Newsmakers
Windermere Pays Rent for 8 Needy Families for Entire Year

Windermere Real Estate founder John Jacobi makes community service a must for his organization but helps to take it to a new level with the Home for the Holidays program.

BY HALEY M. HWANG

Many of us feel the pang of charitable empathy around the holidays. Some do a good deed, get it out of their system, and then go on with their lives until the following year, when the pang might return.

Not John Jacobi.

Jacobi, 63, founded Seattle-based Windermere Real Estate in 1972 and built it into one of the biggest independent real estate brokerages in the West on the premise that community service should be a yearlong commitment that should be at the core of a company’s mission. But this year, Jacobi took his community service mission to a whole new level. He wanted to know how he and his company could truly make a difference in the lives of needy families. Then he realized the answer—since housing is usually the biggest expense in any family’s budget, pay the rent of needy families for an entire year to help them get back on their feet.

The idea germinated with a few members of his staff this past fall, and then the Home for the Holidays program was born. Although the program’s name has a holiday angle, the value to needy families is intended to last all year long.

Windermere announced the program to its sales staff in the Puget Sound region and collected voluntary donations to the program during a six-week fund-raising period. As is typical of the company, salespeople opened their hearts and wallets, and the company raised nearly $80,000 in just six weeks—enough to help pay the rent of six families for an entire year. But the money kept pouring in, so a seventh family was added. Then the Jacobi family decided to sponsor an eighth family on its own.

Windermere partnered with the Salvation Army Northwest Division, because the organization already had a rental assistance program and a sophisticated case management system in place to ensure that the assistance accomplished the intended goal—that the families become self-sufficient by year’s end, says Michelle Barry, who is executive vice president for marketing for Windermere Services and in charge of the Home For the Holidays program.

When Liz Swope, program coordinator of the Salvation Army’s Homeless Family Assistance Program, first heard that Windermere wanted to pay the rent of seven needy families for an entire year, she said her mouth dropped open in shock.

“I said, ‘You’re kidding!’” Swope says. “I said, ‘OK, I have families! I have families!’ It is just a wonderful, wonderful opportunity for some of our families.”

Swope says that her program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development through the city of Seattle, provides housing or subsidized housing for needy families for three to six months. Swope’s annual budget has allowed her—over the 13 years the program has been running—to help about 100 to 120 families each year for an average of three months.

“I have never had anyone come to me and say, ‘Can I please pay the rent for your families for an entire year?’” Swope says. “This gives families hope and a light at the end of the tunnel that they need. Windermere is not paying their way but helping them on their way.”

Swope says four of the families that will be helped by the Home for the Holidays program have suffered financial setbacks in their lives through no fault of their own. Three of the families are headed by single moms who are victims of domestic abuse. The fourth family is headed by a single father whose wife walked out on the family.

When one of the single mothers—who also was recently diagnosed with cancer—learned that she had been chosen to be a beneficiary of Windermere’s Home for the Holidays program, she burst into tears and said, “We’re going to be okay now,” according to Swope.

Swope says that she met the man responsible for all of this at the Windermere holiday party in December.

“I told [Jacobi] that I’m so excited about this project, and he said that he is excited to be working with the Salvation Army, and he hopes to expand it next year,” says Swope. “He is amazing. To have someone in his position consider the people in the position that these families are in speaks volumes about his character and his heart.”

The Man Behind the Program

Jacobi—known as a very understated, behind-the-scenes kind of a man who does not like to call attention to himself—will be the first person to tell you that he is not responsible for the overwhelming success of the Home for the Holidays program. He credits the nearly 3,000 sales associates in more than 100 offices in the Puget Sound area for its success this year.

“We just have great people,” Jacobi says modestly. “They identified with this cause immediately. Everyone thought it was a great idea. We as a company made the commitment, and the sales associates came through.”

But much can be credited to the company culture that Jacobi has created and fostered over the years. Since 1989, sales associates have voluntarily donated $7.50 from each transaction—some even more—to the Windermere Foundation, a nonprofit organization started by the company to distribute more than $1 million each year to organizations that help the homeless or low-income families. In addition, every sales associate goes out into his or her local community one day each year to perform a community service project.

The commitment extends into the Jacobi family as well. Four of Jacobi’s six grown children are in real estate. Daughter Jill Jacobi Wood is president of Windermere and operates five real estate offices owned by the family in Seattle. Son O.B. Jacobi manages one of those offices.

“It’s so ingrained in all of us that it’s part of our lives to help other people,” Jacobi Wood says. “And we just made a vehicle for everyone to feel like they can truly be a part of it. It’s a big mission for us.”

It’s a company mission that comes directly from the top of Windermere, says Ginger Downs, executive vice president of the Seattle King County Association of REALTORS®, who has known Jacobi for about 10 years.

“When you think about Windermere, you always think about community service and a passion for giving back to the community, and that is directly attributable to John Jacobi and his personal passion for giving to the community,” Downs says. “He has a huge commitment to community service that filters down through all the levels of the organization.”

Windermere tested the Home for the Holidays program in the Puget Sound area this year, but the company hopes next year to open the program up to its entire network, which includes more than 6,000 sales associates in the more than 220 offices serving the western United States and British Columbia.

“We obviously have a social obligation,” Jacobi says matter-of-factly. “Our expertise is housing. That’s what we know. If we can help people get back on their feet by providing housing for them, then that’s what we do.”

To learn more about Windermere’s Home for the Holidays program, visit www.windermere.com/holidays or contact Christine Wood at 206/527-3801.

Editor’s Note: Newsmakers is a new monthly feature that profiles real estate professionals who have remarkable and inspiring personal stories, have found creative ways to tackle business challenges, or are making a difference in the industry or their communities. If you know someone who should be considered for this feature, write to Haley Hwang, Web Editor, at hhwang@realtors.org.


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