This is the real estate shop where each episode will bring you a top industry expert to share
their current programs or projects that are making an impact in our communities today.
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Welcome to the real estate shop. In today's episode we are blessed to have Ms. Catherine Buell,
2024 Harvard Loeb Fellow and former director of Amazon's $2 billion housing equity fund. Catherine,
how are you today? I'm great. So excited to be here. Good. Yeah, we're excited to have you as
well, Catherine. You know, your background is tremendously impressive from what we've seen
and what we know about you from being in DC and the work that you did in DC.
We're just for the listeners, so can you mind telling them about your background and how you
kind of matriculated to where you are today? Yeah, absolutely. So I like to consider myself
somewhere between a nosy busybody and a startup kid. I am an attorney by trade. I practice law at
a firm called Pat & Boggs and I bought my house, my first house in Ward 8 in historic Anacostia on
Pleasant Street. It really was a pleasant place to live because I thought my house was beautiful
and did not know that that was going to start an almost 20-year journey into community development.
In historic Anacostia, I got curious about my community and started showing up at community
meetings. And this is around the time, got a bit more active around the time that Mayor Fenty became
mayor. And he was looking for folks east of the River to serve on boards. And so I started in
the built world and community development serving on the DC Historic Preservation Review Board
at a time that the city was launching its historic homeowner grant program. They actually had the
funds. They had not formally launched the program. One of my neighbors who worked for Eleanor Holmes
Norton, who's now actually the Public Building Services Commissioner, knew that the funding was
sitting in an account and wanted it to be allocated to our community. And so when I was on the board,
we ushered those funds out, having the initial million dollars invested in historic Anacostia,
helping the Historic Preservation Office work through some tax issues that they had with the
Office of Tax and Revenue, if you can believe it. And really enjoyed my time. Two years later,
I found myself chairing the board. I genuinely love my time at HPRB. I loved hearing all of the
community input and seeing how the government process ran. And after a couple of years of
serving on the board, my practice at Patton Box was representing sovereign wealth funds,
wealthy investors going into private equity funds. I was the annoying attorney who would call
and rip your documents to shreds and tell you the 50 things that you needed to change.
I actually started working out of the Middle East, but really loved my community service and
community development work and decided to go in full time. So I started with DC government as
the executive director for the St. Elizabeth's East Campus. I actually came after
Feras Kumsayay who got the money for the St. Elizabeth's East redevelopment. He got
to secured $120 million and also passed a master plan for its development. And I started when
we needed to have buildings coming out of the ground. So oversaw the redevelopment of Gateway DC,
which was our open air pavilion. If you haven't been to Gateway DC, it is a wonderful, wonderful time.
Our initial events, we had a ice slide. We opened up with a Whole Foods pop-up market
on the weekends. And most importantly, we had Rocklea City. We bought out the hipsters to bring
out the music, the culture, and the entertainment to the campus. And that really put St. Elizabeth's
East on the map. After hosting a number of parties, we then turned to redeveloping
a 1955 chapel. And we called it Rise Demonstration Center, which stood for relate, innovate,
stimulate, and elevate. It was the one place on the campus that community members could meet.
And so we wanted to create a meeting place, but also a technology center, something that started
to introduce the idea that commercial development would take place on the campus and bring the
community members into the campus in a meaningful way. And we opened Rise from a two-page concept
paper to a bowl ribbon cutting within nine months. We moved at the speed of lightning.
And because of Rise, we were able to make St. Elizabeth's become a reel for many people.
We attracted our first private sector developer finally. And then we got monumental sports and
entertainment to agree to develop the entertainment and sports arena on the campus, which was the
Mystics Performance Arena and the Wizards Practice Facility. And we looked at Camden, New Jersey.
It's a place where my family resides into what was happening there with their basketball team,
relocating their practice facility in Camden. People in Atlanta saw what I did. I had gone to
undergrad at Spelman and worked at the Georgia General Assembly. They saw that I jumped out of
the law firm and went into community development and asked if I would come down to Atlanta to
serve as the COO of the Atlanta Housing Authority. So I started out as the COO, the Atlanta Housing
Authority Services Now Over 25,000 Homes, households in the city of Atlanta, quietly
supports over 10% of the rental market. And really is it just a very well-run housing authority.
