J. Kwame Gray and Rhakeim Miller are neighbors and friends who became business partners and investors in a Philadelphia real estate LLC called Ross Street Investments.
Both of them are Jumpstart Germantown alumni and in this interview they talk about their investment philosophy and outlook when it comes to real estate development. They are both proponents of NOAH (Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing) investing and explain why it's so important to them to provide safe, comfortable, modern, affordable homes for their tenants.
On the National Association of Affordable Lenders' website NOAH is described as an often overlooked strategy that can preserve existing housing found in urban and older suburban neighborhoods in danger of decline or gentrification.
"Now called middle neighborhoods, these neither high-poverty nor affluent areas are the remnants of a vast number of one-time working-class and middle-class communities," says the article entitled Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing is Hiding in Plain Sight. "As we think about future housing policy, we need to be careful that we don’t focus so much on increasing production of new housing—important as that is—that we lose sight of a vast resource of affordable housing hiding in plain sight that can be preserved for the long-term for a modest fraction of the cost of building new."
Find Kwame and Rhakeim on Instagram: @Ross.Street.Investments
