Six years ago, I chose to take the leap into entrepreneurship and become a full-time real estate developer. Initially, having a pipeline of productive projects socially, environmentally, and financially was the whole goal. I worried there wasn’t enough to be done or that I would be able to accomplish. Building trust among stakeholders and partners was a top priority and only started to occur once I’d demonstrated the ability to deliver a stellar project. In reflecting on it, I was young, hungry, and scrappy.
Today’s guest on The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast is Jenifer Acosta, a community revitalizer and incremental developer working in the Tri-Cities region of Michigan, near the shores of Lake Huron. Her focus is on adaptive reuse projects—taking historic structures like old bank and newspaper buildings and turning them into updated housing and commercial spaces. She finds that sweet spot between preserving history while also modernizing and allowing these old buildings to take on new life so they can last another hundred years, even as the needs of a community change.
Imagine a world where the dream of owning a home, once a cornerstone of the American Dream, is slipping away. Today, many families find themselves caught in a cycle where the opportunity to build wealth for future generations is disappearing right before our eyes. It's a troubling trend that begs the question: Are we making the American Dream impossible for the next generation?