Within the run-up to World Starvation Day on Might 28, REIT.com is showcasing how some Nareit members are channeling their experience, tapping their worker networks, and upholding philanthropic commitments to their communities to assist fight meals insecurity.
In keeping with the newest USDA figures, 13.7% (18.3 million) of U.S. households had been meals insecure at a while throughout 2024. The variety of meals insecure households with kids is even greater, at 18.4%—making the efforts of REITs and others to deal with the difficulty particularly vital.
REITs know that when individuals and communities thrive, everybody advantages—creating lasting worth and fueling innovation. By accountable enterprise practices, REITs are assembly the wants of their workforce, tenants, and neighbors, serving to to construct vibrant locations the place communities can flourish.
AvalonBay Communities
As a multifamily REIT, housing, neighborhood—and what makes its residents thrive—is on the heart of all the pieces for AvalonBay Communities, Inc. (NYSE: AVB), says Scott Balina, senior director, inclusion, range & neighborhood affect.
Not too long ago, the corporate readjusted its philanthropic focus areas to extra formally acknowledge the significance of housing and meals safety in “creating the steadiness that makes all the pieces else doable,” Balina says. “We needed to extra formally acknowledge it as a result of it was a big portion of what we had been already doing and we had been anticipating to do extra.”
Final 12 months, AvalonBay labored with 21 completely different organizations that concentrate on inexpensive housing and meals insecurity, clocking virtually 2,000 volunteer hours and greater than $300,000 in donations. These organizations embody the non-profit Doorways, that serves survivors of home violence within the Washington, D.C. area, Caritas Communities, and Feeding South Florida.
Balina says Feeding South Florida has seen a transparent uptick in demand for his or her help, which incorporates amassing shelf-stable meals which can be previous their sell-by dates from eating places and grocery shops, and sharing them with meals pantries within the area. One notably progressive accomplice of AvalonBay is Households Ahead in Orange County, California. As an alternative of a conventional meals pantry, the group creates a grocery/farmer’s market-style expertise the place stock is determined by the present inventory.
Basis Communities in Austin, Texas is one other AvalonBay accomplice that works equally to Feeding South Florida by way of serving as a go-between that distributes gadgets from eating places and grocery shops to households in want. Austin represents certainly one of AvalonBay’s latest growth areas, so it has a comparatively small presence, Balina explains, whereas Basis Communities has been seeking to develop in Dallas, the place the REIT has a much bigger presence. “We considered it as this mutually useful relationship the place we might assist them construct their model in a single area, and vice versa.”