They have just over 200 employees. Most of their properties are privately run and operated.
And I will say I got the pleasure of working with a first-class staff and team. And after nine
months became the CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority. And at a pivotal time when they were
getting back into the game, starting to partner with Invest Atlanta and the Atlanta Beltline,
because housing prices were rapidly and quickly escalating, we revamped and re-marketed our
Homeplex program, which was our project-based subsidy program so that we could be more of a
partner for private sector development that was happening in the city. And really enjoyed my time
there. I came back, worked briefly for the Greater Washington Partnership at a time that they were
working with the Urban Institute to help the region look at the housing issues and what was
happening. And so Urban Institute issued a regional housing report in 2019. It coincided with the
WCOGs passage of a regional housing resolution calling for an additional 360,000 new homes in our
region, 75% of which needed to be affordable and 75% of which needed to be near transit.
And then I got a call that, hey, Amazon is looking for somebody to help think through its
affordable housing platform. You should apply and apply. And in the middle of COVID, after the
shutdown started at Amazon, and I will pause there, but it was, I will say, it was like holding
on to a spaceship and riding it literally to the moon. Unbelievable. That covered a lot of ground.
I mean, starting with, like you said, the Housing Preservation View Board, the various DC jobs,
and even the Atlanta, which is another power town I like to call it, those are high profile jobs. And
I'm a little familiar with the housing authority from the time I spent with Michaels.
I think we did an RFP with them early on. Yeah, Michaels is one of their major developers. Yeah.
Unbelievable. Okay, so at that point, so we do find out how you actually got into
Amazon. And I think around the same time, LinkedIn basically did a little release saying, hey,
Amazon launches a $2 billion housing equity fund, announces you the director. While you were in the
position, how much funding did Amazon deploy into deals? Yeah, well, maybe I can back up and just
talk briefly about how the Amazon Housing Equity Fund came to be. Sure. When I started, actually
didn't tell anybody that I started, which is a bit hard for me because I'm an oversharer.
And because Amazon didn't want the world to know that they were going into affordable housing,
Microsoft had a fund, Microsoft was the first of the tech companies to come out with a commitment
of nearly $500 million, shortly followed by Facebook, as well as Google, all variations of
different commitments. Some going through housing stake funds to administer their dollars, some
offering land. And Amazon wanted to do something different. So two weeks into my starting at Amazon,
I just for fun wrote out a paper of how I would, you know, if I had all of the resources in the
world, my initial assets, actually $10 billion, we reduced it to $2 billion to be modest, if you can
believe that. And wrote out a paper saying, hey, if I could create a fund, I would do it in a fund
structure because I was a private equity attorney with a five-year commitment period, three years
to deploy the funds. Half of the projects would be existing, nationally occurring, affordable,
multifamily buildings, because we knew that was a hole in the boat that while the regions
in Seattle and Washington, D.C., as well as Nashville needed new affordable housing, they
also needed to pay attention to the loss of affordability, because so many properties were being
flipped for and redeveloped for luxury housing. I would pay attention to those non-traditional
agencies. So many people only look at your traditional housing agencies and they forget
that your schools, your departments of public works, your transportation departments have
excess land and sometimes in the best parts of town where you really do want housing development.
So they would be potential partners that we needed to look at. And finally, paying attention to equity.
And at the time, this is just after George Floyd and to the executives at the time,
making sure that we put an exclamation point on this thing called equity was important. And so
we wanted to pay attention to how we could not only administer these funds, but do it in a manner
that was equitable. Two months into my time, we were pitching Jay Carney, who at our time oversaw
our government and corporate affairs office. He was Obama's spokesperson, so so many people
knew him, but he also knew government, thank goodness, and understood what we were trying to do. And
I'll tell you, by September, we were starting to get traction internally to launch this fund in
January, and we didn't have our first deal. And I will say I was sweating. And JBG and the folks
at the Washington Housing Initiative bought us a deal that we could not unsee. It was a 16-acre
property called Crystal House. My best friend actually lived in it. She moved from the Navy
Yard to Crystal House to because she took in her niece and she wanted a larger apartment that was
relatively affordable. And they have some beautiful, pretty large apartment homes. And we could acquire
help with the Washington Housing Conservancy acquire it at the speed of market. And so we stepped
in as a financing partner, financing at, it was a $380-plus million acquisition. We financed $379
million of it, so 97% of the project for a new startup nonprofit, which is unreal. And the second
deal that we decided that we were going to support was King County Housing Authority.
