Environmental Justice and Real Estate

Report Summary: Environmental Justice and Real Estate: Perspectives from Leading Community-Based and Advocacy Organizations features interviews with leaders from the Fifth Avenue Committee, Catalyst Miami, Initiative for Energy Justice, and The Greenlining Institute, and seeks to elevate these perspectives to help built environment professionals address the effects of structural racism and community disinvestment through the perspective of environmental justice. Environmental justice has become a key policy lens to examine and address how low-income communities and communities of color have been disproportionately affected by real estate and land use decisions and environmental hazards.

Environmental Justice and Real Estate highlights the history and objectives of the environmental justice movement and the role that real estate can play in partnering with community actors to drive systemic change. Interviews with four community-based and advocacy organizations shed light on how to define environmental justice, how community efforts work to shape the built environment, and how to create collaborative solutions based on local needs. Member perspectives introducing and concluding the report provide specific guidance to the role ULI and its membership can play in supporting this work. The takeaway: contributing to environmental justice provides an opportunity to engage both community leaders and the real estate sector to promote healthy, sustainable resilient places for communities to live and work.