Evan Holladay discovered his career path while still in college in Louisville, Kentucky. Working for a student housing developer showed him how he could help shape the built environment, and volunteering with nonprofit Family Scholar House showed him how housing could change lives. The combination put Holladay on a path to affordable housing and, ultimately, to co-founding Holladay Ventures with his wife, Jined, with an ambitious mission to help address the nation’s housing crisis.
He got his start in affordable housing at Louisville-based LDG Development, one of the nation’s leading affordable housing developers. He learned the ropes over six years, developing over 1,300 affordable housing units in Louisiana and Tennessee.
After hiring a business and life coach, he and his wife took the leap of faith to launch their own affordable housing development firm, Holladay Ventures, in 2019.
“It was scary jumping out on our own,” he says. “We were definitely bootstrapping it. We didn’t have a ton of capital, but we had a strong conviction that we could do it and that we could building something meaningful and impactful that would help a lot of people. And we started from day one with a crazy goal and a crazy vision to create or preserve 100,000 units.”
Holladay Ventures has grown from a basement operation into one with 16 full-time employees and nearly 1,200 affordable housing units, totaling $447 million in development. Based in Nashville, Tennessee, Holladay and the firm is still working toward their goal. It’s aiming to develop 15,000 units across the Southeast by 2035 and to reach 100,000 units by 2045.
In 2020, Holladay, 36, also launched Affordable Development Mastery, a 12-month group coaching and mentorship program that walks participants through every stage of closing their first affordable housing deal. Over 40 students have been part of two cohorts to date, resulting in just under 1,000 affordable housing units closed.
What did your last project teach you?
Our last project was The Opaline at Artist Hill. We’re doing a video series on all the lessons we learned. In summary, we had 11 different parcels, seven different owners, 38 acres. It took us a little over two years to assemble all of it. We started out with an initial lot, and we went to the community to seek their approval. They did not like our original plan at all. The density was too close to their community, even though we were matching the plan that had been put together through community meetings eight years ago, but we heard them and we said, “OK, let’s scrap the original plan.” So that’s when we went back and assembled the rest of the land to move the density closer to the major thoroughfare that we were on. I think resilience is so powerful, and creative thinking and having the right partners are so integral. We had so many different curveballs thrown that were out of our control. We were months away from closing, and then a $7 million greenhouse gas relief fund got pulled, and that was a huge blow. It was a massive curveball to our capital stack, but we were able to find increased equity pricing. We were able to find a unique deal structure with the bonds. We were able to find construction lenders that could leverage a state tax credit to give us a lower interest rate. We were able to value-engineer our design and completely redesign our building. At the end of the day, we ended up with an amazing product. It took us much longer than we thought it would to get to this point, but it has 251 units with a focus on artists and creatives and really taps into what is so sorely needed in Nashville.
If you could share one lesson with someone just starting their career in affordable housing, what would it be?
Ask lots of questions. Be infinitely curious. Don’t be afraid to put in hard work, and be humble, and surround yourself with great leaders to learn from.
What would your team say is your signature phrase or habit?
I love cold plunging and the sauna, and sometimes I'll bring the team along to do that with me. We did a development team retreat in Minneapolis in March, and basically we did a sauna right on the frozen lake, and then we jumped in the lake for a cold plunge.
What does affordable housing mean to you?
Just hearing stories from the residents who speak at our grand opening events, it brings to light how what we do in affordable housing really truly affects people every day and how it can completely change residents’ lives. It’s such a foundational piece of everybody’s life. I think being able to have that real tangible outcome is why we all do what we do and why we put up with the hard times. To me, that’s really what it’s all about.