Steve Norman, who also was a Loeb Fellow, and he had been a mentor of mine when I was in Atlanta,
had led the charge at King County Housing Authority in Washington State to quietly acquire
a portfolio of over 7,000 workforce homes. And so these were apartment homes that could go up to 80%
of area meeting income. They were not your typical subsidized product. They also had their
subsidized public housing portfolio, Section 8 and Section 9. But this was something different
that the King County Housing Authority had. And they've been having a number of conversations with
property owners and had a list of properties they were looking at in Bellevue, Washington in particular.
And we provided $185 million for them to be able to acquire 1,000 apartment homes, primarily in
the Bellevue, Washington area. And then the last thing we did, Nashville, Tennessee, during COVID,
increased their property taxes by 34%. They just weren't getting the income at the city level that
they needed and their property taxes were historically low, but they decided at the beginning of COVID,
they were going to increase their property taxes. And I knew that was a challenge because at my time
in Atlanta, they were grappling with the same issue when the Mercedes-Benz stadium was being built
and property values were rapidly escalating in the west side near the Atlanta University Center.
And so we duplicated a model where we, through a nonprofit called the Housing Fund run by Marshall
Crawford, provided them with over $3 million to be able to pay the property tax increase for low
income and moderate income households, primarily focused on those zip codes where displacement
and gentrification was likely. And so being able to step in where some property owners actually saw
15, 50% increase in their property taxes, we could create a fund that would just pay cash
and pay for that property tax increase so that they would not lose their homes.
And so having a foot in every single market, we've launched the Housing Equity Fund on January 6th,
the day that there was a lot going on at the Capitol. So I woke up at 5 a.m. that morning and
the news went on, I think between 5 and 6 a.m. and it literally was like, well, I've never seen news
go around the world. But like that, it went around the world and back again. And around noon, it got
quieter and quieter and quieter because attention was focused elsewhere, but word was out that
Amazon was in the housing world. And what's interesting is that even though we made this big
announcement, it didn't become real for folks until we announced that we were partnering with the
three transit agencies. Nina Albert was ahead of Muamada's real estate division at the time
and Sound Transit was looking to redevelop their land for public purposes through my
Atlanta context. We knew the folks over at the Department of Transportation, newly formed
Department of Transportation in Nashville and bought We Go To The Table. And so we bought three,
we committed $300 million to the transit agencies to be able to redevelop their land and our land
adjacent to the transportation nodes for the purposes of affordable housing. And suddenly,
the Amazon Housing Equity Fund was a real tangible thing that people knew could be a resource to
help them close their deals. Well, I'm still a little stuck on, I guess it was the Crystal House
who said there's a $380 million acquisition of which you all funded $379 million.
Wow. We did negotiate it down to the, I mean, I love to negotiate, but man, those are some
tough negotiations because they were our first deal. And we were subsidizing, we were financing the
entire thing. We wanted to make sure that there were three bedrooms and two bedrooms that were
part of the affordability side. We wanted to make sure that the deed restrictions were clear. So
thanks to Kimberly Driggins, she actually agreed to the 99-year long-term affordability
commitment and that's at the standard for the Amazon Housing Equity Fund. And we wanted to make
sure it was done right. And we had a great partner in the Washington Housing Conservancy, but yeah,
we were it. It's like it beats 65% low in the value. I mean, I was like 99, 299,
however many years it needed, I'll do it. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, yeah, it was beautiful. It was
it was truly, truly beautiful. And I will say we closed that deal. Ironically, internally,
our finance person hadn't even done a real estate deal. The level of Hutzpah internally in a tech
company to innovate, to be bold, it didn't mean that our finance person was top class and paid
attention to every detail. And we had great external financial advisors and underwriters and all of
the things. But the team that we had, I still just an honor to work with such a dedicated team who
rolled up their sleeves and said, this is absolutely something we can do, we're going to do. We were
bold about it. We were diligent in our in our review of the acquisition, but we most importantly
made it happen. And because my best friend from elementary school still actually lives in the
building, I can see the difference. I can see the difference of who lives there. I know that it's
having a real impact and we're giving people who otherwise wouldn't be able to live a block away
and in the center of Amazon's redevelopment near three different metro stations an opportunity
to live part of a thriving and growing community. And a great education system right there.
