Our Story

We develop and operate sustainable, life-enhancing affordable housing with a focus on long-term community engagement. Our mission is to enhance quality of life through community development centered around affordable housing. We achieve this through thoughtful planning, vibrant design, innovative collaborations and deep commitment to place and people.

As of August 2019, CDP became a Certified B Corporation (“B-Corp”), a reflection of our dedication to our mission and priority of impact over profits.  Our work is driven by who we are and guided by the following values.

Six core values that guide our work.

Commitment

Commitment

When we say we’re going to do something, we do it. Our word is sacred and we’re accountable to ourselves and to our relationships.

Sustainability

Sustainability

We believe in being stewards of the environment, continually searching for and implementing low-impact or regenerative solutions.

Community

Community

Our vision of community is inclusive and all stakeholders are invited to the conversation.

Equity

Equity

In a world with finite and unequally distributed resources, we strive to ensure equal and equitable access to the essentials of a high quality of life.

Innovation

Innovation

We don’t believe the status quo is sufficient so we’re continually pushing the limits in our pursuit of excellence.

Culture

Culture

We support the arts, artisans, craftspeople, and farmers who celebrate localism and work to integrate this culture into our communities.

We are architects of change.

CDP is dedicated to social change by reimagining community development from the ground up. We’re driven to strengthen the fabric of cities and towns by meeting the housing needs of diverse local citizens and integrating sustainable planning, design, and policy solutions. Through all stages of conceiving, planning, financing, and operating a new project, we center community, environment, and craft. The results show this – over 50 developments that integrate long-term social and cultural programming, symbiotic partnerships, and innovative, sustainable design.

We’re strategic optimists.

We see opportunities where others see obstacles, and have the experience and vision to turn risks into rewards. Our founders have over 30 years of combined experience working with cities and public agencies to bring new investment into existing neighborhoods. Our team is skilled at harnessing diverse resources and partners to share and realize big dreams. Since 2011, CDP has successfully built, preserved or is actively developing 55 unique projects, comprising over 5,100 units and $1.9 billion in total development impact. As our cities and lifestyles change, mixed-use, affordable housing will only become more crucial, and we’re honored to grow with and serve the next generation and beyond.

We believe in quality not quantity.

We’re very selective about our projects and have always focused on going deeper, not wider, in the places we work – because they’re the places we live, too. We treasure the local, and the ability to drive transformative change through everyday engagement and a human scale. This is reflected in our integration of sustainable building practices that are energy-efficient and economically sound.

We prioritize impact over profit.

As a Certified B-Corporation, we are dedicated to the highest standards of social and environmental stewardship, public transparency, and legal accountability, including a commitment to support local economic development by sourcing and purchasing at least fifty percent (50%) from local and independent suppliers as well as serving at least seventy-five percent (75%) local and independent customers or clients, including tenants.

We’re a family.

Both literally and figuratively. Founded by two brothers, Eric and Kyle Paine, CDP prides itself on a talented, close-knit team, and on forging long-term relationships with each community we build. Beyond our in-house team, CDP collaborates with the industry’s most progressive thinkers and highest-caliber third party architects, general contractors, financial partners, non-profit organizations, and property managers who share in CDP’s core values of ethical, efficient, sustainable, and community-oriented development. Each development is formed in close collaboration with a local artistic or social platform that runs long-term programming for residents and neighbors, ranging from organic vegetable gardens to job training courses to after-school art programs.

Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion.

In our relatively short history, Community Development Partners has succeeded in bringing its mission-based orientation to multiple developments in a number of West Coast communities. Our continued success with comparable developments in four Western states has brought us to a more complete understanding of the societal costs of any diminution in our country’s social equity and the results of failing to embrace the diversity that characterizes our communities and nation. These understandings have led us to formalize polices that we hope will help in overcoming these inequities and the resultant problems that they produce.

We will, therefore, dedicate our best efforts to increasing both social equity and diversity in all aspects of our work.

Although our company directly employs a limited number of professional staff, we are committed to pursuing a diverse workforce, to welcoming and including people with different identities to our team. Further, we aspire to engage those with which we do business in the pursuit of increasing our social equity performance. Currently over 40% of our workforce is comprised of individuals who self-identify as members of a protected class and over 40% of our Executive Team is comprised of such members. Our commitment is to maintain and, over time, to increase these percentages.

We recognize that maximizing improvements in the social equity impact of our business will occur when we both pay close attention to our own actions and ask those in our supply chain to do likewise. Therefore we have instituted a policy to review all our professional contracts and our purchases with an equity lens and, with solid data to guide us, search for ways to make improvements in our performance. Equally important, we are asking all those with whom we do business for information on their social equity performance. With this action we hope to persuade all those with whom we have relationships to evaluate ways in which their practices can contribute to opportunities for those stymied by disadvantage to be more active participants in the wealth of our society.