Turner Impact Capital Buys 655 Units Of Affordable Housing In Dallas

Bobby Turner and his Turner Impact Capital have made a lot of headlines at Bisnow in the last couple of years, particularly in its home base of Los Angeles. But after announcing last week that the private equity firm bought 1,300 units of workforce housing in Texas—655 units in Lake Highlands and Oak Cliff, and 645 units in Austin and Las Vegas—and partnered with actress and Texan Eva Longoria, Dallas will soon be far more familiar with the venture for social change.

Turner Impact Capital has a three-fold mission: to provide education, affordable housing and preventative healthcare in dense and diverse cities with a disparity of hope for blue-collar residents. Essentially, it builds schools, fills apartment complexes with tenants who can trade skills for lower rents (ie teachers would provide tutoring services or police officers would keep guard over residences) and staffs healthcare clinics with residents with healthcare training (ie nurses and medical technicians).

The firm’s real estate investment arm, Turner Multifamily Impact Fund, acquired two Dallas properties last week. 

The 356-unit Legends on Lake Highlands and the 299-unit View at Kessler Park complexes will recruit teachers, police officers, healthcare providers and service workers who make too much to qualify for government subsidized housing, but too little for home ownership.

Bobby sees Eva Longoria's partnership with the fund as important, and not just because she's helping finance the deals. “We need ambassadors in these communities that bridge the gap between arrogance [from capital providers] and distrust [of those capital sources by stakeholders],” Bobby tells us. He believes partnering with Eva Longoria combats that.

Dallas isn’t a complete stranger to Turner Impact Capital. Its Turner-Agassi Charter School Facilities Fund has already built a few KIPP charter schools, but now Turner's upping its game in the Big D.

Bobby hopes in the next few years, his firm will build a dozen more schools, buy 2,500 more housing units and build preventative healthcare clinics to work in tandem with each other to enrich communities.