Permanently affordable.

Eve Picker: [00:00:12] Hi there. Thanks for joining me on Re-Think Real Estate for good. I’m Eve Picker and I’m on a mission to make real estate work for everyone I love real estate. Real estate makes places good or bad. Rich or poor. Beautiful or not. In this show, I’m interviewing the disruptors, those creative thinkers and doers that are shrugging off the status quo in order to build better for everyone. If you haven’t already, check out all of my podcasts at our website Rethinkrealestateforgood.Co or you can find them at your favorite podcast station. You’ll find lots worth listening to, I’m sure.

Eve: [00:01:05] Today, I’m talking with Kimberly Driggins. She’s Executive Director of the newly created Washington Housing Conservancy, tackling the affordable housing crisis with a fresh model. This one is aimed at ensuring that middle income teachers and firefighters are not priced out of their homes. D.C. is a city where rents are running rampant, and this only promises to get worse once Amazon’s HQ2 opens. For Kimberly, this is a challenge worth taking on. And just two years into the job and she’s making strong progress, she has her sights set on some big milestones. If you’d like to join me in my quest to rethink real estate, there are two simple things you can do. Share this podcast and go to rethinkrealestateforgood.co, where you can subscribe to be the first to hear about my podcasts, blog posts and other goodies.

Eve: [00:02:13] Hello, Kimberly. I’m really honored to have you with me today and excited to hear about your work.

Kimberly Driggins: [00:02:20] Thank you for having me, Eve. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

Eve: [00:02:24] So you head up a fairly new organization in Washington D.C., the Washington Housing Conservancy. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Why was it formed and how does it work?

Kimberly: [00:02:39] Sure, yes. The Washington Housing Conservancy, we are relatively new, not for profit organization 501c3. And we were created in 2018. And we were created because we saw a gap in the market really refocus on the market rate affordable, also known as NOAH, Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing. We’re focused on preventing residential displacement, stabilizing rents and promoting opportunity for moderate to low-income Washington area residents. Really, the focus of our work, we really work to mitigate displacement and to promote economic mobility. That’s really what we do. And we really felt that in our hot real estate market like D.C., where affordable housing is becoming a scarce resource, thinking about how we can preserve what we already have. This housing stock is the housing stock that is being lost to the market, no matter where you are in the country at the greatest rate. And for, you know, and it’s not the easiest to preserve, but it’s always easier to preserve existing housing as opposed to creating new housing. You need both. We certainly think that you need everything at your disposal, but we’re really focused on this, this product, multifamily housing.

Eve: [00:04:21] Yeah, I think you have, there’s an organization in San Francisco that does something a little bit similar if I’m remembering correctly.

Kimberly: [00:04:30] It’s quite possible, I mean, in hot markets like San Francisco, New York, Boston, I mean, we’ve been fighting this for several years, decades, I would say. I think a lot of listeners that are outside of the DMV don’t really understand how expensive D.C. has gotten over the last 20 – 25 years. And we really are. When you look outside of New York and California and possibly Boston, we’re really in the top five, maybe top three in terms of most expensive markets to live in, especially in the rental market. We’re very much akin to Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn and Brooklyn, New York and the Bay Area in terms of our housing costs. We’re not as high, but we’re trying to really solve a problem before it becomes out of control. With respect to mixed income communities. In those areas that I just named you in Manhattan, you really have a situation where you have unless you’re in a subsidized unit, it’s really the very wealthy, very affluent or low to no income. Because you have the housing subsidy or government subsidized housing, you don’t have a lot of this market rate affordable. I think probably none in the Bay Area, San Francisco specifically. So that’s what we are focused on, and we’re really focused on workforce housing, which is a term that I don’t love. It’s an industry term, but it’s really, it’s people who are, you know, working such as your first responders, your teachers, your lab technicians, hospitality workers, folks that make a “decent living.” You can be making 60 – 75,000. Yet you are extremely rent burdened. That’s not enough to be not rent burdened here in the D.C. area.

