250 | Creating Social Capital in Marginalized Apartment Communities with Margaret Stagmeier
Our guest this week on the pod is Margaret Stagmeier. Margaret is a Managing Partner at TriStar Real Estate, a commercial real estate and mission-based affordable housing company. She is also the author of the forthcoming book, Blighted: People, Politics and an American Housing Miracle.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Episode on Affordable Housing in Marginalized Communities with Margaret Stagmeier
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Margaret Stagmeier
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three things, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practices. Each episode I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection. Someone who has market tested experience and is already transforming many lives. Before I introduce our guests and our topic, I have one request, you could go over to Apple podcast or whatever app you're listening to the show on, hit the subscribe button, do a rating and review. It helps tremendously. Thanks so much for considering it. Today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Marjy Stagmeier, and our topic is Creating Social Capital in Marginalized Apartment Communities. Margie is a managing partner at Tristar Real Estate, a commercial real estate and mission-based affordable housing company. She is also the author of the forthcoming book, Blighted: People, Politics and an American Housing Miracle. Marjy, welcome to the show.
Margaret Stagmeier 01:04
Thank you, Paul, it's an honor to be part of your show.
Paul Zelizer 01:07
You are doing such fabulous work, I can't wait to introduce our audience today. One of the ways we like to get to know somebody, before we get into the work, Marjy is to ask you about a resiliency or a wellness practice that you personally use to resource yourself for this really important work.
Margaret Stagmeier 01:25
So one of the things I do Paul, and I am doing hard work. And when I need a moment to refresh, one of the things I do is I actually go to one of my marginalized apartment communities and sit on the playground. And just watching all the children play and enjoy themselves, just really reinvigorates me and sets me sets my compass for the mission work that we're doing to bring social capital to marginalized apartment communities. I was actually at one of our properties yesterday, reading to the kids, and they were all snuggled up with me there on my lap. And we were just talking about life lessons. And that just really resets me. Oh my gosh, this is an audio only podcast listeners. You can't see my smile, but it's huge.
Paul Zelizer 02:08
I just like imagining what it's like for you to be there reading and snuggling and connecting. Oh my gosh, that's beautiful. So this work Mark, do you think if somebody wasn't familiar with your trajectory, like give us a little bit of the origin story, like, how did you get into real estate and impact and those intersections give us a little bit of the backstory here.
Margaret Stagmeier 02:34
So I was the monopoly champ of my sixth grade class in a public school outside of Atlanta, DeKalb County, and I went home and told my parents, I was going to be a landlord when I grew up. And they kind of looked at me and said, Okay, we support you. And again, I was 11. My father told me to go get my CPA, which I did, I went to Georgia State University, passed the CPA exam, after a long study period, and went straight into real estate. At the time, I was starting to volunteer at the Atlanta Community Food Bank. And I was starting to understand the business model of using hunger to build community. And I was on the board there for a good 1010 years. And when I rolled off the board, it occurred to me that you could use housing to build community. So specifically, we started buying low income or blighted apartment communities near low performing schools. And just through, you know, being in this model for a while, I realized you really could improve education through housing. So that's kind of a quick and dirty. How I got into this business.
Paul Zelizer 03:42
I don't think we've ever had anybody on the show 245 episodes I think we published yesterday. I don't think we've ever had anybody talk about affordable housing in quite this way. So like when you talk about a blighted community, and a housing complex like like, give us like before you all got involved in use the word housing miracle in your book title, we're gonna get there. But like before the miracle happens, like, give our listeners a sense. What are we talking about? What what is an apartment complex, where you walk in and see an opportunity, and most of the world sees blighted? What does it look like when it gets labeled blighted?
Margaret Stagmeier 04:20
So I'm guessing about 95% of your listeners have void areas where we find community gold, like I like to say it, you know, when you're driving down the highway are driving through that marginalize neighborhood and you see those older communities that are boarded up or fenced off or have tremendous weeds. There's usually really high crime. So it's generally an area that people run from or do not frequent. Those are the areas where we like to purchase apartment communities.
