Riley Shantz has always been competitive, playing sports growing up and football in college for Missouri State. There, he dreamed of the NFL, but chose a different path for himself.

“Closing the door on playing football was the smartest thing he could have done,” says Debbie Shantz Hart, his mother and now business partner. “He took all of that determination and drive to play pro ball and put it into real estate development.”

Six years ago, Shantz started over and began working in his mother’s real estate development company. He started from scratch, earning his real estate license and asking thousands of questions, he says. But quickly his mother’s passion for low-income housing projects became his professional focus, seeing the transformational potential and power his projects could provide.

“I have an entrepreneurial spirit, and with real estate development projects, you have to have a vision and sell it to a city, to a community,” he says. “I enjoy the salesmanship, but these projects change residents’ lives.”

In 2023, DHTC Development broke ground on Nordic Landing, a 41-unit affordable housing project. Rents start at $400 a month for qualifying residents, up to $700 for two bedrooms, and 8 to 10 units will be set aside for youth aging out of foster care.

But Nordic Landing isn’t just an apartment complex: it’s a center for life change. Employment training, personal finance classes and mentoring provided by nonprofit partner Flourish will help Nordic Landing residents thrive.

“To help our neighbors and get more affordable housing in the marketplace, it comes down to projects like Nordic Landing,” says Shantz. “The more supply a market has, the more options, the cheaper the rents. That helps overburdened renters, who are often paying way north of 30 percent of their monthly income in housing. Our goal is to see everyone who rents in these developments save money that caused them to be an overburdened renter and then go on to succeed. Those extra dollars are life changing and community changing.”