Wow, that's the families. Was there a funding criteria during your time?
There was. So we really wanted to focus on being the but for capital. While Crystal House stood out,
we were not going to give that deal to everybody. We wanted to be no more than 25% of the capital
stack. So we were looking for projects where the entitlements were already in place, the government
financing or whatever financing that was going to be brought to the deal was in place and we would
come in and be the but for capital. There were, however, a number of acquisitions because you
can't get acquisition dollars out there on the market. There were a number of acquisitions where
we were able to help step in and help nonprofit and mission driven partners acquire the properties
and then refinance pretty quickly to secure their permanent debt and back out and then just be the
mezzanine debt partner. But most importantly, help those acquisitions happen again at the speed
of market, which if you're a nonprofit fulfilling your mission, you don't have $100 million in the
bank. You may have $5 million in the bank. You may if you're lucky, you may have $10 million in the
bank. But having Amazon come in with modified underwriting criteria is that didn't require
that you have the same level of reserves recognizing your mission. And also lowering the equity
requirements on our end made the difference for so many partners to be able to enter into the
affordable housing effort at scale, industry at scale. Unbelievable. Did you all have any focus on
black and brown developer participation or just pretty much the nonprofit was the initial threshold?
We absolutely did. So we worked actually with both nonprofits and mission driven partners.
And because equity was our middle name, we took two different approaches. In the DC region,
what's fascinating and we're less than the DC region, we have a number of developers of color
who who know who have three, four, five multifamily buildings under their belt, they know how to
secure affordable housing financing, whether it's tax credits, whether it's bond financing,
they know their stuff. And so finding developers of color in a place like the DC, Maryland,
Virginia, DMV area region was not hard. But when you step out of the DC area into places like
Seattle and Nashville, it is hard. It's very difficult to find affordable housing developers
who have the experience and who have who have projects to show forward. And so we recognize
that we had to play on two different levels. First for the larger developers, the gyre lynches of
the world, the blue skies of the world, the donkeys partners of the world, they could pretty
easily come in, figure out what our model is, figure out how our financing worked, and put a
deal together. And what we did is if you were a developer of color, we gave you the first look.
It didn't necessarily mean you got a preference in our dollars, but as you know, those dollars go
fast. So being able to be moved to the front of the line and consideration was really important.
And we were thoughtful, not only about the diversity of those developers, but also where they were
developing. And so we made sure in the DC region, we not only supported deals in Virginia, which
actually was pretty easy, because they don't have all of the restrictions like TOPA on acquisitions
that potentially slow things down. But we also invested heavily in Prince or just counting,
we invested near five of their transit stations, we invested in Montgomery County,
and then we invested now in all eight wards of Washington DC, not just concentrating
our investments east of the river, but also investing in Ward 3 and Ward 2 and the like.
And so moving developers of color to the front of the line was our first solution.
And so you see so many, and I really am blessed, I'm fans of these folks.
I get tickled when I drive past their buildings that their projects have advanced.
It's so exciting to see that Dante's Partners project has opened at 7th and in Rhode Island,
they were our first DC investment, and they have absolutely done us proud.
And then we created an accelerator program. And our housing accelerator program actually was
inspired by the conversation I had with a friend, Farajie, who had gone through capital
impact partners, real estate mentorship and development program. And he was telling me
about this program and I was like, we need that. But that's exactly what we need. So
when we launched the fund, we not only had the $2 billion, essentially loan fund,
but we also had $125 million of grant funds to administer. And so through capital impact
partners, National Urban League, and LISC in the Puget Sound, which had just started
up an office, we decided that we were going to work with local partners who already had
the relationships, already had the trust of local developers, provide them with funding.
Our initial allocation was $21 million to the three partners. They were to provide
mentorship, redevelopment dollars, which are very, very difficult to get as you're when
you're starting up a new development venture, as well as training on what was needed for
emerging developers of color to be able to stand up development firm. So many times people think
about, and it's very, very easy to think about, okay, well, what's the financing that I need to
get this project done, but your back office is a mess. And you don't know how you're going to
sustain yourself over the long and short term to actually get that redevelopment project done.