Eve: [00:06:42] Just talking about rent burden, so the typical calculation that you do with a tenant is one third of your income should go to rent and utilities, right? So, if you earn $60,000, then you shouldn’t really spend more than $20,000 on rent and utilities. How is that playing out in Washington? Where can someone find rent at $20,000 for a year? At the moment?

Kimberly: [00:07:08] It’s increasingly hard to do, Eve. I mean, that’s the reality. You know, on average and I’m trying to find some statistics, but you know, this is a region where you know, people are severely rent burdened. A cost for, you know, a two-bedroom apartment is well north of 2,000 maybe 2,500 dollars. And I think about 35 percent or so of folks are rent burdened. And you know, I can get you the specifics.

Eve: [00:07:43] I read some really high numbers. Something like 40 percent are paying half their income in rent, some really large number like that.

Kimberly: [00:07:51] It’s actually, yeah, I’m pulling up some of the stats. It’s 50 percent of households are spending more than 30 percent of their earnings on housing in the D.C. region.

Eve: [00:08:00] Wow!

Kimberly: [00:08:02] That’s a lot, that’s half the population.

Eve: [00:08:05] So these are everyday people who really can’t afford to live in the places they’re living in. What happens when Amazon’s HQ2 headquarters opens? Does that get worse?

Kimberly: [00:08:17] Well, you know, I do. I think that it’s known when you have tech companies and organizations like Amazon, when they move into town, the impact. It can be great for the economy, but it definitely creates housing pressure. And you know, to Amazon’s credit, I think that they have looked at what happened in Seattle. Looking at what’s happened in California with Google and Apple and all the others, and really try to do things differently here in the DMV and Nashville. I think that was a main motivation for their housing equity fund, which we were one of their first marquee investments. So, I think overall, the tech sector has actually responded in a way that I wish other corporations and employers would. I think that they’re recognizing their impact on place. Mainly because of what has happened in California and what has happened in Seattle. And so they all have initiatives around housing, affordable housing, housing affordability. You don’t see that. D.C., you know, there’s a lot of other employers and hospitals and universities are your largest employers in D.C. You also have a lot of defense contractors that are based in D.C. So, we don’t actually, tech doesn’t drive industry here. But I hope that the other sectors are listening and thinking and looking at what Amazon and Microsoft and others are doing because we really need the corporate sector to do their part around thinking about solving for the challenges of housing affordability. Because I think it’s everyone’s issue and I think it becomes a workforce issue for many of these companies. If we don’t do something collectively. It can’t just be government. Can’t just be the not-for-profit sector. We all have to be rowing in the same direction. And I haven’t seen that, and I’m hoping that Amazon and Google and others can inspire other corporations to do similar type of investments.

Eve: [00:10:33] So then that brings me to the Washington Housing Initiative. How does that tie into what you’re doing? Why was it formed? What does it do?

Kimberly: [00:10:44] Washington Housing Conservancy, we sit in a larger, broader initiative called the Washington Housing Initiative. Think of it as a three-legged stool. So, the Washington Housing Initiative has three main components. The Washington Housing Conservancy, or WHC, which is what I run. I’m the Executive Director and we are the not-for-profit owner and operator of the real estate that we acquire. In addition to WHC, we have an impact pool. That impact pool provides mezzanine or second debt financing. It’s a social impact investing arm and that’s managed by JBG Smith. And then we have a stakeholder council that we’re establishing this year and that really is looking at policy and advocacy in this NOAH space. There are very few tools in the toolkit to preserve this type of housing stock, and we are really hoping to change the system and really create more mechanisms to allow this to occur. We are disrupting the real estate market. We’re trying to do something that doesn’t want to happen. And we’ve realized that. We compete with the for-profit sector with these properties. In the NOAH space, by and large, the majority of these properties go to value-add investors or developers that are looking to make double digit returns on their investment, as well as add to displacement. They often acquire these properties. There’s a lot of up-side. The rents are low, but the growth trajectory is high, and they often know that, and they will either make substantial improvements that raise rents or just raise rents gradually because there are no affordability covenants on these properties. And so that’s what we’re doing that’s so different is that we’re buying the property. We’re putting affordability covenants, sometimes up to 99 years. Our first project with the Amazon money, it’s a 99-year deal. But more realistic of our typical profile is 20 – 25 years. Sometimes it’s 30 or beyond. It really depends on where we are in the financing terms, but we’re putting affordability covenants on properties that currently don’t have it and maintaining the asset for the long term. We’re not interested in reselling. We refinanced the property. That’s how our investors get paid in the impact pool, not through sell.

