The Power is Now

Tracking down EquityCoin: The First Digital Token on the Blockchain Backed by Affordable Housing

Vernon J

The first time we mentioned EquityCoin in this magazine was in 2021 when we were doing a profile of its founder, Vernon J. Its been a year now and we want to track the progress he has made with the coin seeing that its different from all others in that it allows people to purchase and retain their rights over real estate properties.

EquityCoin, Inc was founded as a public benefit corporation. It created the first digital token on blockchain technology backed by affordable housing. What the company does is that it provides apartments to those who are most vulnerable to homelessness while also helping the community members to build generational wealth through fractional ownership of the property.

According to Vernon, “on any given night in America, there are over 500,000 people sleeping on the streets even though studies show that increasing access to permanent housing has the potential to reduce homelessness by 50%. This is the crisis of our time, and we need more public and private programs that can directly address this basic necessity.”

Vernon is a commercial real estate professional and an investor with more than 16 years of experience. He launched EquityCoin in January 2021 after renting one of his units to a single mom and son who were living in a shelter.

“I saw tears of joy in her eyes when I handed her the keys to her new unit. Never before that moment had I felt such fulfillment. From that point on, my purpose was clear – to help thousands of families in need of affordable housing,” says Vernon. “When landlords step up to provide housing to the underserved, everyone wins. The tenant receives essential permanent housing, the city keeps families off the streets, and property owners guarantee their cash flow through government rent vouchers.”

Research shows that real estate is one of the well-paying investments of all time and has created wealth for many people more than other asset classes but, the challenge is, many minorities get excluded from this wealth-generating asset class.

“By marrying blockchain technology and affordable housing, we will revitalize urban areas from coast to coast, building a more healthy, livable, and sustainable society. It’s not only important to do the work, but also to have the cultural empathy to provide a holistic approach to community-building,” states Beatriz Durant, EquityCoin, Inc.’s Director of Property Management.

 

“It was essential that we build a company with executives and board directors that actually represent the communities we serve”, Vernon declared. According to Deloitte’s Board Diversity Census Report, appointing women and minority directors provides benefits beyond just demographics. Diverse directors are “more likely than White men to bring experience with corporate sustainability and socially responsible investing, government, sales and marketing, and technology in the workplace to their boards. These skills are on the forefront of growth in a post-pandemic economy and less than 55% of board members in the Fortune 500 report having any one of these skills.”

 

The company was named 2021’s  Most Fundable Companies. To help streamline the tokenization process for other real estate operators, the company is developing a proprietary secondary market called EquityShare. This will logically process the terms and conditions of the real estate equity contracts for execution on the Ethereum blockchain. Currently, the average exchange period of real estate is 30 days, although EquityCoin aims to reduce that to 30 seconds.

 

Sources;

https://www.easternprogress.com/meet-the-black-and-latinx-company-using-blockchain-to-house-homeless-families/article_2fae7995-2b90-54e8-9288-9656b0cf0d7e.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/equitycoin-named-one-2021s-most-123600898.html

https://equitycoin.org/#join-the-movement

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/equitycoin

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