And so so many of the stories from our accelerator participants,
were just beautiful. And so that really was our solution. And that accelerator program has been
renewed. There's been a second round of developers. And there are a number of developers who have
come through who actually were able to secure Housing Equity Fund financing. One of my favorites
was actually Jebediah Gardner in Seattle. Jebediah had been a developer for 13 years,
in Seattle, pushing his business forward, and got the development rights from a church who was
moving out of Seattle, they were in the central district. And so he secured the right to acquire
their property and redevelop it as affordable housing. And he came to us and he asked us for
something like an $8 million load. And our underwriters took a look at it. And they said,
okay, you could do a couple of different things here, you could give them a loan, but there's
not going to be any revenue to pay this loan back for some time. Or you could just outright
give them a grant. And we presented it to our internal investment committee and we got approved
for a $5 million grant. We made sure that the land was put in Jebediah's name, not in his
necessarily partnership name, his firm was 51% owned by him, and he had business partners
partners to make sure that he was in the driver's seat. And now there is an African American man
in the city of Seattle who owns property in the central district. And he owns and controls those
development rights. And it's just been such a pleasure to see him blossom. But it's stories
and perseverance that people like Jebediah that actually keep me going because there are people
out there with just dreams and they're trying to put things together in places and spaces where
nobody like them exists, nobody like them is thriving. And had he not put his hand up and
spoken out, I don't think that we would have paid attention. But because of the grace of God,
and our underwriting team saying, Hey, if you're really focused on equity, this is the right thing
to do. We decided not to do the easy thing, we decided to do the right thing. Yeah, one thing
I would say is, I know all the players in DC, but I spent a lot of times in my hometown of Philly,
right there across the bridge from Camden. And the word starts spreading out, and folks are like,
what's Amazon doing? I'm like, sorry, guys, they don't, they don't come as far north. And I mean,
jealousy level was just through the roof, because we were watching these deals unfold. I'm like,
guys, I mean, it's all about geography and demographics. So yeah, yeah, I could have gone
to Camden, I would, I'm part of South Jersey girl. So I feel you really can use that in Camden,
Philadelphia, you know, but we've made Camden's made some nice progress, but it's been a game changer.
Yeah.
Now, I know, Catherine, you're up to something different now, completely different. You mind
telling the listeners what you've been up to lately at Harvard. So I am actually, when I was on
HPRB, this is probably about 15 years ago, Javier Lynch came back from this fellowship and he said,
I just came out of the most spectacular fellowship. And I got to think about the built world for a year,
and just take a year off and just, I don't tificate and ponder what was going on in,
in real estate, architecture and design. And something about how he talked about the fellowship
and the time really stuff with me. There are a number of Washingtonians since him who have done
the fellowship from Harry Chagoni to Andy Altman to Kimberly Driggins. And I really wanted to know
what was up with that low fellowship. And so as I was rounding out year three at Amazon,
it knew that our investment period was coming to a close. I started to look around to see what
else was out there. And the fellowship application was open. So I decided to put my name in the hat
and luckily got selected. And the low fellowship really is an opportunity to take a step back.
It's through the Harvard Graduate School of Design and some mid career professional development
fellowship. They bring in somewhere between eight and 10 professionals from around the world. So
you're interacting with people in our class. We have an architect from Norway who worked on the
Thai-Burma-Borlin border. We have a community developer who works on massive scale redevelopment
based out of South Africa. And when I say massive scale, it's redeveloping what are sometimes referred
to as slums into 1500 home communities to redevelopers in Philly and an artist who curated the
British Pavilion in Venice at the Architectura Biennale. Just such beautiful creative minds.
