Revamping NYC’s affordable housing as a ‘place of peace’

Buwa Binitie is the founder and CEO of Dantes Partners, a real estate development firm that focuses on creating and preserving affordable housing. Binitie moved to New York City after leaving his home country of Nigeria to seek a better life and an education. Through the New York City Housing Authority PACT program, Dantes Partners is changing the lives for nearly 900 residents in Washington Heights, Harlem and Sugar Hill. The organization has created and preserved over 8,000 affordable housing units in the mid-Atlantic states, and over 3,000 units in New York City. About 85% renovations are now completed across the Audubon Houses, Bethune Gardens and Marshall Plaza – a project estimated at $166 million. Since founding Dantes Partners, Buwa Binitie has closed nearly $2.3 billion of unconventional real estate transactions.

New York Nonprofit Media sat down with Binitie to discuss what it was like migrating to the U.S., why he launched Dantes Partners and how the organization is creating affordable housing for New Yorkers. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Could you tell me about yourself and how you got started in the real estate business?

I am the founder and CEO of the Dumas Collective, which is an amalgamation of various real estate vertical fronts that operate in the real estate ecosystem and development, property management, construction management and investments. 

I got started in the real estate business. It's pretty simple. I'm an immigrant, or was an immigrant. I'm not sure if that's still a popular word these days, but migrated to United States from from Nigeria, moved to New York City because that's was what my dream was, and living in New York City, going to NYU, and as I was nearing graduation, I started to witness how your income dictated where you lived, and also got to experience firsthand how exorbitantly expensive it cost to live in the city. I had to move to Jersey City, specifically, and was commuting back and forth into the city to work. I didn't really think much of it, until I moved to San Francisco, where I found myself pretty much homeless for about six months because I couldn't find an affordable place to live, and when I eventually moved to Washington, D.C, again living out of a bedroom. I basically was like, I need to do something about this. This doesn't make sense, because, how is it such? How is it possible that someone like myself, who is employed, a contributing member of society, be on the brink of homelessness all the time? So I went back to graduate school, learned about real estate, and I've made my focus and my mission of preserving and creating affordable housing.

Can you tell me more about the specific projects you’ve pursued to create more affordable housing in New York City? 

We can talk specifically about Audubon Houses. This drives home for me primarily because, you have buildings that have experienced a significant amount of deferred methods, and there is nothing that annoys me more than the ability to quickly identify affordable housing buildings and the symptoms of what affordable housing buildings typically look like. The entry doors don't work. Elevator systems are barely working, if working at all, and just the general quality of life that the tenants experience in terms of customer service can also be lackluster. NYCHA created this opportunity for firms like myself to come and bring in new life to the residents, in terms of renovating the units, introducing better quality of life, whether it's a laundry system, a vending system, brand new elevators, brand new mechanical systems such that people can be comfortable within the unit, either in the summer or winter months. These were all things that I felt not only could my firm do, but spoke to our social mission. So we jumped at the opportunity. We got awarded, and now we are in the midst of completing 557 units for 900 residents that we hope will be ecstatic about this phenomenal work that we are a part of on their behalf.

You work with NYCHA to do a lot of innovations within public housing. Can you tell me why you think it's so important to renovate public housing? I know you've talked about a little bit, but, can you go more into depth when it comes to that?

I am the type of person that if I came home and something was a mess – it really, really should be a place of peace. This is meant to be your sanctuary. This is meant to be a place where you can escape from all that you have to encounter or are encountering, and if you're coming into a place where it's just as disruptive as outside, you're never going to be able to achieve peace in your lifetime. And no wonder you start to see a rise in crime, or rising mental health issues, or domestic issues, because everything is amiss. You're frustrated outside and you're frustrated indoors. That's not how human beings are meant to live. There's got to be a place of sanctuary for just about every single human being. 

So for me personally, we take on that role very, very seriously in terms of making sure that we do an exceptional job in not only renovating the units that these residents occupy, but we are renovating the exterior. 

It's unlike any other NYCHA project. We've flipped the lobby in ways that look like hotels, right? We have introduced color to the exterior of one of the buildings, just to again, think of ways to brighten up people's day and create a conversation on the block that says, “Wow, look at that building. It was not like that before. We've introduced high quality service reliant on your elevator and on the security features working. 

