THE SESSIONS PERSPECTIVE

3 days ago

3 min read

Who Will Own Our Neighborhoods?

Warm sunset on a neighborhood street: smiling couple with keys, kids walking, shopkeepers outside storefronts.

By DJ Sessions, Sessions Lending Group

Let me be honest with you.

For years, we have watched change come to our neighborhoods without us. New buildings go up. Old neighbors move out. Property values rise, and somehow the people who lived there the longest are the ones who benefit the least. We see it in Dayton. We see it in Cincinnati. We see it in Columbus. And too often, we find out what happened only after it already happened.

I want to talk plainly about that, because I believe we can change it. But only if we stop watching and start owning.

Renting the Present, Losing the Future

There is nothing wrong with renting. Many of us start there, and many of us stay there longer than we planned. But we have to be honest about what renting does over time. When you rent, you are paying for a roof today while someone else builds wealth off your payment for the rest of their life.

That is not a small thing. In our community, the gap between those who own and those who rent is one of the biggest reasons wealth does not pass from one generation to the next. We work hard. We pay on time. But at the end of it, too many of us have nothing to hand down.

Ownership is how that changes.

Ownership Is Bigger Than a House

When I say ownership, I do not only mean a home, though that is where many of us should start.

I mean the corner store. The barber shop. The daycare. The trucking company. The buildings on our own blocks. Right now, in too many of our neighborhoods, we live there but we do not own much of what is there. And when you do not own it, you do not control it, and you do not benefit when it grows.

Business ownership matters just as much as homeownership. When we own the businesses on our streets, the money stays closer to home. We hire our own people. We keep our corridors alive. That is real community power, and it does not come from anyone giving it to us. It comes from us deciding to own.

Two Ways In: Build It or Buy It

A lot of people think you have to start a business from scratch. That is one way, and it is a good one.

But there is another way we do not talk about enough. Right now, all across Ohio, older business owners are getting ready to retire. Many of them have good businesses — real customers, real income, real employees — and no one to take over. When those businesses close, our neighborhoods lose jobs and services we needed.

We can be the ones who step in and buy them. That is called acquisition, and it is one of the most overlooked paths to ownership we have. You do not always have to build something new. Sometimes you keep something good from disappearing, and you keep the jobs right here at home.

Why I Do This Work

I did not learn this from a book alone. I’ve spent years in lending, and I’ve put in the work to understand development and business ownership through programs like the NAREB Developers Academy and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses. I mention that only so you know this is not talk. These are real, proven paths, and they are open to us.

But knowledge does not build anything by itself. Action does.

Your Move This Week

So here is my challenge to you, and I mean it seriously.

Pick one ownership goal for the next twelve months. One. A home. A rental property. A business you start or a business you buy. Write it down. Then take one real step this week toward it — a phone call, a meeting, a plan on paper.

We cannot change what already happened to our neighborhoods. But we can decide who owns them going forward.

Let it be us.