Uplifting Neighborhoods One Project at a Time
With a budding nonprofit, Daisy Figueroa (’21) improves housing for low-income communities.
Photo by Patrick Strattner for Boston University
Uplifting Neighborhoods One Project at a Time
With a budding nonprofit, Daisy Figueroa (’21) improves housing for low-income communities.
In her final year at BU Law, if you didn’t find Daisy Figueroa at her laptop you may have found her reaching for a hammer and nails.
She and two classmates from her UC Berkeley undergraduate days spent much of their pandemic downtime completing free home remodels for low-income renters in the LA neighborhood where she grew up. They also built dozens of fold-away desks for K–12 and college students to make their transition to remote learning a bit easier.
The pandemic-inspired construction projects eventually seeded a nonprofit, Hood Renovationz.
Even as Figueroa enters the world of corporate business law as a first-year associate at Boston-based Goodwin Procter, she and her workmates intend to keep nurturing and growing the budding social enterprise.
“We’re all so passionate about this organization and we realize it has a lot of potential,” Figueroa says. “All three of us are equally invested in keeping this vision alive as far as we can possibly take it.”
The idea for Hood Renovationz sprang from a simple wish to make her parents’ rental home more comfortable for them during the pandemic. Even after both Daisy and her sisters had moved out, their parents’ single bedroom remained crowded with the maze of bunk beds and dressers that had accommodated the family of five for 20 years.
Her parents were overcome with joy when they saw the transformation by Figueroa and her college friends Joseph Rios and Francisco Millan. After Figueroa documented the makeover on Instagram, the idea really took off.
“People were really hyped about it and that’s when we realized there was a bigger need than we ever thought,” she says. “We realized we don’t have to do a lot to make a big impact.”
The trio soon got requests to help others in the neighborhood. They endeavored to help as many people as they could using their own labor and supplies, aided by microdonations that flowed in as word spread. Hood Renovationz was featured in Vice and on CBS’ The Talk, which gave $1,000 to the cause.
In the Huntington Park neighborhood where she grew up, as is the case in many low-income communities, renters often can’t depend on their landlords to keep up with home maintenance and don’t have the means to do it themselves.
We’re doing as much as we can with the time and resources we have. We always have this mindset we’re running a marathon not a sprint here.
“People that haven’t lived it find that hard to believe,” she says. But as someone who grew up under those circumstances, Figueroa can appreciate what a difference such help can make.
Figueroa credits the mentors she met at BU networking events, including lawyers at the Locke Lord law firm and the Hispanic National Bar Association, for supporting her efforts. They not only helped with the paperwork involved, but also gave her the confidence that she could pursue the social welfare project while finishing her law studies.
“We’re doing as much as we can with the time and resources we have,” she says. “We always have this mindset we’re running a marathon not a sprint here.” For example, the crew has learned that it’s faster to build 20 desks at a time and set aside one day to install them all. The renovation projects take longer and the scope depends on each client’s needs. They aim to complete one per month. This summer, they spent two months on a youth center renovation while Figueroa was studying for the bar exam.
Soon, the nonprofit will be eligible for grant funding, which will allow them to hire someone with nonprofit startup experience to take the enterprise to the next level, including taking advantage of the volunteer database they’ve been building along the way.
At that point, Figueroa plans to take a step back to focus on her legal career, but will remain involved at a board level.
She looks forward to the day when the nonprofit can expand to the Boston neighborhoods she visited while working with BU Law’s Immigrants’ Rights & Human Trafficking Program and pay back all the support she’s received from the school.
“It’s full circle. I’m straight up this girl from this neighborhood and I’m very proud of that,” she says. “I didn’t have to hide this part of my identity and where I come from. I brought that to BU Law and they embraced me without hesitation. The support of the community has been amazing.”