Paul Zelizer 04:54
And I love the example of like, think of a fire department like in most of the world if something's burning mean, right? Everybody runs away. But if your job is you work for the fire department, it's suit up in that that's when you go to work. Right? Exactly. And that's how I think about him really good impact people, listeners, listen to what's happening here. It's like, we're most of the world is running away, we suit up and go to work. And I just want to honor you for seeing that opportunity and helping our listeners think about it in such a tangible way. Give us a sense that so you're talking you're you're pairing affordable housing and school performance. And when it's blighted, there's a I don't know if it's 100% correlation, but it's gotta be super high, you probably know better than I do. You have a blighted large apartment complex. And you have a school like what are those schools tend to be like when there were many of the people living in them are living in housing that is blighted.
Margaret Stagmeier 05:55
The intersection, intersection of housing and education and actually healthcare two are so strong. And when I set out to write the book bought blighted, I took a 244 unit, severely marginalized apartment community, and have used these as case studies, I can tell you, 100% of the time, that I've been offered to purchase a large blighted apartment community 100% of the time, the school is a low performer. The reason is, is two things. First off, what causes schools to basically fail is something called transiency, or mobility. All the school teachers or educators out there listening are shaking their heads going, yes. Typical schools that are low performers have about a 30 to 40% transit, see, every year, that means the school loses 30 to 40% of their students. Imagine that your school teacher, you put your heart and soul in these kids, and you go away for summer break, and you've lost 40%. And a lot of times, you'll lose the child, you know, three months into the school year. Every time a child moves schools, they lose three months of learning. You know, and that's not something that investment can basically invest in or see through. Schools cannot have a plan for mobility other than the housing. And so what we see is, as these apartment communities become more and more marginalized, you have families moving out because of the crime, and taking their kids with them, you have families moving out because a lot of the landlords have these huge rental increases that are not sustainable. So this is one way that housing affects education. The second way is the condition of housing. So a lot of times when we buy these older apartment communities, the roach infested, they have mold. People don't realize that roaches are a precursor to severe asthma. And Asthma is a situation that basically really affects a child's learning. So if they're coming to school, from a household with high roaches or with mold, from a health perspective, they simply can't learn. A lot of the families that we see are in the emergency room quite often with their children. And all we have to do is go in and do a major pest treatment, clean up the interior making it healthier, and a better filtering system. And you'll see the health outcomes of the children and their educational outcomes dramatically improve. So really, that's two ways that housing affects education.
Paul Zelizer 08:31
So walk us through like with this example that you're talking about, hey, the air quality is really poor, there's roaches it's like not a comfortable place to live, because you're worried about your safety, right? Like give us a sense of how do you come into a building like that? And then we're going to talk about like, how do you fund all this in a second? Because I can't imagine our listeners aren't asking questions about capital, right? But talk about like, just like walk us through some of the steps. Okay, this is one of the units we think is good for business language, we might call it a turnaround, right? I don't know, a remodel or revamp, right? Or reboot. This is one of ours and then walk us through like how do you start to? I would imagine, you know systems or old energy inefficient roaches like crime, like how do you even begin to start to get the flywheel effect in a positive direction.
Margaret Stagmeier 09:32
Well, I have been doing this PA for for several years, I've owned and managed over 3000 units in my career so far, and I've got more in the horizon. It's very predictable. So it's how you sequence capital investment. You know, I've seen a lot of people try to purchase these apartments and basically lose money because they don't sequence their capital correctly. The first thing you have to do is secure the area. So you've got to invest the money for license police off servers that are that can carry guns, it usually takes about three months of 24/7 security to really see a massive change in the current criminal element. So that's the first thing you had to do have to do, then you have to secure the area in terms of gates, you know, you have to try to outsmart the criminals and make sure that any path into the property is properly secure. Gates fences, so they can't sneak in. Drug dealers are actually pretty smart. Once they see licensed police officers on site watching their every move, that usually changes behavior. The other thing you need to do is start screening your tenants and being very careful with the tenants that you let into the property. Course tenants are very smart these days, I can give you false Job, Job, paycheck stubs, and you just have to be very careful who you let in. And then once the property is secure, then you can start the capital investment, you can start, you know, replacing roofs, renovating down units, upgrading appliances, interiors, if you don't have the area secure, that capital investment will walk out the door, because it'll be sabotaged. By the criminals, there'll be torn up, they'll still steal your air conditioning systems. Once we start the capital at that point, one of the first things we do is community center. So we usually partner with the local elementary school, the local federally qualified health clinic, and other corporate partners. And we start broad resident wraparound services like free after school programs, free summer camps. We'll do wellness programs, where actually you'll have our tenants will have access to a doctor dentists vision or hearing and an OBGYN For 50 to $75, based on a memo of understanding with that federally qualified health clinic. So we bring all those resources into the property. And then you know, it's just a matter at that point of building community trust, we try to keep our rents affordable for families earning between 25 and $45,000 a year. And we just start creating the community trust so that eventually and it takes a couple years to do that, you're now creating a community of choice by families that have low incomes, or they can get to know their neighbors. Usually within one to two years, the children are outperforming their peers on the Federally Qualified test in Georgia, it's the Georgia milestone. And then that's how you really see the school starting to improve is now you have a section of children. And usually if you buy a large apartment community, you're talking about 10 to 15, or 20% of the school. Well, if you can make that much of a difference in 10 to 15 to 20% of the school, you really start seeing the school improve, you see transit see going down, and you see safety. So all those factors combined really improves the educational outcomes, not only for the children, but for the local elementary school.
