Matthew Linde of People Restoring Communities: 5 Questions

For Matthew and Benjamin Linde, affordable housing development isn’t just a career, it’s a family business. Rather, it’s the family’s calling. 

Together, the Linde brothers lead People Restoring Communities (PRC), a New York-based, family-run real estate firm specializing in developing and preserving affordable, mixed-income housing.

The brothers took over the leadership roles of CEO — Matthew’s helm — and chief operating officer — Benjamin’s position — in 2022 from their father and uncle. When it was founded in 1971 by their grandfather, Jerry Chatzky, the firm was called Property Resources Corporation and focused on a variety of residential real estate assets. But when it was time for Matthew and Benjamin to take over, they knew it was time to fundamentally change the company’s mission.

Affordable housing was a key element in the company’s portfolio, but now that the Linde brothers are running the show, it is the only element. Over the last year, PRC has transitioned into third-generation leadership, and rebranded with a focus on housing equity.

Commercial Observer sat down with Matthew Linde in early March to discuss the company’s rebrand and mission, and what it’s like navigating affordable housing in New York City. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Commercial Observer: Can you take us through the company’s history and the rebrand?

Matthew Linde: The original name of the company was Property Resources Corporation, and that was a name chosen by my grandfather. There was very much an ethos of the company of being very press shy and staying out of the headlines and just really not putting ourselves out there. We love the work. We love what we do, but advertising what we do was generally not something that was seen with my grandfather’s generation, or with my dad and my uncle’s generation. I think part of that was because the company wasn’t just doing affordable housing. We were doing some high-end luxury stuff, we were doing some high-end condos, and we were doing third-party management.

The decision my brother and I made was that we really wanted to focus on affordable housing, and we really wanted to change the company from being a for-profit multifamily developer, to kind of skirting that line between being a for-profit company and being a nonprofit and mission-driven company.

We’re equally focused on trying to improve tenant lives, and we felt a little more comfortable putting ourselves out there, being a little more public. The name change to People Restoring Communities really defines what we do.

Why make the change and focus solely on affordable housing?

It was just the part of the business that really spoke to me and my brother, more than the other side of the business. 

My background is much more on the market-rate side, and I come out of the capital market side. I was financing these deals and seeing these multifamily operators have these astronomical cash-outs. We’d go to these closing dinners and we’d be drinking wine that was older than I am. I just kind of realized that’s not really my goal.

Juxtapose that with going to a tenant meeting and getting a hug from a resident who’s had a leaky faucet for years and who had to miss multiple days of work to stay home and have the maintenance person not show up, to being able to take over management and really renovate these units while people are living there, and change people’s lives.

We’re capitalists. We’re in favor of making money. We want to grow, we want to scale. We want to support jobs. But we also have that secondary win, where you’re also making people’s lives better and supporting communities. 

Are you developing affordable housing projects solely in New York City?

Right now we are in four states in terms of deals that we have under contract that we’re pursuing. We have deals in Massachusetts, deals in New York, deals in New Jersey, and a deal in Virginia. My brother and I love New York, we’ll always have a presence in New York, but we asked, “Is there a way to diversify and to start doing deals in other states?”

New York is very competitive and New York’s very challenging. There’s a ton of support for affordable housing. But every deal has three or four layers of subsidy in it, and a ton of soft money, and you’re dealing with four or five city agencies. New York is always going to be a part of our business, but the pipeline in New York has gotten so saturated, and the wait times to get your deal to the closing tables have just gotten longer and longer and longer — although we’re seeing some signs that it’s starting to improve. And people are focused on it and trying to make it go faster. We just decided that there’s other opportunities out there to do deals elsewhere. 

Where was your first stop outside of New York City?

New Jersey. It just made the most sense. New Jersey has its own quirks, and its own housing state financing agency that also has its quirks. But I think we’re really excited about the possibility of not doing deals only in New York. 

We’re breaking ground on a project in Paulsboro, N.J., this summer. This was a 150-unit complex that we purchased last summer. We had a seller who just wanted out, so we did a quick closing and bought it on a bridge loan. After acquiring it, we went to the state and we said, “Hey, there’s these 150 units that need to be renovated, can we take this and go get tax credits and go get bond financing, and can we do a 4 percent deal that can afford us the ability to renovate all of these units?” It took about a year — which is relatively quick for an affordable housing deal — to put together the tax credits. We’re hoping to break ground at the end of June and start renovating those 150 units.

Let’s go back to New York City for a moment. You mentioned how much red tape there is. What is your perspective on how that impacts affordable housing deals? 

It’s frustrating for everyone. I think the people who we deal with at the city agencies are some of the most dedicated, smartest, hardworking people in the industry, but it’s the policies. Nobody’s looking to take any risk if you work for a government agency. And the amount of box checking that anyone needs to do in order to clear things just makes everyone’s job so much harder. … They have to figure out some way those boxes can be checked faster. Because the industry is frustrated by just how long it takes to deliver affordable units, whether you’re renovating them or you’re building them from the ground up.

We’re in this really weird time in New York City where there’s finally consensus that we need to add supply. Everybody on both sides is saying, “We got to build, we got to provide more affordable housing.” But that’s coming at the exact same time that we’re being hit with this operating crisis in existing units, and kind of compounded by the fact that we have a budget deficit. 

All of these things take money, and I feel for the mayor, because he’s in a tough spot. He has all of these really grand visions for how he wants this city to be. But meanwhile, everyone’s struggling to collect rent, everyone’s struggling to pay their operating expenses. There’s just no money left over to reinvest back into existing properties.

I don’t know what the silver bullet is, but I think everyone is focused on it. Everyone knows what needs to happen, but it’s going to take time, and it’s going to take some difficult choices about how the city is spending its money, whether it’s promoting the existing buildings or going to new supply. But there’s not an unlimited supply of funds that can support all of those goals. 

Amanda Schiavo can be reached at aschiavo@commercialobserver.com.