Why I Want to Know More About ESG in Multifamily

When I conducted the interviews for this year’s 20 for 20 White Paper, ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) was an unsurprisingly common theme. Based on the 20 conversations with senior executives, it seemed that ESG was becoming a driver in many decisions, including technology implementations. At the time, I noted that while the influence was big, it was unspecific. The parameters executives used to define potential ESG benefits of technology projects seemed extremely broad. The most sophisticated companies in the domain appeared to be at the stage of defining how they could measure ESG rather than using it as a decision-making criterion for individual projects.  The broader media coverage of ESG in the nine months or so since those interviews has presented a mixed bag of views on ESG. It makes me want to know more about how it’s affecting multifamily operations and technology.  A Shifting Tide? I was interested to read a recent special in The Economist (ESG Investing: A Broken Idea) that provided a detailed review of current ESG investment practices. The collection of articles referenced (and were perhaps inspired by) an essay series by Tariq Fancy, the former chief investment officer for sustainable investing at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset management company.  Fancy called into question the ultimate benefits of ESG initiatives, claiming that the profession is little more than “marketing hype, or spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community.” He pointed out that investments were rendered acceptable according to the ESG narrative that could be established rather than…