Community Benefits

- Savings on costs of construction for a public service

In 1990, Del Rio finalized the first application of the Prosperity Model to building public service infrastructure with the construction of a waste treatment facility for Los Angeles County in southern California. At the time, all large construction projects in LA County were financed as part of a multi-asset portfolio, otherwise interest rates on the financing would be exceedingly expensive. Enabled by a unique liability and payback structure, and one of the first applications of a design-build approach, this waste treatment plant was the first example of a low interest rate securitization of a single asset. In fact, it was the first rated and insured public-private partnership in the world. After the success of the facility, design-build single asset securitization became much more popular.

Community Benefits

- 40% savings on costs of construction and operation for a public asset

- 50% savings on ongoing operational costs

- Encouraging community self respect with high quality construction

- $300M donated to the public

Del Rio advanced the Prosperity Model in its next iteration, this time applied to the construction and ongoing management of a public health building for LA County. At the time, it was standard practice for developers building buildings for County use to charge the County to build the buildings, own them, and then charge rent to the County for ongoing use of the building. Even when the County did own new public buildings the developer would maximize the cost of construction as much as possible. Del Rio implemented the exact opposite model, and made development an affordable service. Del Rio built the building extremely efficiently with short and long term costs in mind, so much so that the building’s operational costs are still significantly under market. Del Rio also established a separate non-profit organization to operate the building long term, and all of this was implemented with the County retaining ownership of the building itself. All of these efficiencies were implemented while the quality of construction was significantly increased compared standard practices. This same structure was implemented again in 1996 for another building for the LA County Social Welfare Department, generating about $300M in current additional asset value to the County.

Community Benefits

- Increased capacity for self-governance

- Contributions to long term stability

The Prosperity Model doesn’t just reduce costs and increase efficiencies in hard asset development projects. It increases the prosperity of communities holistically, including creating opportunities for communities’ to improve their capacity for self-governance. In 2006, Del Rio was asked by Frank Jungers, the last American CEO of Saudi Aramco, to suggest an approach to support the resolution of Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Recruiting partnerships with the Vatican and leaders from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, and after putting in the first funding personally, Del Rio founded the first two Masters programs in Social Work and in Governance & Administration of the Public Sector in Palestine. The programs were run at the Catholic Bethlehem University, the first university in the West Bank, and continue to train public servants in Palestine today.

Community Benefits

- Ecological preservation

- Preventing privatization of natural commons

- Preventing wealth extraction

Natural commons resources, including water, fisheries, minerals, etc., are the foundation of the prosperity in communities. Unfortunately, some of the worst applications of the current paradigm of global development is in the extraction of value from the utilization of natural commons, which is why the Prosperity Model is most impactful when it is applied to protect and retain the value of the natural commons for local communities. This requires active monitoring and management, but simply monitoring the health of the environmental doesn’t make a difference without the clear goal to increase the prosperity of the people. To more clearly establish the need to integrate data about nature with data about humans, Del Rio has supported activities at the University of Washington combining the environmental sciences and social sciences. In the mid 2000s Del Rio provided grant funding for early GIS development for land and ocean data and in 2007, Del Rio successfully facilitated the partnerships and funding to establish the University of Washington’s College of the Environment, the largest such college in the world. This was the first college at UW to focus on the environment as a whole, as well as the first program to combine hard and soft sciences. Del Rio also donated funding to support scholarships for low income students to attend the College. His support of environmental science to support human-centric monitoring and management of the natural commons is ongoing. In 2020, Del Rio recruited a $32.5M donation from the Nippon Foundation to launch the Ocean Nexus Center at UW for dedicated research on ocean metrics and measurement to support ocean health.

Community Benefits

- Historical awareness, community dignity, and self-respect

- Stable funding for the museum

La Plaza is a Hispanic cultural heritage museum in Los Angeles cofounded by Nelson Del Rio. Del Rio influenced the design of La Plaza to include a large public space for hosting community events, and, wanting to establish the cultural institution’s long term stability and avoid the risks of perpetual fundraising, Del Rio convinced the founding board not to sell part of the land on which the museum would sit, but instead to build apartments and condos on the land and use that rental income to support the museum’s ongoing operations.

Community Benefits

- Established the World Bank’s policy on the oceans, fisheries management, and near-ocean community development

- Established a human-centric approach, prioritizing the wellbeing of both humans and nature, not just nature alone

Oceans management is a significant concern for international bodies including governments, IGOs, and environmental protection groups. In 2013 Del Rio was recruited along with civil society leaders, biologists and economists, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, and the CEOs of some of the largest seafood companies to participate in the World Bank’s year long policy development initiative to define their highest level goals for ocean investment. Most of the participants, including the fishing companies, entered the process prioritizing ocean pollution, ecosystem health, and sustainable animal populations and fisheries. But Del Rio guided the group to recognize that the most important goal they all share is to the prosperity of people, which includes the health of ocean ecosystems, but not at people’s expense, and not on the basis of extractive development practices. This was the first time history there was unanimous agreement on a policy making process with the World Bank. Several initiatives grew out of the panel and are still active, including the Global Partnerships for Oceans, a public-private partnership of more than 140 governments, IGOs, and other organizations dedicated to supporting ocean health, which is guided by Del Rio’s contributions to the Blue Ribbon Panel report.

Community Benefits

- Affordable, high quality housing for renters earning 30% of the local Average Median Income

Blokable is a paradigm breaking modular housing design, build, and own company based in California cofounded by Nelson Del Rio. Blokable’s business model and financial structure is a direct application of the Prosperity Model geared for solving affordable housing, an increasingly urgent need in California and many other cities around the world. Blokable’s Phoenix Rising is a 12-unit community housing prototype built in partnership with Washington State and Valley City Behavioral Healthcare, a non-profit offering recovery and support services that owns and operates the housing complex for renters making 30% or less AMI. Blokable took full responsibility for the necessary political partnerships, financing, architecture and design, and construction. Blokable built these units for about $125k / door including all amenities and ancillary expenses, half the average cost of housing development in the area, and faster than normal, all while dealing with rising steel costs due to supply chain disruptions from the COVID pandemic. The apartments are as high quality as a luxury condo, incredibly safe, sound proof, and all electric with high quality air filtration, recessed lighting, steel frames, and a 100 year useful life. The embedded IOT and efficient air conditioning reduced heating and cooling costs by 60% and significantly reduced the costs of ongoing maintenance. Blokable also has a non-profit arm that will sell its homes at cost to those most in need of housing, transforming the opportunities for generational wealth creation for poorer Californians.

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