Paul Zelizer 12:59
Well, what an inspiring story, and thanks for sequencing that for us, Martina, I got a wine back. I'm known for being a particularly granular guy. And you said something genius. And I'm not gonna let you slide with you said, you just build community trust. That's all. That's it? That's it, right? Like, this is like, like, this is the secret sauce and the equation, right? It's literally creating social capital and communities where trust has not always been easy to come by, shall we say. So I'm not going to let you slide talk to walk us through that, you know, I can imagine I'm putting myself in the shoes of somebody who's, let's say, living in this building, we're considering living in it. And I see some changes there. Okay, like now there's a security presence. And now, like, you know, crime is going down. And now I see some capital improvements. So I can imagine that some of that, okay, that's getting my attention. But if I'm in a community like that, and I have worked in many, many communities, like you're describing and New Mexico, for anybody who's listening, I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, New Mexico, in the US is always in a competition between Mississippi, Alabama, and New Mexico, who's going to be the 50th of 50 economies, the bottom of the barrel. So you know, just giving folks a sense. I have some embodied experience of what you're talking about. I would imagine as those changes start to happen, you get people's attention, but that doesn't get full buy in so like go a little deeper. What does that trust REIT that trust building really look like?
Margaret Stagmeier 14:38
It is quite a process and think about it. You're living in an apartment community. You might have lived there for 10 years. Apartments are part of the structural world they are subjected to Mother Nature and they do deteriorate. And over time now you have an owner that's come in is not spending the money and they're letting the drug dealers and they're not getting the security. You're pretty angry, you are traumatized, you're seeing your children traumatized. So there's a lot of trauma when we come into these apartments and in building trust, you have to just be so patient. One of the things we do is we do tenant association meetings. And then one of the first one I went to at Somerdale apartments, which is featured in the book, it was so heartwarming, because we had about 25 tenants show up. But by the end of the meeting, they were talking about how they could organize a job fair, because one of the residents mentioned her 18 year old was looking for a job. And one of our tenants actually worked for Delta Airlines as a baggage handler. And he knew Delta was hiring. And he was so excited. So the tennis on their own started forming, basically job fairs, they got to know each other, they look out for each other. That's how you build community trust. And like I said, it can take a couple of years. But once you think about it, once you know your neighbors and you trust your neighbors, you know, you want to be a good community citizen, you're going to protect your neighbors. And we've seen this over and over again. And and it's not even a racial issue or an income issue. You know, if you want to just be a good citizen and live in a good place, that's what you'll be is you'll look out for your neighbors, and you'll try to contribute. And to all the people listening, think about those people in your childhood that helped you basically build your social capital, you know, the neighbor, that was your girl scout leader, a boy scout leader, your your friend whose parent helped you get your resume done, or basically networked you in the job market. I mean, that's how you build social capital. And a lot of it comes from your community. If you're living in a marginalized community without any social capital, then you know, your life trajectory is probably poverty. But if you live in a community that is helping you access resources, you'll have a much better projection going forward as far as getting out of poverty into middle or even upper middle class. And we've seen it over and over again.
Paul Zelizer 17:06
You mentioned started this episode talking about snuggled up with a bunch of kids reading books, right? So like what happens with the kids in these communities I imagined that is a key part of why you do what you do is to help give them more options in life and open doors for them. Is that fair to say?
