the building, who builds the building, who uses the building and who owns it.

There are racist legacies affecting each of these. Redlining and prohibition affected who owned land. A solution to that is partnering with landowners who are people of color or whose work benefits the community. Disparities in lending affect builders. A solution to that is hiring construction businesses owned by women and people of color.

Exclusion and lack of funding affects who becomes a developer. If you total up Black and Hispanic developers, they make up less than 1% of real estate developers, despite being 23% of the population. A solution to that is my company, a minority- and women-owned emerging small business.

Adre is a development company that addresses inequities at each phase of development. I applied a social equity lens and an environmental lens and decided to look for catalytic projects and ways to advance the building industry.

We see the community as a client, along with the clients we work for.

What does it mean to see the community as a client?

We approach development through a values-driven model, and every project has measurable outcomes tied to excellence in design, environmental stewardship, economic resilience and equitable outcomes.

Some of our deepest impacts come from small, intentional actions taken through innovation, education, arts and culture.

We’re exploring new possibilities in construction and climate resilience from mass timber to microgrids, and we advocate for policies to advance our industry’s response to climate and community.

We’re working with youth of color and disadvantaged youth to educate them about real estate development to cultivate the next generation of leaders. And we’re bringing local artists in early on to think about the cultural expression of our projects given that we’re working in communities of color.

Let’s talk about one of those projects, the Williams & Russell Project. The property is located within an area that the Portland Development Commission and the City of Portland condemned in the early 1970s under urban renewal for an expansion of the Emanuel Hospital (now Legacy Health) campus, displacing 171 families, 74% of them Black.

The block at North Williams Avenue and North Russell Street was vacant for 50 years and is now being developed through the collaboration of Williams & Russell Community Development Corporation with funding from Prosper Portland (formerly the Portland Development Commission), Legacy Health and the City of Portland.

Adre is the land developer and is currently remediating environmental contamination at the site and will be the developer for two of the buildings. Tell us more about the project.

The Williams & Russell Project is what we’re calling a restorative justice project, because this land was part of the Black community, and was taken over by Emanuel Hospital, and Black homeowners and businesses were displaced.

At Williams & Russell, we’re the developer for an affordable homeownership project with 20 townhomes and a business hub project. The folks who were displaced from this neighborhood will have the first preference to come back and live here. We’re building townhomes with backyards because we heard from Black potential homebuyers that they prioritized privacy and space.

The business hub will attract a mix of for-profit and nonprofit organizations that are centered on business creation, economic development and support.

We’re raising money for the Williams & Russell Project. We still need $2 million to start the affordable homeownership project, and we’re trying to start the project in September. For the business hub, if all our outstanding grant requests are fulfilled, we need to raise an additional $7 million. We’re looking for grants. That’s the only way to make these affordable to the community.

You’ve built an amazing business, and you’re working on transformative projects. What motivated you to choose this path?

I had early childhood experiences of seeing people living in substandard environmental conditions. My dad is from Ghana, and I traveled a lot to Ghana as a kid. I lived in Northern Nigeria when I was a kid, at the edge of the desert. I experienced all sorts of water shortages, and a locust and cricket swarm came through.

Plus, my mom is an environmentalist, so I grew up with this sense of the connection between people and the environment and an understanding of real, extreme poverty.

We lived in Florida, so I’ve been to Epcot way more than the average individual. Epcot is about the future of cities. So, I was thinking from an early age about making the world a better place. I’m also a Christian, and Christianity is supposed to be about caring for the planet and caring for people. Those are core values for me.

Corporate Donor Advised Funds are one of many ways donors partner with OCF to make an impact. To explore how OCF can assist you and learn about other giving options, reach out to an OCF philanthropic advisor who can guide you every step of the way.