Tracy Doran
The nonprofit Humanities Foundation has developed more than 2,000 affordable homes in the Southeast, with hundreds more in its pipeline.
Tracy Doran, president of Humanities Foundation
Creating housing for low-income seniors and families has been the organization’s mission, but president Tracy Doran has grown Humanities to do even more.
Doran sees the big picture as well as anyone in the industry. That’s why she’s taking on the related issues of food insecurity and health care for residents.
Since 2014, Humanities has delivered 400,000 pounds of food to people living in its developments. It always had small pantries at its properties, but the team recognized that it needed to do more.
“We saw that many of our residents, especially seniors, were struggling to meet their bills, and they would give up food to pay for other items,” Doran says. “We said that’s a place where we can really supplement and help them.”
Humanities has partnered with local food banks and churches to deliver fresh produce, frozen meat, and other staples to residents every other week. Previously available only to properties in its home state of South Carolina, the program has been expanded. Almost half of the food has been delivered to Humanities’ properties in Virginia. Deliveries are also made to a senior housing community in Georgia.
“It’s a direct infusion of capital into that household,” says Doran, who founded the organization in 1992 with her husband, Bob, who leads the James Doran Co., a real estate investment and development firm. Tracy worked with Bob on his deals and was well familiar with the business.
Wanting to give back to their community, they had volunteered to help build a single-room occupancy development in Charleston, S.C.
“About half of the people who were living in the homeless shelter were working full time, but they made low wages and couldn’t afford the set-up costs to go into an apartment,” says Doran. “The cost of living was high.”
Through that experience, the couple saw the need for a nonprofit that understood how to develop and finance affordable housing.
The active family also owns St. Jude Farms, a sustainable oyster farm and aquaculture business in South Carolina’s ACE Basin. The company has been a partner in the food pantry program, with its refrigerated trucks helping to make deliveries to the affordable housing communities.
Another major program that Humanities has started is a telehealth program for its senior residents. The organization, which has about 400 seniors in Charleston alone, recognized that many of them have chronic or serious illnesses, says Doran, who worked as a nurse for 13 years.
As a result, Humanities has teamed with Medical University of South Carolina to provide telehealth monitoring and in-person visits to several of its affordable housing developments, including a senior development in Georgia. “We’re monitoring and keeping up with folks who have illnesses before things get bad,” Doran says. “We can help people manage their chronic illnesses, stay healthier, and age in place to be able to live longer in their independent housing.”
There’s also more affordable housing that needs to be built. Humanities received an impressive three low-income housing tax credit awards to build 302 more affordable housing units in Virginia in 2016. That will add to the six projects that the group has completed and two it has under construction in the state.