Margaret Stagmeier 17:27
Yeah, I'm thinking of Willow ranch apartments in Clarkston, Georgia, which I've owned for 25 years. I've owned it long enough to have two generations now that I've been involved with one of the families that moved to the property, and it's mainly refugees. Now, that moved to the property in 2011. There's a girl that had eight sisters. And they didn't even speak English. One at the second sister went through our starcity after school program. She really worked hard. And she ended up as a Bill and Melinda Gates scholar and is now in med school. And there are so many stories like that, like I said, some of our tenants go on to be arborist, police officers, we've had one run for city council. But they got the resources and the confidence through their community and that particular property. I do not have many tenants move out. If they move out, usually they're moving out to go into homeownership, or because they've gotten a better job. And it's just amazing to see this community where everyone pretty much gets along. Even you know, you have, I'm getting a lot of people from Afghanistan now. We've been through all the refugee crisis. And they all basically get along. And one more thing is we have a very robust after school program there, we have about 60 kids in the program. And the kids, that's the one I was snuggling with and reading to yesterday, we went around and they were telling me what country they came from, and how and I mean, they were all getting along and playing together. So it's it basically really helps build confidence, community confidence. And those families really trust and enjoy where they live. And it is a low income apartment community.
Paul Zelizer 19:11
You talked earlier and again, I'm a granular guy. So bear with me. You talked earlier about the ripple effects on the school right said between 10 and 20% of it is a large, complex, that the population of that school could be 10 or 20% of folks living in that complex. What's like, give us a little more granularity. What happens in the schools that are serving the families from these complex.
Margaret Stagmeier 19:39
They struggle. And you know, they're trying to hit their federal mandated metrics. And there's a lot more schools in Atlanta and actually around the country as the apartment communities age. They're seeing their schools basically deteriorate, because of all the things I discussed earlier. And I'm going to give you an extreme example. There's a lot apartment community called force code which is made national news. It is a severely blighted property 395 units and it provides 80% of the housing for the school across the street called Thomasville Heights Elementary. Thomasville Heights Elementary has consistently been in the bottom 10 schools to come out bottom 10 out of 1200 schools in Georgia. And they just announced that they're closing force Cove apartments because it's looks like a third world country in there. And the school just announced they're closing because they're losing 80% of their students. So you know, that is an extreme example of how housing and a large apartment community can affect the school.
Paul Zelizer 20:47
And when you start to do the community building and make these capital improvements, like what happens to a school where a large portion is from one of the communities where you come in and start working your magic.
Margaret Stagmeier 21:01
I'll give you another example. We purchased one it was 446 units in North Atlanta kind of in an affluent area, but it was severely blighted. And the school Brumby Elementary was in a bottom performing school. And we basically went in there renovated started the after school program, the partnership, we had 90 kids in the program, we had 100% pass rate on the GA milestone, and that school became a title one school of distinction. We were roughly 25% of the school, our students were when she Dr. Richie, the principal, just wonderful, wonderful educator, when she became a title one school distinction, all of a sudden, the homes in her community started sending their children there. And up to that point, she had not had one single homeowner send their children to her school. So as the school improved and started getting noticed, the families around the school started supporting it, given it stronger support. And that's an example of a success story of how an apartment community was able to improve a school to the point that really started building even more social capital with all the homeowners and the greater community.
Paul Zelizer 22:11
And I would imagine that's a virtuous cycle, because homeowners are likely to have more resources. And so now the school has, you know, more money for the Parent Teacher Association. And if there's a landscaping or playground need, or is that fair to say those kinds of things also start to change. Yes, yeah. Beautiful. Well, let's do this in a moment. I want to come back Marty here. How do you fund it? And how do you make this work as an enterprise, this isn't a nonprofit, this is a for profit real estate company that you're doing this with, right? As a mission based one, but like, I want to unpack how that all works. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you want it to grow both in terms of your impact to help more people and your income, so you can live a good quality of life? If you do, I'd like to talk to you about some research for a second. When scientists look at what actually contributes to humans, meeting our goals, whether that's something in the realm of wellness, or something in the realm of an impact business, the single biggest predictor of whether we actually reach our goals is what they call social support. In other words, do you have people who are on a similar journey that can talk to you both about the nuances and the tip? Hey, here's a strategy that really works for impact oriented websites. Or here's somebody who can help you with trademark that understands our kind of brands, as well as the emotional intelligence, the ups and downs of this purposeful business journey. Aware partners has a community just like that. It's called the intrapreneurs community. And it's hundreds of really generous, very impact oriented entrepreneurs. And that's exactly what we do with each other. You can find out more at aware printers.com forward slash community. And thank you to everybody in the AWARE printers community sponsors this podcast. So Margie, in the second part of the show, we'd like to talk about getting more granular and putting on our entrepreneur glasses. I think Obama listener, I'm like, Okay, wow, that's really cool in the realm of impact, how does this work as an enterprise? So one of the things I would imagine if I'm a listener, you're talking about units with hundreds, you know, buildings and complexes with hundreds of units. And if I'm a smart entrepreneur, I'm like, That sounds expensive. Like where's the capital to buy these buildings and then the capital to remodel them? Where does that come from?
