Diversify with private credit and equity real estate investment funds that make non-concessionary impact investments to expand access for America’s working families to affordable, safe communities.
Senior Secured Mortgage Fund that makes private credit investments to experienced real estate sponsors. Targets monthly passive income and annual returns of up to 10% for accredited investors.
Private Real Estate Investment Fund that invests in income-producing, attainable rental communities. Targets monthly passive income and annual returns of up to 12% for accredited investors.
Private Preferred Credit Fund that makes primarily equity (debt for tax purposes) and debt investments to preserve attainable rental housing. Targets monthly passive income and annual returns of up to 11% for accredited investors.
Private Real Estate Investment Fund that invests in all stages of development to build, improve, and manage attainable rental housing. Targets quarterly passive income and annual returns of up to 13% for accredited investors.
See how DLP Capital’s lending fuels real estate projects that transform communities. These stories highlight the creativity, determination, and results of the talented sponsors we work with.
Explore a selection of our recent transactions across lending, acquisitions, and investments — demonstrating our commitment to delivering momentum, certainty, and impact for real estate projects nationwide.
Our core value of Driven for Greatness is about adopting a growth mindset and consistently seeking out opportunities to learn. The Twenty is our way of helping you do just that, named after the core value that sets the tone for all we do: the Twenty-Mile March. Learn from our latest webinars, articles, podcast episodes, and more.
In his blog, Founder and CEO Don Wenner shares insights from the lessons he’s learned as a faith-driven CEO who has grown DLP Capital to be an Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Company for 13 consecutive years at just 40 years old. Learn not just from his own experiences as an entrepreneur, father, and husband, but the most important lessons he has learned from friends and mentors like John C. Maxwell, Lloyd Reeb and others.
From impact investing to building an extraordinary organization while being equally focused on an extraordinary family, Don Wenner’s Elite Impact Podcast covers it all. Learn valuable insights and hear incredible stories of leadership, impact, and more from Don and his guests.
Experience DLP Capital events anytime. Watch keynotes, panel discussions, and training sessions featuring industry leaders and experts driving innovation and impact.
Access DLP Capital’s complete webinar library, featuring quarterly fund updates, educational sessions, and special presentations designed to keep investors informed and inspired.
Read the latest DLP Capital quarterly report for the most recent performance of DLP Capital-sponsored funds, updates on current investments within the funds, stories of our impact in action, company insights, and more.
CEO Don Wenner has built a life—and a company—dedicated to transforming lives through access to safe and attainable housing. Today, DLP Capital is creating solutions to the affordable housing crisis, redefining community, and helping investors discover success with significance.
DLP Capital’s purpose-driven, non-concessionary impact investments create housing, jobs, connection, and opportunity for families across America. Discover more about how DLP invests with purpose.
Meet the visionary leaders committed to executing DLP’s vision of transforming the lives of both residents and investors through the building of Thriving Communities.
Stay inspired by the latest updates from DLP Capital. Explore how we’re driving meaningful change, earning recognition, and celebrating milestones as we continue building thriving communities across America.
At DLP Capital, work is more than a job—it’s a mission. Join a team dedicated to solving America’s housing crisis, building thriving communities, and creating opportunities for families across the country.
Our mission starts with connection. Reach out to our team or visit one of our locations to learn more about how DLP Capital is creating impact where it matters most.
3 Innovative Solutions to the Affordable Housing Crisis
Rising demand and soaring inflation are exacerbating the affordable housing crisis across the country. Can this trend be reversed?
March 18, 2025
Market Updates
Half a decade ago, Covid brought the global economy to a near-complete standstill.
Now, it finally appears that the height of post-pandemic inflation, which peaked at an annualized rate of 9.1% in June 2022 for U.S. urban consumers—the most since November 1981—is finally within the rearview mirror.1
According to a recent report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), prices increased a mere 3.0% between January 2024 and January 2025, signaling a potential reversion to the Federal Reserve’s symmetric long-term inflation target of 2%.2,3
Still, lower inflation doesn’t mean that prices are declining—only that the rate of increase is slowing. In other words, consumer prices have likely risen permanently, an inconvenient truth that is arguably most visible in high-ticket expense categories like housing.