And you get to come and audit classes and honestly just take a step back and reexamine
not only the built world, but how you relate and how you show up into the world. And so
other than the expectation that you take at least one class at the Graduate School of Design
each semester, the world is oyster. And for me, one of the areas that I really wanted to
dive into was divinity. And so I've taken a number of classes at the Harvard School of Divinity,
specifically focused on Black spirituality, deepening my understanding, because I wanted to
focus on this question of what it means to create a love village. And love village is what I call
wellness focused lifestyle communities that are inviting to Black and Brown people. Through my
journeys, I share my career trajectory, but I will say there's a different side of that career
trajectory, which is you get tired, you get burnt out, you get weary, particularly in community
development. When you're fighting the good fight on behalf of everyday people, there is a toll for
you. And I would, in my free time, really enjoy wellness retreats around the world. But many
times when I enjoy those wellness retreats around the world, there weren't a ton of people who
looked like me. And I kind of felt like, you know, that's just part of the compromise. They were also
pretty expensive. And after having my own health challenges at one period, I started hosting in
my backyard a group called Heart Refuge in Washington, DC, run by Rashi Hughes and Mama Aisha. They
do meditations, weekly meditations for anybody who is interested, specifically bringing in people
of color and started hosting them as we were doing outdoor ceremonies and thinking, this is exactly
what I want to create. The community I want to create, this is a vibe I want to create, bringing
in people of color into this wellness movement. And so my time here at Harvard has been focused on
that wellness question, expanding it, understanding it, looking at what it could possibly mean for me.
And I feel like I've only touched the tip of the mountain. That's I leave. I don't, I feel like
there's still so much more in this emerging field. But most importantly, finding that not only is a
wellness industry now a $7 trillion industry, the wellness industry, wellness real estate in
particular is a four close to a $400 billion industry in the fastest growing subset of that
wellness industry faster than mental health, faster than healthy eating, and faster than
wellness tourism. It's growing, it's booming, and it's something that I expect we're going to start
to hear more about more and more, but particularly at higher socioeconomic levels, as opposed to for
everyday people who also need access to their own wellness. Unbelievable. So now that you're
getting ready to graduate from the program, you'll be graduating. And after that, and you hit the
ground, which direction are you going to run? Yeah, well, in the near future, I'm going to
stay on my learning journey. I am so grateful for all of the things that I've learned,
because there's a whole world out there that many times when you're representing a brand,
you're representing an agency or an organization, you get hyper focused on their work. But being
able to take a step back and think about, okay, if I'm focused on wellness, what about aging issues?
Harvest Joint Center for Housing just recently issued a report on aging. And what they noted is
not only are 10,000 people turning 65 and older each day in the United States, but that aging
population is becoming more and more diverse. The housing in this country is not suitable for that
aging population. So we are going to have a public health crisis, particularly at older ages on our
hands. And it's something I've been aware of, but have not focused on. And those aging populations
in their diversity also are looking at multi-generational housing solutions. And so spending more time in
that aging world and understanding what the implications are, because I think they're going
to be pretty significant for the housing market, as well as for the public health market and marrying
those two industries. But staying in this learning mode, and then also working with folks behind the
scenes. One of the things that I really enjoyed this year is seeing so many people, whether it's
Kellyanne Kirkpatrick at Amazon, whether it's Latrina Owens at St. Elizabeth's, like the next
generation coming in and really doing their thing and creating beautiful spaces, beautiful programs
has just really warmed my heart. And so working behind the scenes to support those organizations
and doing more strategic advisory work, as opposed to being back in front of the camera.
Gotcha. You've had some pretty impressive jobs, Catherine. How much of that would you attribute
to networking and building the relationships you've built? And what kind of advice would you have for
listeners around that? Yeah, I actually attribute my jobs to spirit. Spirit blessing me because it,
you know, so many times I've been almost the least likely person in the room. I remember
when one of my colleagues on HBRB suggested that I be the chair, I really thought I had, it was
taking a back. I was like, I don't know. I don't know about that. I really got to think about this
and pray on this. And in Atlanta, I was like the intern who's returned. So my advice for folks,
I guess it is kind of networking, but stay curious. It's my curiosity. And the fact that I will show
up in rooms that sometimes are not paid, right? Showing up in rooms where you got to volunteer,
you can just geek out on whatever the work is. But working with people and feeling how fun it
is to work together in these different spaces. Also trying different things. I was not afraid to
try something totally different. Whether it's this fellowship, I mean, some folks are like,
what exactly are we doing? So you're going to be a student to go into work for DC government. I
remember folks gave me such a hard time from leaving corporate law to go work for the government.
