2023 Fall Issue of Urban Land - 36

PHILANTHROPIC IMPACT
The Homelessness to Housed Initiative
ULI members and donors aim to help the Americans who
struggle to find shelter or are unhoused
PATRICK J. KIGER
A few yeArs ago, veteran multifamily
real estate developer and longtime
ULI member Preston Butcher
was on a street in Mountain View,
California, when an unusual sort of
housing complex caught his attention.
Preston
Butcher, the chairman of
Legacy Partners, has built elegantlooking
apartment buildings across a
wide swath of the western U.S., from
Dallas all the way to Seattle. But
LifeMoves Mountain View, the development
he admired, was something
different. It consists of 100 small,
boxy, modular dwellings that provide
separate units for single adults, couples,
and families experiencing homelessness,
as well as support services
and case management designed to
help the residents eventually regain
stability in their lives.
Preston Butcher wasn't just
attracted by the project's altruistic
mission, though. " My background is
in development, so I was impressed
by the construction and the design, "
he recalls. " So I started asking questions. "
As
he learned more about the
project and the larger subject of
building for the unhoused, he had a
sudden revelation: " You would never
start an office building, a warehouse,
or an apartment house without
knowing all about your competitors,
and what they charge. "
But builders of housing aimed
at the homeless didn't have similar
market intelligence to study. " You
had these different organizations
building structures, and some were
very inefficient and terribly expensive, "
Preston Butcher explains.
" Others were very efficient and less
expensive. I thought, we need to put
together comparables and gather
best practices of projects that are
36
URBAN LAND FALL 2023
successful so we can show people,
these are the ones that work. "
Preston Butcher envisioned a new,
businesslike approach to finding solutions
for homelessness, a problem
that affects numerous Americans. (A
snapshot of homelessness compiled
by the U.S. Department of Housing
and Urban Development found that
on a single night in 2022, 582,462-
or about 18 of every 10,000 people
in the U.S.-experienced homelessness.)
And
he knew of an organization
with the right mix of technical
experts in just about every aspect of
real estate development to tackle it.
" I called Mary Beth [Corrigan,
senior vice president at ULI] and
said, here's what I think we ought
to do, " Preston Butcher recalls. His
initial inspiration and philanthropic
support led to the publication of
a June 2022 report, " Homeless to
Housed: The ULI Perspective Based
on Actual Case Studies, " which
presents detailed analyses of-and
specifications for-eight successful
efforts to house the homeless, from
North Carolina to California. The
report also seeks to dispel negative
misconceptions about the homeless,
and focuses on government intervention
and upon the potential for the
private-sector residential development
segment of the industry to join
in working toward a solution.
But that was just the start. In September
2022, Preston Butcher and
his wife, Carolyn, donated $1.5 million
to fund the ULI Homeless to Housed
Initiative. The ongoing effort is within
the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing,
which aims to gather and disseminate
further information about
innovative solutions for homelessness,
as well as to fund projects by
ULI District Councils that are related
to homelessness, and to give ULI
Interior of a LifeMoves Mountain View dwelling in Mountain View, Calfornia. The
project inspired veteran multifamily developer and ULI member Preston Butcher
to provide philanthropic support for a June 2022 report, " Homeless to Housed:
The ULI Perspective Base on Actual Case Studies. "
LIVEMO VES
2023 Fall Issue of Urban Land

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