Economic Empowerment through Real Estate: One Man’s Vision for an Equitable Dallas

Tell me about Simply Custom and your vision behind it.

My name is Kevin Brown, born and raised here in Dallas, Texas, I'm a partner at Simply Custom and we are a community real estate and construction management firm with a mission to change the way our community is built, but more importantly, who profits from that activity. We do that by creating value and opportunity, and sharing the wealth with our community, using both commercial and residential real estate as the vehicle.  This is what brings into focus our vision of us as a collective community, building ourselves again. And when I say that, I mean that literally. I'm talking about families participating in building their homes, and getting paid to do so. Building our parks, our schools, churches, building our business districts where we shop, dine, entertain, thus building our collective wealth - intergenerational wealth building, but more importantly, building an economy where we can become the number one employer of our community. And for me, then and only then do we eradicate the social and economic injustice that we face, and level the playing field.

So you are helping create personal sustainability for your community members.

Yes. Let me give you an example of how. We do this through a series of partnerships. I partner with a family member to build a home. I can impact their cash flow and wealth through equity sharing and creation, where there's equity day one when they move into the house. So we hire the homeowner, 1099, as their own superintendent. And I pay them $2k per month for six months to manage their own project. Now these homeowners are the best superintendents I've ever experienced because they have personal stake in the outcome.

How does your membership work and is there an educational component for the homeowners?

We have a one time life membership fee of $500. That money gives them access to be able to participate in these strategic partnerships that can go beyond building their own home. We also work with investors who are interested in building. I already talked to you about paying the homeowner as superintendent, the equity piece is we have a set fee that's reduced for the market, where we get paid as the general contractor, regardless of square footage.  For initial financing, we have relationships on the interim construction financing side, then have mortgage lenders.

The reason that this is all important to me, is there is a tremendous wealth gap in our community that no one has addressed. It's a problem that internally we need to resolve. So, I'm allowing my business to be leveraged in a way, to solve a great problem. So that one day we can finally have a seat at this economic society that we live in.

There's no value in our community and we have no power. And our vote gets us just a little bit of a return on that investment. However, the powers that be that have the capital and wealth and resources get a greater rate of return. Now until the system changes, that's just how the game is played. We have to learn how to play the game. And if that's the rule, then we need to be invested in the political process, that means that we need to get behind not only our candidates that we want to see run for office locally and federally, we have to get behind them with our dollars. SO that they don't have to depend on outside sources where their allegiances would have to lie, from the big donors. If they get that from the everyday person, then their allegiance will lie there.

How does South Dallas factor into your community rebuilding? 

My mother was born and raised here in South Dallas. When I was a small child, I remember going to my grandmother's sister's house every Sunday and when you drove down the street, every yard was manicured perfectly. Everybody had a lot of pride and there was a high percentage of ownership.  Now at that time, we were just starting to migrate to South Dallas in the 1950s (before my time) - it had been a Jewish Community. When we started moving in, there were bombings of homes, trying to get us out of there. We had to really fight to be there, so there was a sense of immense pride. And then things changed with the baby boomers. What happened is a big drug epidemic that flooded the community, then you just saw this huge darkness and change. So people who could leave, got out. And the values of properties began to go down.  In my mom's generation, we had mixed income neighborhoods, with folks of different professions - doctors, lawyers, teachers, all on the same street.  This is really important because children get to see examples that they can aspire to be.

Have your members made new connections being involved in Simply Custom?

We have members only meetings and that time is specified to educate and teach all about real estate. Also, to share opportunities in commercial real estate development.  If we are going to develop, we need to be land banking, so we put out an offer together.  So currently the membership has four commercial projects that we are working on collectively. Then we have Simply Social Friday once a month, where we socialize, network, and build solid community relationships.  You get to know the people who you're working with. 

This has been a fantastic journey for me and it's truly my life's work. I'll do it for the rest of my life. I'm looking to resolve deep problems , community issues that face our relatives, my family, my friends, people I went to school with. And by fixing that problem, we become better members of this society. And then we have power.  

Want to learn more about the Simply Custom community? click here!

photo by Ashlee Freese