BC Business
Cambodian slum | BCBusinessWorld Housing plans to build homes for $2,500 to house some of Cambodia's slum dwellers.
Cambodian slum | BCBusinessWorld Housing plans to build homes for $2,500 to house some of Cambodia’s slum dwellers.
Two Vancouver real estate veterans, with the help of some high-powered friends, are launching a social enterprise that they think will transform the housing situation in some of the world’s worst slums.
Peter Dupuis and Sid Landolt, business partners for 32 years with S&P Destination Properties Ltd., are calling World Housing CCC Inc. “the world’s first one-for-one real estate gifting model.” Along with Toronto real estate magnate Hunter Milborne, Kal Tire president Robert Foord and others, the men are hoping to turn the business of selling condos into something virtuous. In short, their program will see condo developers deliver a portion of their proceeds on every condo sold to NGOs building basic housing for some of the millions of people around the world living in slums. “A condominium buyer chooses to buy in a certified World Housing community. And when that takes places, a developer pays a marketing services fee to World Housing of approximately $3,000,” explained Landolt at a Tuesday news conference in downtown Vancouver. “That fee then funds the construction of a home by one of our certified NGO builder partners in the Third World.” Landolt and Dupuis have spent years selling multimillion-dollar condo units for Donald Trump in Hawaii and Mexico, along with other luxury brands such as Ritz Carlton and Four Seasons. Now the pair are hoping to build spartan 130-square-foot units in places such as Cambodia and the Philippines.
“This model is sustainable for two reasons,” said Landolt. “There’s an overwhelming demand that consumers have to buy things that create social change, whether it’s a product or a service. And also there’s an incredible need—there are currently 120 million people living in slums around landfills in the Third World.” The idea was born on a flight that Dupuis and Landolt took from Los Angeles to Vancouver a couple of years back, where they found themselves seated beside Blake Mycoskie, the founder of TOMS shoes. Mycoskie popularized the “one-for-one” concept with his 2006 pledge to deliver a pair of free, new TOMS shoes to a child in need for every sale of his retail product. By 2012, over two million pairs of new shoes had been given to children in developing countries around the world. So far World Housing has gifted 53 homes in Cambodia through a beta condo project in Hawaii, with capacity to build 40 homes per month. By 2020, they hope to house 30,000 people in upwards of 5,000 units in the developing world. Dupuis says that they currently have “certified World Housing developers” lined up in Vancouver, Toronto, Hawaii and Taipei, with the Vancouver developer partner to be unveiled on March 18, 2014.