Eve: [00:13:28] Mm hmm.

Kimberly: [00:13:29] So did I answer your question there, Eve?

Eve: [00:13:31] Yeah, yeah. So, I think, you know, probably most of us are thinking, you know, to keep something affordable is very difficult with the way finances are structured these days. The capital stack and you’re a nonprofit, which makes it possible for you. But how about that impact pool that you talked about? How does that work? I mean, where does the money come from and what sort of return and how big is that going to grow?

Kimberly: [00:13:58] Sure. So, the impact pool, again, that’s it provides mezzanine financing. I’ll talk about who invests in that in a second, but to give you an example of our capital stack. So, our typical capital stack, it’s a first mortgage from a GSE like a Fannie Freddie. That’s 70 percent. On average, these are averages. The impact pool comes in to provide the mezz debt, and that’s up to 20 percent. And then the conservancy, WHC, what I run, the organization that I run. We provide up to 10 percent equity, so we have real skin in the game. We put money into our deals that’s separate and apart from the mezz debt, from the impact pool. And I think that that’s something that most people don’t really know or fully understand. But what makes us competitive is that mezz debt, because it is below market rate debt. That debt is so the investors, we have, it’s 115 million for the first round for the pool. The fund has closed. We raised that money over the last two years. We started deploying that money early or late last year. And that impact pool, the investors are primarily banks. And banks know, this is impact investing. So, it’s a single digit return to investors. It’s a total of nine percent. It’s seven percent to the investors. There’s a two percent fee that goes to the administrators of the pool. In this case, it’s JBG Smith, so it’s nine percent money.

Eve: [00:15:40] Not bad. It’s not bad.

Kimberly: [00:15:42] It’s not bad. You know, when we structured the fund several years ago, that was what it needed to be. I think if we do a second round, it could be lower in terms of the return. It’s not bad. I know in the social impact world you’re looking typically around five six percent return, so it’s above average for social impact investing and we recognize that. And so again, banks are primarily the investor in that fund, and they have many reasons to invest. Mainly, it fulfills their CRA credits, and it advances the mission around affordable housing. All of them have affordable housing, social impact, economic mobility goals. And you know, the biggies are all in. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, you know, you name it, Trust, which used to be SunTrust, BB&T. So, they are national banks, local banks. We have high net worth individuals that are also in the fund now, you know, as opposed to our money WHC, you know, ours are philanthropic dollars. So, you know, that’s the difference. Banks are rarely donating to us. If they are, it’s really a very small amount, typically. But our biggest donors, we have donors, we have some foundations locally, Marriott, Shatner Foundation, others that are based here. We’re looking to grow. We have a $30 million fundraising goal, the Conservancy does. And we’ve raised over half of what we need to date. We have raised 18.5. So, we’re looking to close that gap in the next 12 to 18 months to be… We feel like that is the number it’ll take to get us to scale and to get us towards self-sufficiency. That’s another key aspect of our model, Eve, is that we are designed to be self-sustaining. We will not always be in a fundraising mode once we get critical mass in terms of the number of units, which is 3,000 for us. You know, our properties do generate some revenue that goes back to the Conservancy to help with our operations. Not a lot, but some because we have market rate units in the portfolio. I mean, that’s part of our criteria selection.

Eve: [00:18:18] Interesting. So you, to sort of break even, 8,000 units…

Kimberly: [00:18:23] 3,000 units

Eve: [00:18:25] 3,000. Okay. That’s a lot.

Kimberly: [00:18:28] Yes, it is.

Eve: [00:18:29] What is scale mean to you then? What sort of the big, hairy, audacious goal?

