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As a teenager, Shadrick Bogany woke up nearly every Christmas morning in a different home. Living in subsidized housing with his brother and mother, Bogany moved frequently within Houston. “I had a ringside view of how families can be disrupted, how hard it is to make friends when you’re constantly moving, and the stigma of living in a housing project,” Bogany says.
Until he was 10, Bogany had lived with his dad, who owned his home, invested in other properties, and eventually retired early from bus driving to live on his rental income. The contrasting experiences had a profound effect on Bogany. By the time he was 18, he had purchased his first home with the money he earned from his job at Montgomery Ward. While he attended the University of North Texas in Denton, his mother moved into the house to assume the payments. And when he graduated—with a wife and baby in tow—he was able to move back into the house.
“I realized early on that home-ownership was a great way to build wealth,” he says. He eventually parlayed the equity in his first home to start his own real estate brokerage and purchase his next home. “I felt like if I could do it, everybody else could do it,” he says.
Bogany, ePRO, who heads the Shad Bogany Team at Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate—Gary Greene in Houston, says too often people in the Black community don’t believe homeownership is possible. Without a family member or peer providing a real-life example of how to grow wealth, the idea of owning seems out of reach.
At the Houston Association of REALTORS®, he was instrumental in making a down payment assistance finder and financing primer, available at har.com/downpayment. And as vice chair of the Houston Area Urban League Community Development Corp., he has helped veterans and others secure homes.
“During his decades-long career, he has relentlessly worked to address systemic barriers that impede equal housing opportunities,” says retiring Houston Association of REALTORS® President and CEO Bob Hale. “His actions have not only transformed individual lives but also reshaped entire communities, making them more inclusive, prosperous and just.”
A Teacher at Heart
Bogany has executed his mission in two ways: educating as many people as possible and volunteering with numerous Texas housing agencies in service to the community. On the education side, Bogany often teaches courses and workshops, instructing practitioners about fair housing and consumers about buying and selling. He’s routinely tapped for insights about affordability by the Houston Chronicle.
His biggest educational platform is his live, weekly radio show. “Real Estate Corner,” on gospel station KWWJ 1360 AM, has run every Tuesday night for nearly 34 years. Bogany uses the show to discuss everything from down payment assistance to REALTOR® advocacy.
He Talks, People Listen
The show has imbued Bogany with local and state clout. “That’s why the mayor knows me. Politicians come on my show. I’ve had Republicans and Democrats. I’m proud that I’ve been respected on both sides of the aisle, and that’s because I do the right thing.”
Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry appointed him to the board of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the agency responsible for affordable housing and other community programs statewide, where he served for seven years. At the Fort Bend County Housing Finance Corp., where he is currently president, he has partnered with for-profit developers to help build apartments using the low-income housing tax credit.
At the Houston Association of REALTORS®, he was instrumental in making a down payment assistance finder and financing primer, available at har.com/downpayment. And as vice chair of the Houston Area Urban League Community Development Corp., he has helped veterans and others secure homes.
One developer asked Bogany to help combat NIMBYism jeopardizing a 125-unit, $14 million affordable project. Bogany says the councilman and the neighbors were adamant. “People had bought into this thing that we don’t want ‘these people’ in our neighborhood. ‘It’s going to bring our property values down.’ It was like a disease spreading,” he says. “There’s no evidence. It’s all myth. I put a tax credit apartment right down the street from my house, and my value has tripled.” (A recent Georgia Institute of Technology study supports Bogany’s claim. The researchers studied property values in the Los Angeles area before and after the addition of affordable housing and compared the changes to similar neighborhoods without affordable housing nearby. The study found affordable housing developments could help raise nearby prices by 3%–5%.)
Residents near the proposed project showed Bogany a brochure to explain the type of complex they’d prefer. It was one of Bogany’s own tax credit developments. “I said, ‘Tell me what it will take for us to do this.’ We did everything they asked us to do. They voted to support us. And we had a two-month waiting list the moment the complex was finished,” he says. “You would never know it’s a tax-credit deal. It has computer rooms, a business area with internet access, even a day care.”
One of the programs Bogany talks about in classes and on his radio program is the Housing Choice Voucher program. Many people are unaware, he says, that it enables Section 8 recipients to use their housing benefit as a source of income for a purchase under certain eligibility requirements (though not every housing authority participates). “Homeowners gain stability. And their mortgage payments, aside from taxes and insurance, remain the same. The government benefits because it doesn’t have to increase assistance to cover rising rental costs.”
One client he recalls was a waitress with kids, including two she took in after her sister died. Bogany helped her use a Section 8 voucher to buy a four-bedroom home. “When I gave her those keys, she hugged me. The kids hugged me. It made me cry,” he says.
For Bogany, those keys mean her kids will be able to stay at one school, make friends, and have a house of their own to come home to each night. That stability, he says, is the key to a vibrant future.
