Responsible Property Investing & Green Building

 

While living in Hamburg, I made friends with some people who were refugees. They lived in a part of town most of my other friends avoided — Wilhelmsburg, with about 49,000 inhabitants. 25% of those were either unemployed or living on public assistance. Many were foreigners with little education. They had come to Germany to escape violence and economic desperation in other parts of the world. They told stories that were tragic and fascinating. And they lived in dreary apartment buildings like the one above. There are approximately 8,000 public housing units crammed into Wilhelmsburg. News reports about the area usually contained words like: crime, ethnic tensions, language barriers and undocumented workers. Sound familiar? Getting an informal education on the German public housing and social system helped me to see more clearly the connections between similar issues and the real estate industry here in the US.

The Responsible Property Investing Center represents institutional real estate investors who are applying triple bottom line principles to their activities within the many Wilhelmsburgs here in America. It takes on the challenge of creating value in investment real estate across ten dimensions, all of which either directly overlap or indirectly support green building. Here’s a few:

• Energy conservation
• Smart growth
• Urban revitalization and adaptability
• Environmental protection
• Voluntary certifications (like LEED)

With so much in common with green building, why does RPI matter?
I only showed you a few of RPI’s dimensions above. When you look at all of them together, you will see a heavy stress on how people are treated and corporate accountability. There is less emphasis on the technical construction requirements of the property. Green building fulfills many important RPI criteria, but green building is not the exclusive goal of RPI. Both however, strongly advance triple bottom line investing. They complement and strengthen each other. And that’s a good thing.

Upcoming RPI Convening in Boston
Here’s the link to the  Responsible Property Investing Center’s website. (Disclosure: my firm is involved as well). The growing support for the RPIC indicates that there is a belief within institutional real estate that triple bottom line investing is not a philanthropic move, but a credible investment strategy.

The RPIC is also having a meeting in March and investors with a triple bottom line focus are welcome. If you are an investor with activities within this field and want to meet your peers, I urge you to sign up and attend.

Hope to see you there!

Photo Credit: Flickr/Hochhaus Stadtteil - Hamburg Wilhelmsburg