Meet Paul Odland, founder and managing partner of Belveron Partners and a board member of Conifer Realty.
The real estate veteran discusses what he’s working on, recent decisions, and how affordable housing developments are evolving.
What was your first job, and what did that job teach you?
My first job out of college was selling packaging supplies to warehouses door to door in the San Francisco Bay Area. The pay was 100% commission so the stakes were high, but I was literally selling cardboard boxes. It was a job in which all the academic credentials in the world made little difference. More than anything, it taught me how to deal with rejection and how to start from scratch. It was not glamorous, but it made me more resilient.
What issue have you been spending the most time on this year?
Having closed our seventh fund in the second half of the year, we are now going back to first principles in everything that we do. The housing landscape has changed a lot in the past four years, so we are reassessing how we do things, strategizing about the markets we operate in, and ensuring we are set up to execute quickly as opportunities arise. I don’t want to do something one way just because we’ve always done it that way. Either you change and adapt or you stagnate. We also spent a lot of time building out our teams across different verticals, and we institutionalized our operational processes and reporting capabilities.
What is Belveron Partners’ relationship with Conifer Realty, and how is it evolving?
In 2020, we made a significant investment in Conifer Realty. While Belveron and Conifer share the same values, we bring different skillsets to the table, which is what made the partnership attractive. Our goal from the outset was to leverage each other’s strengths. We are now seeing the fruits of our labor, from a stronger development pipeline and knowledge-sharing across teams to a deeper network of relationships around the country.
What is the best move that Belveron-Conifer made this year?
I’m proud of the effort we’re making to be more present in our communities. In February, our executive teams piled into a Sprinter van and embarked on a four-state tour to visit our properties and talk to on-site staff and residents about what's working and what’s not. We want to make sure our residents feel cared for, and that means having our boots on the ground, whether through programming, services, or events, which we are doing more of each year. To this end, we’ve spent a lot of time engaging with our property management partners, setting expectations, and making changes when needed.
As mentioned, we also raised our largest fund to date and broadened our institutional capital base, despite the challenging capital markets environment over the last couple years. That is something that provides great longevity and stability to our business.
What is the worst move that Belveron-Conifer made this year?
Looking back over the past year, and even the past few years, I think our worst move was not getting people back into the office fast enough, or for more days per week. It does not work—pun intended—to work remotely, especially for young people who are just getting started and are new to this type of work. We hang our hat on keeping our team engaged, and it’s incredibly difficult to help people grow and advance in their careers when they are not working together in a hub. I’m not debating that there is near-universal preference for hybrid work schedules, but my personal feeling is that it’s bad for growth.
Why affordable housing matters:
I believe with every cell in my body that housing is the solution to our most pressing social issues. This is especially true for homelessness, mental health, and addiction, which are causes that are close to my heart. The first line of defense is a safe and affordable home, but far too many Americans are one unforeseen medical issue or job loss away from going over the precipice. We strive to increase the supply of affordable housing, to be good humans in the affordable housing space, and to do what we can to fix a status quo that is seriously broken.
How are your affordable housing developments changing?
The biggest change on the development front has been diversifying our pipeline beyond 9% low-income housing tax credit deals by pursuing both larger, more transformative deals and different deal types. This summer, Conifer was selected to lead the redevelopment of the former Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill, New York, a 10-year, multiphase initiative that will provide up to 1,300 housing units. Conifer also branched out with two acquisition-preservation deals, representing more than 1,000 affordable units with a scope that includes $100,000 in upgrades per door. We are also tapping into different funding sources, with Conifer being awarded $8 million through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Green and Resilient Retrofit Program to improve sustainability at two communities in New York’s Sullivan County.
What affordable housing trends are you tracking?
We take our cues from how city and state housing agencies are responding to the housing crisis and prioritize partnerships with the ones we feel are forward-thinking in solving the problem. Ultimately, most of the country’s affordable housing is privately owned, albeit highly regulated, and we want to be a thoughtful partner in how to create synergy between the public mission and private investment. We’ve been doing a good job of changing people’s minds in states that have had not-so-great experiences with others in the past, and in replicating what we’ve done to address the gap in federal programs for households earning between 60% and 120% of the area median income in high-opportunity areas across the country.
Burritos or tacos, and why?
I moved to the Bay Area after college and raised my kids there so it was burritos for a long time. Now that I live in Austin, Texas, it’s tacos. At least with tacos I don’t have to keep buying bigger pants.
We hear you have a top-notch Chewbacca mask. What’s the story?
I’m a big fan of ironic comedies, and the Chewbacca mask is an homage to a scene in the movie “Step Brothers.” But unlike Will Ferrell’s mask, mine is movie quality.
What else would you like to accomplish in your career?
Mentoring others is the next mountain I want to climb in my career. A few years ago, we seeded an initiative at the Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate at the University of Notre Dame (my alma mater) to establish a course on affordable housing and advance research and policy solutions for our industry. If I can do anything that’s worthwhile, it’s to inspire young people to get energized about this issue and attract talent to this space because the trendlines are not going in the right direction when it comes to housing.
