Mardie Oakes

2006

Mardie Oakes

Hallmark Community Solutions

San Francisco, California, United States

The Bold Idea:

California is facing a housing crisis. Currently, only 15 percent of residents can afford a median-priced home, compared to 49 percent nationwide. Over 350,000 individuals, including 95,000 children live on the streets. The housing crisis is especially acute for the rising number of people with mental illness or developmental disabilities, where the model of institutionalized living is being dismantled without quality, replicable housing alternatives to take its place. Hallmark Community Solutions (HCS) proposes to bring together real estate financing tools and design options in new ways to provide cutting-edge housing solutions that are scalable and replicable for Californians in need.

Biography:

Architecture has inspired Mardie since she was a child. Believing that innovative design could create stronger communities and healthier lives, she attended Rice University School of Architecture. Mardie spent five years as a nonprofit housing developer in the Fifth Ward, Houston’s lowest income community before earning an MBA from Harvard Business School. She then moved to San Francisco to serve as Director of Lending for a nonprofit bank, where she invested $20 million of private capital into affordable housing projects in the Bay Area.

Moment of Obligation: Why did you want to create your new organization?
I’ve witnessed firsthand how high-quality, affordable housing can transform lives. Where and how people live directly affects their health, productivity, stability, and happiness; children growing up in diverse communities are more equipped to navigate the growing complexities of their world. Agnews Developmental Center, an institution for people with developmental disabilities located in the heart of Silicon Valley, is slated for closure in 2007. This impending closure, along with key legislation, created the right moment for HCS to launch. This pilot project will not only make a lasting difference in the lives of Agnews residents and their families, but will pave the way for a new era of how housing for people with developmental disabilities is designed, built, and financed.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to take on deeply entrenched social problems?
I’ve spent the last ten years working in architecture, housing and community development, and finance to advance my passion for making the places people live places to thrive. Loving the work is the first step. The effect of our physical surrounding on our spirits has fascinated me since I was a little girl and drove me to study the systems that manifest in our surroundings: capital, real estate, design, community networks, and government. Once you understand these systems, you can begin to change them. My husband, Tony Deifell, also gives me the ability to take on this challenge, helping me commit to these ideas with all my might. Tony is Gall to Think Big personified, and this rubs off on me everyday.

New and Untested: Describe what’s innovative about your new work.
HCS’s innovation lies in its commitment and capacity to create new ways to finance and design new housing solutions. HCS will identify alternative opportunities for financing, using a co-creation approach with institutions that have local interests in affordable or special-needs housing (e.g. universities, government, banks, health care providers, corporations). As a result of these efforts, we will pave the way for other mission-driven developers to build on these techniques and expand the palette of financial tools available to the sector.

Seeing Possibilities: What do you believe are the most important qualities to do social change work?
Having a big vision and then translating that vision into the thousands of tiny steps it takes to make that vision come true.

Which musical artists/albums get you going?
The Weepies, Chris “Kiff” Gallagher, David Byrne, Maktub, and Prince.

What books do you recommend (pleasure, work, and anything in between)? Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick, Regeneration by Pat Barker, and Straight Man by Richard Russo.

Which websites do you visit often (work and/or personal)?

• wdydwyd.com
• fabprefab.com
• earth.google.com
• wikipedia.com

Any last words, thoughts or advice to other social change leaders?
The following quote guides me personally and professionally: "We had definitely committed ourselves and were halfway out of our ruts. We had put down our passage money – booked a sailing to Bombay. This may sound too simple, but is great in consequence. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way." I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: ‘Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!’" (The Scottish Himalaya Expedition, 1951)