You’re an immigrant from Nigeria. How does your identity play a role or influence in the work that you do?

Well, I love that question.I would say that it's in different ways, right? All under the sort of acquiesce of America. I believe then, as I believe now, that this is a phenomenal place to be for an immigrant like myself who has always had bold, audacious goals. I've always felt like this is the place where anything and everything is possible. I felt that way 30 years ago, and I still feel that same way today …I don't want to be treated less than a human being due to the housing choices that are available to me because of my income. That's always been a big defining or big thought for me … And that's how I've always approached our development, and that's why we we've gone and taken deep strides to coin the term “luxury affordable housing” and have a trademark, because we have known from day one that there is no such thing as an affordable brick; there's no such thing as an affordable window; there's no such thing as affordable mechanical system. It's still the same thing. But the only difference between an “affordable building” and this class A building is just thought. It's thought in design; thought and approach and basically just giving more thought to how to present the building and services in a way that people are treated with dignity. 

I noticed going on the Dumas Collective website, it's predominantly Black leadership and that really stood out to me. So I was wondering, in your view, what's the importance of having Black leadership in this space?

Look, there's no surprise here, right? The real estate industry is a pretty unforgiving industry, and I say it's unforgiving primarily because of the significant amount of capital that's needed in order to be able to initiate any real estate transaction … There's no surprise that we are (not well represented) across … commercial real estate. And more importantly, if you were to talk to any minority individual about real estate, their only sort of introduction to real estate is that of a realtor. They don't know of developers … much about landlords, so on and so forth.

What I've tried to do since the advent of my company is to introduce members of the community that are interested in learning about real estate and hopefully be able to [help them] rise up the food chain in their career, by creating that avenue and that opportunity for folks within my community. 

I also wanted to bring up, you have a family Foundation. Can you tell me a bit more about how that started and the work that entails that part of your organizations?

So I would say it's really an extension of the mission of the Dumas Collective. The family foundation is an organization that I personally contribute dollars to on an annual basis. And it does a number of things. One, it supports organizations that have minority leaders in the arts, entrepreneurism and events. And what do I mean by events? Events such as thought drives, Thanksgiving and holiday parties. Some of it is centered around our properties. Some of it is all the properties, the arts. Anything really just encouraging folks who have a tendency to be creative and looking for ways to sort of continually encourage them to pursue their dream, because I believe in being a dream enabler. So if you're a writer, if you're a painter, a sculptor … we try to look for organizations that continue to encourage those talented individuals. And obviously, as an entrepreneur myself, we find or identify organizations that basically create a platform for high school student business competitions and every now and then are fortunate enough to be a judge at those events. It’s a way to put smiles on students’ faces and help mentor them, and so forth. One of the foundations that really makes me happy is an organization that is in the culinary space. They have figured out a way to harness a lot of talented individuals and channel them through their system and basically prepare them to succeed in the culinary space. That's yet another organization that I've pledged an amount of money to from the foundation to create job opportunities. 

You've closed nearly $2 billion of unconventional real estate transactions. What is the secret of your success rate?

We deliver, and that's what I tell my team all the time. I only want to be known for delivering on our promises. I don't want to be known for anything else. I don't want to be known for being famous. I don't want to be known for driving a fancy car, any of those things. I just want to be known for delivering on promises. So here we have a project and we have multiple stakeholders that we have to please. You've got the tenants who are looking at us, who were extremely skeptical from day one, and now they've got smiles on their faces, right? You've got NYCHA, you've got our lenders and everyone else in between that expects us to deliver. And I dare say they will all attest to the fact that we've done exactly or are doing exactly what we set out to do, and it's because of that, folks come back to us for more or they give us more work. I don't know if they just give us more because they know that we are not going to give up, but we're going to stick it out, and ultimately deliver.

Anything you’re looking forward to in the next year or few years in terms of your work in New York?

I mean, I would love to figure out a way for us to grow that. We sponsor quite a bit of organizations that are based in New York that resonate. We help out a lot [during the] holiday season. There are a lot of things that we are doing already, as far as far as social impact work is concerned. I think what I need to do, as we expand our operations in New York, is to just formalize a process that will continue to be an extension of what we're doing.