Rents, already up by an average of 33.4% nationwide since the pandemic, continue to rise faster than broader inflation, causing the average residential accommodation to cost nearly $2,000 a month to lease.2,5,6
This figure is creating cost burdens for many renter households. Research from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) reveals that 22.6 million or half of all tenant households spent more than 30% of their household income per month on rent in 2023—200,000 more renter households than in 2022, and 2.2 million more than in 2019.7
What can be done to tackle housing affordability challenges? While no single solution is a cure-all for the nation’s deep-seated rental crisis, some targeted efforts may help ease cost burdens. In this article, we present three innovative solutions to the United States’ affordable housing crisis.
1. Build attainable workforce housing
One particularly worrying development, according to the JCHS report, is that middle-income households—those earning between $45,000 and $74,999 per year—are experiencing the fastest rise in rental cost burdens out of any income group.7
As the study’s authors explain, cost-burdened middle-income households rose by “3.3 percentage points in just one year to 45 percent [of households in that income range, and up] 7.7 percentage points from before the pandemic.”7
One straightforward solution could be to build more housing indiscriminately; after all, a study conducted in Germany found that adding “one new housing unit to the stock for every 100 rental housing units offered on the market in a given month reduces rents by 0.4–0.7%.”8
But the JCHS data suggests that an optimal supply-side fix for housing affordability must be targeted and intentional. Increasing the supply of attainable workforce housing—communities aimed at moderate-income households earning between 80% and 120% of a market’s area median income, or AMI—could be most effective at reducing cost burdens for the demographic for whom unaffordability is most rapidly becoming a challenge.9
Workforce housing has historically been underbuilt in many U.S. metro areas.10 This means that a focus on “missing middle” attainable housing, rather than government-subsidized affordable housing developments (or, on the other extreme, high-end luxury communities), could offer a targeted, high-impact solution to the current affordable housing crisis.
DLP Capital’s impact-focused sponsored funds target net annual returns between 9–13% and help finance the development and construction of attainable housing communities.
2. Develop safe and attractive manufacturing housing communities
Single-family and multifamily dwellings comprise the lion’s share of the country’s housing stock, but that doesn’t mean that alternative forms of housing should be neglected.
Manufactured homes, which make up roughly 6% of all homes in the U.S. and about 11% of new single-family homes under construction, are quickly becoming an attractive competitor to their traditional, stick-built counterparts.11,12
They’re also more affordable than the latter. Factory-produced and site-assembled manufactured homes cost on average $85 per square foot to build.12 This makes them roughly one-half the price of traditionally-built single-family homes, which cost on average $165 per square foot to construct.12
Cost savings aside, these homes are also faster to construct: manufactured homes can be built in around three to four months, as opposed to an average of 8.6 months for traditional single-family homes and 17.1 months for multifamily communities.14
The DLP Preferred Credit Fund provides investors with debt-side exposure to manufactured housing, RV parks, and vacation communities.
A holistic approach to the affordable housing crisis should enlist the help of a multitude of residential housing formats that address the evolving needs of a growing population of tenant households.
Specifically, as the cost of homeownership soars to all-time highs, more would-be homebuyers are staying on as renters. Across the board, just 5.8% of renters are in a position to afford to buy a home,17 and even those who can skew older. The median age of today’s homebuyer is 38—and the average, 56.18
Given these figures, it’s easy to see why there’s an ongoing, nationwide uptick in renter enthusiasm for multifamily alternatives like built-to-rent single-family communities: these accommodations allow young families priced out of the housing market the opportunity to experience the space and privacy of single-family living without sacrificing the amenities common to apartment dwelling, such as clubhouses, pools, gyms, and tennis courts.
Developers are beginning to respond to increasing interest in these professionally managed communities, which are purpose-built with tenants in mind. Build-to-rent homes now comprise 10% of the U.S. single-family housing stock, up from 5% just two years ago.19 As of 2025, there are more than 110,000 single-family build-to-rent units in the pipeline, mostly in Sunbelt cities like Austin, Huntsville, Charlotte, and Orlando.20
The result, in other words, is a best-of-both-worlds arrangement: the perks of a fully detached home without the headaches of homeownership combined with the convenience of a multifamily community without the cramped nature of its close quarters.
Since 2006, DLP Capital has been addressing America’s affordable housing crisis by financing the development and construction of attainable workforce housing, including build-to-rent communities.
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