Kimberly: [00:18:37] I mean. For me, you know, that’s a great question, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that. You know, we want to go as far as we can. I mean, you know, we’re proving the model. We’ve had a breakthrough year this year. I mean, you know, I’ve been on the job two years and this year we’ve acquired our first properties. We have two more that we’re closing on and we have a strong pipeline. And I think that we’ve moved from this is a nice idea and it sounds cool to knowing that it can work. So, we’re past proof of concept, but we’re pre scale. And for me, you know, 3,000 is a starting place. It’s not the endgame. I mean, I definitely think we want to do more. I don’t know what that means, but I do know that we want to keep going. And I also think that as we prove the model, if we can do more in the low-income space, I get this question all the time. You guys are focused on workforce. What about low income? There’s pressure there and it’s the hardest housing to create because of the amount of subsidy that it requires. That’s really true. I mean, I would hope that, you know, if we’re successful beyond my wildest imagination, that we are able to do more at the 30 percent or less AMI. I mean, that’s where the challenges, I mean, are really, really great.

Eve: [00:20:03] Yeah.

Kimberly: [00:20:03] But there’s also a lot of government resources that work to produce housing at that level. Of course, it’s never enough. But you know, we, as I said earlier, all need to all sectors need to step up to solve this crisis, and we are one solution. We’re not the only solution. And I think that if we can make a dent and workforce, we chose this because no one is really, not as many people are paying attention to this demographic. And there’s actually no resources for folks. I mean, and this is personal. I mean, this was me, you know, I chose to live in Washington because it was affordable over 20 years ago. If I was just starting out in my career, I’m not sure if I could afford Washington. I went in, I started my career in the not-for-profit space. I wasn’t making a lot of money and I didn’t have a lot of debt from college and graduate school. So, I was able to follow and work on what I’m passionate about and live in a city that was affordable, and I want more people to be able to do what I was able to do. And you know, right now, it’s really tough in D.C. to be able to do that. You have two and three roommates, or you have two or three jobs to be able to come out of school.

Eve: [00:21:33] Right, right. So where do you find your tenants then? Are they typically the buildings are full, and you keep tenants in place?

Kimberly: [00:21:41] Yes, absolutely. I mean, you know, the great thing about our model is when we buy a building, it’s about keeping residents there. We want residents to stay. We don’t need people to move. The mix is what we need for our model to work. The one exception is the Amazon project and Crystal House. Crystal House is a market rate luxury building, right? It wasn’t mixed income, you know, typically, our building profile is Class B Class C buildings that are in very good shape. They don’t require substantial rehab, but they’ve got great bones. They’ve been well cared for. There’s not a lot of deferred maintenance, but it’s just not the, you know, the buildings. And you know, that’s most of the NOAH housing stock is what I’m describing. And so that’s typically our building profile with the Crystal House. That’s market rate luxury. We’re transitioning that building to 75 percent affordable over the next five years. So it’s 20 percent a year and we’re doing that through natural attrition. We don’t need to displace current residents. We want residents to stay. Many of the residents that live in Crystal House qualify for the workforce program, so when their leases are up, we’re asking them if they want to participate. Now, participation in the workforce program, having your rent reduced, you have to we have to income certify. So, this deal was written to LIHTC standards and so we income certify at all of our properties to make sure that you’re qualifying for the workforce units. There’s about 20 percent of those units are 50 percent or less of AMI, but it’s 75 percent. So let me do the math. 825 units, that’s 619 units that will be made affordable for moderate to low-income workers and residents at Crystal House over the next five years. And we were keeping that affordable for 99 years. There’s a 99-year affordability covenant. It’s quite possibly one of the largest NOAH projects in the country, so we’ve been told by some of our national advisors.

Eve: [00:24:05] So, you know, when I listen to this, you know, I also interviewed an architect, who I think is amazing in Australia, who’s tackling this in a completely different way, but exactly the same demographic. The firefighters and teachers who could no longer afford to live in the city. And he found a piece of land next to a railway station with a bike trail that goes all the way into the central business district and built this building, just chipping away at all the cost to make it affordable for that group of people without any marketing. He has a waiting list of 8,000 people.

