Silver Street Development Corporation is proud to announce the launch of the newly redesigned SSDC website. The website, completed in partnership with development firm Old City Press of Washington, DC, is designed to serve as the fulcrum upon which Silver Street’s increasingly robust PR efforts will turn in the coming months.
Public opinion on affordable housing has always been contentious, the current polarized political climate only dramatizing the pre-existing tensions surrounding the issue. Through a broad PR campaign, Silver Street hopes to promote their vision of subsidized affordable housing, as an industry that, when shepherded by organizations of repute, has the potential to offer an improved quality of life and healthy, prideful communities to millions across the country.
“Affordable housing communities, when owned and operated responsibly, should be not only a positive asset to the individuals living within them,” saysRoger Gendron, President of SSDC, “but also to the larger communities within which they exist;” later adding: “if owners make this a priority, attitudes towards affordable housing will inevitably become more positive as time goes on.”
Until recently in the company’s history, Silver Street has driven their resources primarily towards creating and preserving affordable housing communities without focusing overtly on public relations, this despite a recent spate of activity which includes their acquisition of Pequot Highlands Apartments, a 250-unit community in Salem, MA, and Sebastian Villa, a 171-unit community in Neptune, NJ, which together will exceed $90M in development costs, and the acquisition of partnership interests in over 5,000 units across the country via their direct investment platform.
“Silver Street has historically been kind of a quiet operator. They have a definite reputation in the industry, but we’re really hoping to see the company become more of a standard name among industry leaders and government agencies and legislators,” says Pete Gendron, SSDC’s Director of Marketing. “We have an opportunity here not just to grow our brand, but also to make an argument on behalf of affordable housing in general to the country.”
The website, developed in partnership with Old City Press of Washington, DC, will highlight Silver Street’s 10,000+ unit portfolio, leadership, recent acquisitions and partner network. The site will likewise act as a digital hub for Silver Street’s government outreach program, the aim of which being to forge connections with local, state and federal legislators to further the cause of privately-owned affordable housing, an aim worked towards in conjunction with the Institute for Responsible Housing Preservation (“IRHP”) and others.
“Owners have a responsibility to help educate their local and national representatives to the benefits of affordable housing,” Gendron says. “It has unparalleled efficacy as a vehicle for elevating individuals who reside in these communities, and that is a message that is in need of continual vocalization throughout the public sphere.”