Margaret Stagmeier 24:48
So Paul, that is also a challenging part of our model. It you know, as we discussed earlier, people run when they see our apartment communities including investors and bankers, And
Paul Zelizer 25:02
so if you want to buy that one or you wait, and I get this wrong, yeah, I can only imagine what they say. Right?
Margaret Stagmeier 25:08
So it has violent crime, failing school, it's full of mold. And yeah, drug dealers. So yeah, you can't wait to invest your money in there. Let
Paul Zelizer 25:16
me write you a check right
Margaret Stagmeier 25:19
now. So we have gotten very creative. And luckily, since I've started this journey, the financial and capital markets have started coming our way. You know, 10 years ago, capital markets, investors would have thought you were crazy. If you took them to a property like this doesn't matter if they would not even have walked through the gates. But in the last year, what I've noticed is there's a lot more social impact funds, and mission based investors that are willing to basically make an investment with us. So to give you an example, in the book blighted, I needed to raise $12 million to purchase this property. And it took me about a year to raise the money. But I braided together a very innovative social capital stack, I got a foundation to give me a seven figure loan at 0% interest, we at Tristar actually started a Social Impact Fund that gives 3.7% to tear tenure fund. And basically to do this type of investment. We went to the city of Atlanta, and they have a housing opportunity bond that will do 1.5 million at one to 2%. And then we finally got a bank that was willing to invest with us because they needed their care credit, which is community reinvestment credit. And they knew our history and our track record. So they were willing to take a risk with us. So we raised the $12 million, and my average cost of capital was roughly 3.5%. What that has enabled us to do is keep our rents down. So one of the things investors out there need to understand is for every percent return you want, in this particular do, we had to raise our rents roughly $45 a month. So if my investors wanted, instead of a 3.3%, return, let's say a 6.3% return, I would have had to raise my rents roughly 130 to $140 a month just to pay the return. So essential to this model of keeping rents affordable, you have to have low cost capital, it's essential. And like I said, we're just starting to see the markets really open up to this concept and be willing to invest with us and maybe get a lower return.
Paul Zelizer 27:40
So it sounds like it's there's some individual investors, there's potentially some municipalities who are saying, well, this is really good for our community, and we're going to bring in some money. So you brought funding from a variety of sources in this as people connect it up with the impact goals of the project, is that fair to say?
Margaret Stagmeier 28:01
Right, we we've created a community of investors who are willing to invest with us and keep rents affordable, we were able to offer at this particular property, our rents for one bedroom or started at 695 442 bedroom is around about 875. So for our area, that's about 45% area median income, and it's affordable for families earning between 25 and $45,000 a year and that was our goal.
Paul Zelizer 28:27
And we're talking Atlanta, right? Like if anybody knows the economy of Atlanta, that's like remarkable affordability. Plus, if I am a potential renter here, not only am I getting affordable, but I'm also getting the sense of community well being after school programs, there's healthcare, there's job fairs, like I'm getting a lot that goes beyond what it would be like my experience living in even if there was something similarly priced. I get all these other both tangible and intangible benefits of living in this community. Is that fair to say?
Margaret Stagmeier 29:02
Correct. Beautiful. So
Paul Zelizer 29:06
what would you say to somebody who's saying, Wow, this is really interesting. And you're about to tell us a little bit about this book? And the answer might be go buy the book, which would be fine. But if somebody's listening, and they're saying, Wow, just wow, there's a marginalized community or a number of marginalized communities I really care about and this sounds awesome. Like, how would somebody even begin to get started? If they said, There's something here I want to understand more about what this would take?
