Kimberly Driggins ‘16
Kim leads the Washington Housing Conservancy, whose goal is to acquire and develop workforce housing in Washington, DC. in a recent Fast Company article, she spoke about the Conservancy’s partnership with Amazon to preserve affordabliity as the company establishes a presence in Crystal City, VA. Kim described her organization’s unconventional approach and how it is tapping Amazon’s below-market financing to convert existing apartment buildings into below-market homes.
Driggins says the conservancy is eschewing government subsidies in favor of private capital that can more quickly acquire and preserve affordable housing while providing its investors with a return. “We’re doing something that the market doesn’t want to have happen. We’re disrupters. We’re able to leverage private capital, and we have a social-impact investing fund to really compete with for-profit developers in the space,” she says. “We’re able to move quickly because we’re not relying on government funding to close deals.”