Kimberly: [00:24:42] Wow.

Eve: [00:24:42] So there’s a part of me that thinks like, this is a global problem, and we’re just like scratching at the surface of it. What is it really going to take to correct this housing crisis that we’re in? Are we ever going to be able to correct it?

Kimberly: [00:25:00] Yeah, that’s the million-dollar question, Eve. I do think it’s a global phenomenon. I have some experience in Europe and Denmark. Copenhagen specifically, I sat on a board there. Europe tends to have social housing, which, you know, they have a larger sort of definition that I think includes sort of this workforce. But I’ve gotten some interest outside of the country. I know that Canada, Toronto. You know, again, another hot market real estate market. And you know, the project that you discussed in Australia. Jennifer Keesmaat, the former Planning Director, she’s now head of a company called Markee Developments. They’re doing exactly the same thing, but they’re doing new construction. And, you know, we talk often. I recommend her. If she hasn’t been on your podcast, she probably has.

Eve: [00:25:54] I love that. I would love that. No.

Kimberly: [00:25:56] I think that what we’re doing is so similar. But her scale is actually larger than mine because it is new construction that they’re doing. But the goal around creating and or preserving workforce housing is is exactly the same and also the ambition around. We have a dual mission. It’s preserving rents and service of promoting economic mobility, and we haven’t even scratched the surface on what that looks like. So we are a mission driven, not for profit. We focus on, you know, how can we promote economic mobility for our residents? And we have a full strategy that we developed last year that we are implementing with all the properties that we acquire. And it’s really exciting. I think that that piece is part of the solution to the question that you raised. Because it’s it’s not just about rents, but it’s also how do you ensure that people have enough income? How do you raise people’s incomes? That’s really the equalizer. And, you know, you know, minimum wage, I mean, it’s going up to 15 hours and I mean, $15 an hour. It was stagnant for I don’t know how many years in the U.S.

Eve: [00:27:19] Yeah.

Kimberly: [00:27:19] So you know, there’s definitely like an income stagnation issue in the U.S. and how do you promote economic mobility, whether that’s, you know, for our residents thinking about what are the resources that our residents need to help them build wealth? Is it, you know, financial literacy? Is it thinking about how do you mitigate the second highest expense, which is daycare in the DMV? Is it thinking about how do we promote entrepreneurship if that’s something that you’re interested in? Is it thinking about workforce development? So, we really have a focus on human capacity and wealth building, and we’re partnering with best-in-class service providers for that. We were very clear about what we do and what we don’t do, but we are very collaborative. We will make the partnerships that we need to, to advance our mission.

Eve: [00:28:20] So you’ve had a really big background, including pretty significant honors like the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard and White House Fellow. And I wonder how you ended up here. You’re clearly very passionate about this. What led you, kind of down this path to equitable housing for everyone?

