COMMENT: Moments like this should be turning points for real estate to say “not in my name”.
Real estate wants to be a consumer brand, yet even oil companies have more morals at times. Matt Gallagher, chief executive of Parsley Energy, is on record, among other larger oil and gas companies, calling out their peers for flaring, which is a major source of emissions. Oil companies are saying “not in my name”.
Even tech CEOs, who we castigate as spoilt rich kids solving problems no one asked for a solution to, are calling themselves out; the chief executive of Foursquare, one of the largest location data platforms, is calling on lawmakers to pass legislation to better regulate the wider location data industry amid abuses and misuses of consumers’ personal data.
Acknowledge your impact
The industry has talked a good talk about its contribution to #BlackLivesMatter, but has stayed quiet about its impact on the lives of black people in cities for years.
Has anyone stood in support of Angela Fonso, a black mother from Southall, west London, who has been campaigning tirelessly against the toxic air her kids and neighbours have faced from nearby construction? Read their words, hear their stories, and you realise how lucky you are not to be them, facing hospitalisation from merely breathing the air in one’s own neighbourhood.
Has an industry CEO stood up for Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, the black mother of Ella, whose life was taken from her as she developed acute asthma over the course of her young life? Ella was not born with asthma but her lived experience in Lewisham, south-east London, and around the South Circular road meant she developed it.
Some of the particulate matter that infected her lungs came from the very vehicles carrying the concrete to put up your buildings, the piping for the water to run through them, the cabling to empower your internet and all the tools to make them “sustainable”.
The industry has said it’s always been against racism, but clearly these black lives didn’t matter enough for someone to say these “black lives matter to me” and lead change for them.
Real estate wants to be a consumer brand, yet even oil companies have more morals at times
The citizens of Southall have fallen ill because legislation has not protected them. Rosamund Kissi-Debrah lost her daughter from urbanisation. Where are the voices from within the industry truly championing changes to the legislation that governs them? There is a lot of lobbying and protectionism in an industry that claims to be placemakers and social shapers. Being an anti-racist isn’t about giving performative slogans; it’s about solving the problems people unjustly face.
Behave like the best
In June 2019, chief executives from Twitter, H&M, Yelp and the Body Shop, amongst others, signed a letter in the US in response to the restriction of women’s rights, stating that such legislation inhibits their “ability to build diverse and inclusive workforce pipelines, recruit top talent across the states, and protect the wellbeing of all the people who keep our businesses thriving day in and day out”. There is not a landlord, investor, developer, agent or lawyer who wouldn’t want to work for them or have them as a tenant, so why not behave like them?
Ask the person on the street the difference between the most publicly visible and PR-conscious REIT and another propco under review for exploiting loopholes and they wouldn’t be able to say which was which. Ask them about the difference between Nike and another and they’ll know the difference. Why? Because they stand for something beyond their profits – justice.
If you don’t have anything to stand for, it’s easy to knock you over. As Nike said in standing with Colin Kaepernick of the NFL: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Josh Artus is co-founder and director of The Centric Lab
