Solving NYC’s housing crisis is more than an academic exercise for Fordham graduate students.
At the Fordham Real Estate Institute, graduate students tackle problems that the industry faces every day, including the challenges posed by balancing the need for affordable housing with the financial requirements of developers. Last time we spoke with the Fordham team, we got an overview of how their Real Estate Master’s programs prepare students for the boardroom; in our second piece, we learn how the program’s focused structure helped recent graduate Adam Pollack create his award-winning proposal for a mixed-use development in the Bronx.
Real-world problems need real-world solutions
Fordham’s real estate master’s programs prepare professionals for the opportunities and challenges that exist across a complex and competitive real estate industry. One of the biggest challenges is addressing affordable housing.
Solving the housing problem involves bringing many different components together, from zoning and permitting to design, construction and financing. Solutions also demand that the private and public sector work together. A common theme conveyed across Fordham’s different master’s degree programs is that there has to be private sector involvement to create more affordable housing.
Fordham utilizes Capstone experiences to provide students with practical projects that allow them to put their skills to work in real-world scenarios. For his Capstone project last year, Pollack created a development plan for a transformative affordable housing project in the Bronx.
The proposed project leveraged the NYC Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) zoning and the FRESH program to deliver 371 affordable units, a ground-floor ALDI grocery store and 156 parking spaces across a three-condo structure totaling nearly 270,000 square feet.
“Although there’s an affordable housing need in a lot of different places, what Fordham has helped me to better understand is that the details of knowing your individual area is really important,” says Pollack. “You need a lot of different support, both politically and economically in terms of subsidies and tax incentives, to make it pencil out.”
Pollack’s development plan shows how a strategic layered financing model, using Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and other subsidized sources of debt, can create both critical housing for the community and a financially viable project for the developer. Pollack was recognized as a Capstone award winner – and he now has the added bonus of watching how his plan compares to the development now taking place at the very same site.
A practical education from working professionals
The Fordham Real Estate Institute curriculum is designed to develop collaborative, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that will provide students with a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The curriculum itself is grounded in the real world, giving students experience with the challenges industry professionals face every day.
“What makes Fordham’s real estate master’s program unique is its timeliness,” says Ravi Bhatia, PE, an instructor and co-chair of Fordham’s Construction Management Master’s Degree program and Business Development Manager at Skanska. “The program is evolving as we see the market needs change.”
Fordham keeps track of industry trends and adds new courses and modules as needed across its master’s programs in real estate, real estate development, construction management and hospitality.
One of the strengths of Fordham’s RE master’s degree programs is that all of the instructors are adjunct. As practitioners in their respective fields, instructors are constantly bringing in fresh ideas from their day jobs in the industry.
Bhatia, who has been an instructor at Fordham for the past five years, has over four decades of experience in the construction industry.
“Connectivity to the real estate market, and the New York real estate market in particular, is a strong selling point for Fordham’s real estate master’s degree programs,” says Bhatia.
At the leadership level, the Fordham Real Estate Institute maintains close ties to major firms, ensuring that the graduate programs can act as feeders to prominent positions in the investment, development, construction and hospitality sectors.
“What’s really nice about the leadership of the Fordham program is that there’s a great connectivity between the university and the industry as a whole,” says Gemma Burgess, co-head of the global real estate practice at the executive search firm of Russell Reynolds Associates and a recent recipient of Fordham’s Bridge Builder award. “Bringing the school and the industry closer together is a way that we can continue to be successful at bringing in a pipeline of fresh leaders into the industry, and also to make sure that it’s an inclusive pipeline.”
Reckoning with real estate’s future
One of the advantages of Fordham’s model is that students get a real-time look at the changes going on beneath the surface of the real estate industry.
In his classes in the Construction Management Master’s Program, Bhatia conveys that construction is now a high-tech business with innovation in materials and processes, such as robotics and modular construction, that are helping to contain the costs of housing construction. The task ahead for future real estate leaders will be exploring ways to continue to innovate and use technology to create more affordable housing options.
“If we can leverage technology partnership between government and developers, we are definitely going to find solutions, but they’re not going to be easy, and that’s the opportunity for our students at Fordham,” says Bhatia. “We’re going to provide you with the tools, the methods, and, more importantly, the mindset, to go out and become leaders in real estate and construction.”