Aryon Shahidzadeh

Aryon Shahidzadeh is a Master of Urban and Regional Planning graduate student interested in innovative models for community ownership and affordable housing development. Prior to graduate school, Aryon was a Coro Fellow in Public Affairs and his rotations included working at Innovative Housing Opportunities and the City of Glendale’s City Manager’s Office. Before moving to Los Angeles, he was the Operations Manager at the Washington Bus, a youth-led policy advocacy nonprofit, and worked in the education sector for three years. Aryon is a Levine Distinguished Fellow in Affordable Housing at the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate and a board member at the Westside Urban Forum.

Project Overview

The American racial income gap has been dramatically outpaced by the racial wealth gap, which reflects a family’s ability to own assets and build financial reserves. A wealth gap has compounding consequences for a family’s economic mobility over time, and it drives deep racial disparities. This is especially evident in gentrifying neighborhoods, where development builds wealth for outside investors while excluding or even displacing residents.

“Neighborhood REITs” entail philanthropy helping form local entities to purchase and assemble portfolios of real estate in neighborhoods that lie in the path of major neighborhood development, with residents buying or being granted shares alongside institutional investors. The portfolios would be large enough to include a mixed-income spectrum of both growth-oriented and affordable projects, with market-rate buildings cross-subsidizing the affordable ones. This would allow neighborhoods to manage gentrification and help create infrastructure for zero resident displacement. The holdings would combine residential and commercial asset classes, at a scale permitting mixed-use, comprehensive community planning.

For my client project, I’m working with Emerging Markets Development Corporation to assess what the alternative roles for community foundations are in community ownership of real estate. This entails working on the early stages of developing Neighborhood REITs in two California cities: Fresno and San Bernardino.

In Fresno, the planned California High Speed Rail through downtown Fresno is attracting capital to the adjacent Chinatown neighborhood, a disinvested, 60-acre area with vast stretches of vacant and undeveloped land. A group of multi-generational small business owners and property holders have a vision for a mixed-income neighborhood, one that can be refined with additional input.

In San Bernardino, the Carousel Mall presents a unique opportunity to rejuvenate San Bernardino’s downtown core. The city and region have been grappling with increased land acquisition due to its value to the logistics industry, a trend causing displacement and measurably toxic consequences from truck traffic. The project presents an opportunity for community ownership and control, centering around a 43-acre vacant mall situated in the heart of downtown, adjacent to municipal buildings. Community partners in San Bernardino envision transforming this area into a walkable, transit-oriented community with a re-established historic street grid. The vision includes expanding workforce housing, implementing urban forestry, and creating vibrant public spaces. 

Why is this topic, specifically, important to you?

A scaling of Neighborhood REITs could not only address the seemingly intractable racial wealth gap but also mobilize communities in planning/development processes. In my hometown Portland, the Community Investment Trust reported that at least 65% of resident investors, a majority of them immigrants, became qualitatively more involved in their community’s civic life through local projects and events within the first year of becoming owners. With a distinct focus on community financial shareholdership in these project sites, there can be both an increased sense of resident agency as well as long-term wealth-building for working-class residents.

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will you be working with them?

I am working with Emerging Markets Development Corporation to help explore Neighborhood REITs that lie in the path of development in San Bernardino and Fresno. I’m helping with research and stakeholder facilitation between philanthropic partners and community-based organizations.

How do you hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

I’m hoping that this client project can help push the envelope of how we use community ownership investments to rectify the multi-generational financial consequences of racial injustice. I also hope that it will provide useful case studies for how market-based, private-public approaches in community ownership can fit into a broader strategy to stabilize housing and create economic mobility for working-class residents in cities.