Margaret Stagmeier 29:39
Well, the answer really, is to buy the book. The book is basically the biography of Summerdale apartments. It's not just the business model the business models mentioned, but it's really the story of the people. And as you're reading the interviews with the tenants and their stories, you realize how it all intersects for example, this is Humphries who has lived at the property for over 23 years, you know, she's really seen it, you know, as a healthy property declined to a marginalized property and then come back. She's now raising the fourth generation at the property. And I spent three years interviewing her her granddaughter and watching her great grandchildren, you know, and they were all severely traumatized. Her great grandsons, you had nightmares, they would fight with their mother at night over who had to sleep on the bed closest to the window. They were doing very poorly in school. They acted out when they started at the star c program. You know, one of them has severe asthma, you know, the list goes on. So as you as you track the families living there, and the principal was another major person I followed in interviewed and my police officers, I mean, if you're a police officer, what are you doing at night and apartment community like this, you know, we're you know, you're gonna have three and four and five 911 calls a day, and you want you drive in and see all the drug dealing going on. You know, I do follow the drug dealers and get their stories, I didn't interview him, because I was advised not to. But you know, I show what the impact of their actions were on the children in traumatizing the children. So I think that once you read the book and follow how the model unfolded, you realize through marginalized apartment communities, we're raising the next generation of poverty. And it's so important for municipalities, foundations, banks, businesses, apartment landlords, basically, to come together and do joint models on how to improve neighborhoods, not just, I'm in my lane, as an educator, I'm going to throw millions of dollars at this school, which basically, is not a good investment, because you know, you invest in these children, and they're gone, 40% of them are gone the next year, you know, on the foundation, I mean, I've had so many conversations with foundations and corporations who invested millions of dollars in schools and technology, and the school didn't improve. It's because they really need to look at investing in housing, basically, so that's what this book is giving you. It's the roadmap. It's the biography and the roadmap of how this apartment community basically unfolded, and became a successful apartment community. And a an asset for for the city. And all the metrics are in there, how it's all interconnected.
Paul Zelizer 32:32
Merde of care. I never thought of it this way before. But I'm curious if this language feels appropriate to you to language it this way in the world of like helping the unhoused there is a model that is called housing first, that I imagine you've heard of that model before? Is that that vocabulary you're familiar with? Yes, yeah. So so it's almost like you're taking like, like, when we think of some of these issues that communities care about, when there's a marginalized community, whether it's, you know, failure to thrive at school, or these health inequities, people tend to miss that housing first people. Right. And in a hole and an unhealthy situation, we have that vocabulary and that framework, in other words, in the if somebody's unhoused, or on the verge of unhoused, you know, used to be you had to like jump through all these hoops and like, prove that you were, you know, had a job and you could pay some or like that you were sober or working towards getting sober if you had a drug addiction. And all the research said, Just get them a house, you have people who are unhoused, or are in danger of becoming unhealthy, make sure you have stable, safe housing to the best as humanly possible. And then those other efforts of helping somebody with what they're doing for work, or helping somebody with their health issues and not keep going to the emergency room over and over and over again, or drug addiction, all those things. The treatment success rate goes through the roof compared to somebody who's housing unstable or on the street. And like, it's almost like you're taking a housing first approach to some of these other issues like a school failure to thrive, or health inequities in with young people who are living in these really problematic situation. And I just never thought of it that way. Does that translate at all?
Margaret Stagmeier 34:24
Absolutely. And I'm going to take it a step further. It's not just housing someone either you really have to have the wraparound services, you know, you really have to show them the path. Yes, I'm in a stable house. But if I don't network or know my neighbors, or really get out there and try if I just allow myself to just stay in my safe home. That doesn't really progress the model. It helps. It's more of a defensive, not an offensive model. So which is why we feel like it's just as critical to offer the on site wraparound services, to basically help people on a path towards improving their lives and building social capital.
Paul Zelizer 35:04
And some other language listeners that I would encourage, please tell people this book is coming. If I understand, Marjorie, it's coming September 2022. So just a few months away from when this episode goes live, and we wanted to sort of prime the soil like, like I even said to Marty, should we wait till the book launches? Which is a no, no, no, no, we want people now to know. So listeners, please, we are an ink impact obsessed community, please tell people that this is coming, tell people about what Margie and her team are doing. And some other language that might help us wrap our head around what we're doing here. When Harvard Business School looks up, what actually contributes to people learning how to do business really, really well, the single biggest thing that they talk about is the case study method of business education. In other words, it's much more effective to do what you just did. Mardi here is a example real world of how we did this and what the outcomes were and tell the stories of a single complex or, you know, a couple of complexes and people who lived in them and what the impact was, and how you did it. Then to talk in theory about marginalized communities, and how do we make schools better? How do we like have higher quality housing, like you really move the needle in these communities in such an impactful way. And what we can do as a community of impact oriented folks who care deeply about marginalized communities, listeners is tell people go read this book. Not that it's all the answers. But such a great powerful story where we can learn together Marjorie has done so much of the work to help us have a tangible experience to read, learn and start dialogues in our own communities that really need some help. So please, this is something we can do is tell people about Marjorie's work, and let's get ready to go make some noise when this goes live and go by it. Please, listeners, thank you very much.
