The era of ESG investing is drawing to a close, according to critics who say the label promised more than it delivered. Political attacks, disappointing returns, and a lack of verifiable impact have left a vacuum that some see as an opportunity for more disciplined, conviction-driven models.
Steven Libman, founder of Investing With Purpose™, has spent 15 years building a faith-driven multifamily investment approach that treats community impact as an operating system rather than a marketing claim. In his view, ESG asked the right question—"Does my investment matter?"—but answered it badly by creating a universal moral scorecard that became political, vague, and unenforceable.
"You could really slap an ESG label on almost anything," says Libman. "But where was the measurable impact?" The failure was structural: ESG tried to impose a single set of values on a diverse investor base, leading to inconsistent application and no reliable way to evaluate claims. For faith-driven investors, the framework outsourced the definition of goodness to Wall Street. "Faith-driven investors do not need Wall Street to tell them what is good," he adds.
Libman's alternative focuses on what he calls the Purposed Care Initiative (PCI), an on-site program embedded in his firm's multifamily properties. The initiative delivers measurable outcomes: lower tenant turnover, improved delinquency rates, higher reputation scores, and stronger staff morale. "Caring is not charity," Libman emphasizes. "It is a strategy. Better communities create better assets, and better assets create better investments."
This approach challenges the core ESG assumption that investors must trade returns for impact. Instead, Libman argues that genuine community investment produces both. The firm tracks standard real estate KPIs—net operating income, occupancy, expense ratios—alongside Purposed Care Indicators (PCIs), such as the number of resident events, pastoral care connections, and acts of service completed each month. This dual accountability structure gives investors a clear view of financial performance and community impact.
"We do not want to be ESG with a cross on it," Libman says. "We offer real disciplined investing with real underwriting and real returns, but coupled with real care and real accountability associated with that care."
With ESG in retreat, the space it occupied is genuinely open. Libman believes the better framework is straightforward: biblical stewardship, transparency, purposed impact, and excellent investment discipline. The Purposed Care Initiative offers an early signal of what rigorous impact accountability can look like in practice, though whether it gains traction beyond faith-driven firms remains to be seen.
As investors search for something more concrete than a label, the lesson from ESG's fall is clear: impact language without impact infrastructure does not work.