Kimberly: [00:28:42] You know, it’s something I’ve thought a lot about. You know, I’ve had an amazing career and, you know, I’ve been in urban planning and development my entire career. I started out working at Enterprise. Enterprise Community Partners now, but it was Enterprise Foundation in the mid 90s. And so, this is a bit of a full circle moment for me. I’ve always been someone who was interested in cities. I grew up in the suburbs, so it was very much, you know, I was attracted to cities. But I grew up in the 80s and I saw, you know, cities weren’t the hot places to be that they are now. And there’s a lot of homelessness. There’s a lot of violence, gang violence. There was a lot of drugs. I saw a lot of that when I would go into to New York. When I go into to Philadelphia, when I go down to D.C. And I always wondered why, and I saw it disproportionately impact people of color, African Americans in particular. And I was living a very different life. You know, my parents were first generation. They moved from the city to the suburbs to give my sisters and I a better life. You know, this is really, you know, zip code matters. Where you grow up is a strong determinant of your life outcomes. This is Raj Chetty. But even before he came along, this was the case and my parents understood this and they moved us out. You know, my mom grew up in the toughest part of Baltimore. My dad grew up in Chester, Pennsylvania, in the poorest area. And so, you know, they were, you know, they defied expectations and, you know, they instilled in us, you know, the will to give back. Like, you know, do whatever you are passionate about. But make sure that whether it’s in your career or in your personal life, around service, around this world is bigger than you. And too much is given, much is required. And that ethos has driven me and my entire life. My love of cities. I love everything about cities. I love the density. I love the diversity. I love the messiness actually of cities. Cities are complicated and it’s something as an adult, I’ve always chosen to live in a city. I went to graduate school in Chicago, and I’ve made my career in Washington, and I worked in Detroit for three years. So, I like big, messy challenges and problems. But I also look at the entire ecosystem. So, I would say that I’m an urbanist and I’m a city builder. Right now, I’m focused on the challenge of housing and creating equitable housing. But, you know, throughout my career, I’ve gone deep. I’ve thought about how arts and culture, you know, it can be a catalyst for neighborhood change that informs my view on placemaking and making sure residents feel a deep sense of belonging. So, you know, the route, you know, it’s not a dotted line per say, but there is a through line in my career and this it all comes together in this job. And there’s a sense of urgency. I mean, I love working on issues that are of the moment, and there’s nothing more urgent right now in the DMV than really trying to figure this out. And I like innovation. You know, I worked for government for 15 years. I loved local government. I served with honor and duty with local government. But they’re not out of the box.

Eve: [00:32:34] No, no.

Kimberly: [00:32:35] We did some. We did some innovative things. You know, I tried my best. But that’s also what draws me to this job and this role is that we’re not quite sure that it works. We are proving out the model and I think that we are going to be successful. But there is a level of risk and I think that innovation requires risk taking. You really do have to push the envelope. You have to be uncomfortable. You have to move out of your comfort zone. And these are things that I live my life by. I certainly, my career has been defined by taking some level of risk because I think that that’s when you really learn, and I think that you have to fail. I think, you know, innovation part of innovation is failing, but you want to make sure that you course correct, that you’re constantly willing to look at what you’re doing to evaluate, is this working and be able to innovate and move as you go?

Eve: [00:33:47] I love every word you said. So, you have a start-up, it’s pretty, that’s pretty fabulous. That’s a pretty great way to live your life.

Kimberly: [00:33:59] You know, for me, you know, it is, you know, I, you know, I get really excited, I love being the first person to do something. Even when I was in government. Many of the jobs that I had I was the first person to have it. I like startup culture. I like building something from the ground up. You know, it’s deeply rewarding. And I also think I have the personality to think about the next steps. What’s needed, the unknown. You know, this is not work that if you need to know what you’re doing every day, and you need a roadmap, this is not for you. You know, I’m interviewing now to bring on staff and you know, I’m looking for personality traits as well as skills. But this entrepreneurial, out-of-the-box thinker, you know, that’s where I live, and I try to surround myself around people who have that as well, because you need that in startup culture.

Eve: [00:35:06] Yes, you do. Well, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this, and I hope I get to talk more to you some other time because there’s a lot of energy there, and that’s pretty wonderful.

Kimberly: [00:35:18] Well, thank you, Eve. I really appreciate you inviting me on to your podcast, and I would love to come back because I feel like I didn’t do justice talking about the social impact work that we’re doing. And I think that your viewers, as well as you would be really interested to kind of get into the details of that work. And I would love to share it with you. You know, at an appropriate time.

Eve: [00:35:43] Awesome. Thank you. That was Kimberly Driggins. Kimberly is a woman of great passion and generosity. She’s had a remarkable career in urban planning and public policy, working on and in the cities she loves. And now she’s turning her passion and energy to the challenging crisis that is touching so many people. Housing. While Kimberly has only just begun to craft a fresh approach to this overwhelming problem, it’s clear that she plans to be spectacularly successful and we’re sure she will be.

Eve: [00:36:44] You can find out more about this episode or others you might have missed on the show notes page at our website, Rethinkrealestateforgood.co. There’s lots to listen to there. A special thanks to David Allardice for his excellent editing of this podcast and original music, and thanks to you for spending your time with me today. We’ll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.