Margaret Stagmeier 37:09
Well, thank you so much. Now, what I what I did is I had 15 people read the manuscript before I found a publisher. And I mean, I had friends call me and say I was up till three in the morning, I could not put this book down what happens to Mrs. Humphries, because in the introduction, it just, it's I'm walking, I'm basically showing how her day is and how she's walking through drug dealers. And she's befriending them because she's a woman of very strong Christian Christian faith, you know, and then Monica, what happens to Monica, we ended up having to evict her because she would not clean up her. Her apartment, even though we totally renovated it. You know, in ski our police officer, what happened to him. So at the end of the book, it tells where everyone landed. And then we have a chapter on COVID That shows how COVID affected housing and education, it really disrupted our model for about two and a half years. So it's a very interesting story.
Paul Zelizer 38:03
So if anyone has some connections in Hollywood, you're saying you wouldn't be opposed to turning this into movie? Is that what you're telling them? Come on, let's think absolutely. So you've been at this for like, 25 years or so more, when you know, the book is is part of I imagine like scaling the story and trying to both bring more opportunities for what you're doing and Tristar and the communities that you're currently located in. And but I got to imagine that it's not just like, let's buy some more complexes in Atlanta, you're a bigger thinker than that, as I was doing my research, like what like, give us a little bit of the vision, like, where's this going when you feel when you lean into the impact you want to have, and starting to tell the story. So I can't wait to read the book, so embodied and so like, I get a sense of like, yeah, what I haven't even read the book yet. And I want to know what happened to Mrs. Humphries. Right. Like, where is this going? What's What are you hoping to have happen in the realm of more impact as the books coming out and as more people are hearing about the work you're doing?
Margaret Stagmeier 39:15
So we host a breakfast every month. It's a nonprofit called Star see that? That I started so when I started down this path, we realized that we had to have a nonprofit for fair housing laws. In other words, landlords can ask their tenants about their health care or their education. So we started a nonprofit called star c and star c actually offers the wraparound services. star c started an eviction relief fund in 2020. Our goal was to raise 50,000. We raised 12 point 5 million. We were we'd say that again. We were our goal was to raise $50,000 with our eviction Relief Fund. We started in April 2020. We raised 12 point 5 million and we realized with all this Money, we really needed to engage other landlords. So we opened it up to any landlord in Atlanta that offered affordable rents below 80% ami. And we had 312, landlords sign up representing 64,000 apartments. So now our network at Star see has is really broad. And we've realized a lot of these landlords would want access to resident wraparound services. And we're looking at our model now to figure out how we can change our delivery delivery platform. So for example, WellStar, has a dense Smile Train, you know, if we can network with our 60,000 apartment units, and then offer services through WellStar, or through Georgia Power, they have an energy efficiency program. That gives you a reduction in your utility bill, if you qualify. You know, Atlanta Gas, the list goes on of partners. We have had a lot of landlords around the country now reach out to us. So we're looking at the CRC model and having conversations with other resident wraparound service providers like enterprise, and other landlords about creating maybe a national best practices model. So that's something that I'm working on this year. And the star see breakfast, which if anyone listening wants to join us star dash c.org, and it's on Zoom. We started that in 2015. And I've probably had about 20 Young landlords and now come through the program. And we've got two landlords that have now reached out to us to partner. And we've started buying land next to low performing schools. And we're doing new construction with federal tax credits. I've always been kind of anti government in my model, I always wanted it to just be a straight market rate model. But because apartment pricing is so high right now you can actually build them cheaper than you can buy and renovate in Atlanta. So we've got a 306 unit property under construction in South Atlanta. Our partner school is Mount Zion Elementary, which is a low performing school. And then we've got another 450 unit deal in the city of Atlanta, with continental colony Elementary, and Atlanta public schools and Atlanta housing that we're partnering to develop. We've also got property developments in the queue in Alabama, and now South Carolina. So we're looking at expanding the model with partners. Because my expertise or genius is simply not construction. My genius is renovation and doing wraparound services, but we're willing to help other landlords around us that might want to bring this model to their community.
Paul Zelizer 42:38
And as I'm listening to you tell the story, Margie, you keep using the word partner. Is it fair to say that strategic partnerships have been a significant maybe even one of the major contributors of how you built something to this scale? Yes, yeah. Talk to us about that. Because that was my sense. I'm like, this woman knows how to do strategic partnership. And, and that's sort of a bit of a, you know, I can get on my soapbox and say, Hey, we need to get better at partnering out of siloing. Sometimes in the impact space, we don't mean to but we get a little stuck. And like I'm the only one who can move the needle. And if somebody hasn't yet found their way into the kinds of strategic partnerships that you're talking about such leveraged players, how can you help our listeners understand how to get better at that scale?
Margaret Stagmeier 43:29
When you buy these large apartment communities, and I'm gonna go back to the example in North Atlanta, it was 446 units, it was 990 bedrooms, okay. 1800 people lived at this apartment commute. So as a mini city, I mean, there's a lot of cities in the United States that are not 1800 people. And when you look at it from that perspective, you realize in that city, you need everything, you need housing, you need health care, you have families that can't, can't pay their groceries or their credit cards, they have credit issues. I mean, you need every service, especially when you're attracting families that have low incomes. So you have to partner you know, the landlord, basically is the general partner. I always say the landlord's like the unofficial mayor of the community of the small city that your apartment community, you cannot thrive unless you partner and you need all of it. You need churches you need. Like I said, utility companies, corporations, and you can do it in a way that everyone wins. Those churches are looking for places to create new worshipers, of course, but also to basically serve those corporations. That local pizza delivery firm you know, is looking for ways to build their business. within the department communities you have millions and millions of dollars of purchasing power. You have people who need services. So by creating partnerships, you're you're creating a triple win for not only the business and not only for your your tenant but for yourself as a Well, by just again, building that social capital, we have a lot of tenants that work at the local businesses. You know, McDonald's was attached to one of our properties, and one of our residents worked there, and he could afford to his apartment rent working at McDonald's. So, you know, partnerships are at the core of creating social capital and what we do. And it's just as easy as just contacting the company, or the church or the school. And just going in there and introducing yourself and you will find, I'm trying to think of a single partner approach that is said, notice, I'd say 99% of the time, it's a yes, especially if you can align the partnership in a way that everyone wins.
Paul Zelizer 45:43
Margie, I can hang out with you all day, you're doing incredible work, and you're a busy person, and our listeners are busy too. If there was something you were gonna hope we would get to today, other than, like, go check out the links by the book or the website, etc, etc. All of that listeners will be in the show notes, aside from please go buy the book. There was something you were hoping we were going to get to we haven't gotten to it yet. Where there's something you want to leave our listeners with to help them go have more impact in their area of focus. And we haven't touched on it yet. What would that be?
Margaret Stagmeier 46:19
Paul, I would tell them to support you, because I can't tell you how much I appreciate you amplifying our model, and educating our your listeners on what we're doing in Atlanta, so they can help improve their community. I mean, to me, that's like the ultimate social capital goal is to have it people like you use your platform to amplify what we're doing. So the one thing I would say to the listeners is to support you.
Paul Zelizer 46:42
Thank you for your kind words, Marty, thanks for being on the show today. It's it's been absolutely fabulous. I can't wait. When we hang up, I'm going to be like, Oh, can I connect you with this one and this one and this because I just want everybody to know what you're doing. It's so so awesome. Thank you for what you do.
Margaret Stagmeier 46:58
Well, thank you, Paul. Thank you for having me on your show.
Paul Zelizer 47:01
So listeners, please go check out the website, check out the book, please, let's amplify this message of this incredibly impactful work. That's all the time we have for for this particular episode. But before we go, I do want to say we love when our listeners suggest topics and guests. So if you have an idea, go to the AWARE printers website. And on our contact page, you'll see our three simple guidelines, we try to be really transparent about what we can say yes to and unfortunately, we get more pitches than we can say yes to right now. But we try to be really honest, here's what we're looking for. Here's like pay attention to these and you'll get a yes, right. It's on our contact page or where printers.com forward slash contact and tell us your ideas. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.