And looking back now, that's a distant memory. But at the time, it was a decision and it was a
big deal to some folks. And so networking, but also trying different things, being willing to be
in different spaces with people who may not look anything like you. And being willing to use your
voice and learning how to use your voice. There are some times where I found maybe I was a little
too strong or a little too harsh, but that's okay. Learning how to moderate and then show up because
people's ability to bridge the gap is really, really critical. I don't think that we fully
appreciate even in community development how much those spaces lack diversity. I went to the
Housing Finance Conference that happens in Chicago every year and I was just struck at
in the finance world, how few people of color there really are on the affordability side. And
that's something that we still have to work on. And so not being afraid to go into those rooms,
to learn everything that you can to really show up and make a space for yourself.
Totally agree. So in addition to many of the high level leadership roles that you've had,
are there any professional organizations outside activities or other voluntary positions that you
hold? Oh, yes. So I am still active with the women of color and community development. And for those
who don't know about Wicked and are curious, please check them out. They have a great board,
a great slew of events, and great networking opportunities for the women. So many times,
particularly women of color, we really are the only ones in the room. And so every time I'm
around them, it feels like a great big hug. And I'm so impressed by each and every member of Wicked.
I'm also still active with the Anacostia Coordinating Council. I love my folks in Ward 8. And on the
Smithsonian Anacostia Museum Board, which is the Smithsonian's only community based museum.
And that one is actually really, I hold it special to my heart because it was an exhibit at the
museum that actually made me want to go into community development full time. Dr. Gail Lowe
put on an exhibit of housing redevelopment east of the river and talked that exhibit talked about
the impact that the Federal Housing Finance Administration had on financing at basically
no cost to these developers with no equity requirements, multifamily's garden style apartment
buildings that you see scattered across east of the river. And that a lot of the movement that
took place in the city where families moved from Georgetown to Southwest to east of the river
happened because of federal housing policy. And I seeing that big picture, I said, oh my goodness,
that is something that I really want to get my teeth into. And it's just an exhibit at a museum.
And so it's a real honor to be able to serve on their board and to see the great work that
they're doing around sustainability and education and the like.
Awesome. How are you managing self, right, in your work life balance and staying in alignment?
Yeah, I am learning to pace myself. And that honestly has been the biggest gift and the biggest
blessing this year. For those who have not read Rest is Resistance, I strongly encourage you to
read it because so many times we think our value or see our value in our accomplishments.
And forget that particularly as people of color, we have to calm our nervous systems. There are
challenges that we face every day, whether it's microaggressions, whether it's outright
aggressions and outright discrimination, we carry with us legacies of challenges and
hurt from our ancestors and from our parents that need to heal, really making sure that I can take
that time to heal. So I've been a meditator since I was an undergrad. I am an avid meditator. My
prayer life has become very, very active. I will go to every self-help, self-healing event that I can.
I have no shame and no ego about the learnings because there are so many learnings out there.
And I actually do see it as part of the charge in my life. This wellness world has held me in ways
that I could not have imagined. I lost my father when I was young. My mother has late-stage dementia
and that was a real struggle when I was running the Amazon Housing Equity Fund to balance the
work that I was doing in the public-facing journey as well as this private challenge of losing
a version of my mother that I once had and having to become and step into a caretaking role.
Being able to call on support groups, early in my career, I joined the Washington Bar Association
and actually found them to be a great support group. I'm not ashamed of calling on all of those
tools to make sure that not only is my physical health strong but that my mental health is strong
and that I can learn how to grow and maneuver and most importantly take care of myself.
Excellent. It almost sounds like when you talked about Love Village a little earlier,
all of that in my mind was a component of wellness as well. And you just hit it a little bit harder
right now. Absolutely. So my final question would be what do you envision the next five years
looking like for you? But I will preface that by saying I got a feeling it's going to have some
wellness involved there. Absolutely is. I am going to jump as deep into this wellness world as I can.
There's a wellness summit coming up and I looked at the panel and it was
it maybe there was one person of color and one woman. But I was thinking to myself there's
not any black people in this conversation. And if you look at the data, black people are more
likely to live alone at every age and stage of our lives. The trauma that we experience on a daily
basis is pretty significant and we know that isolation and loneliness is an epidemic in our
country and it's particularly harsh on African Americans and our health. And so I want to stay
committed to this field, building out new models. Again, whether my name is on the front or not,
I'm working behind the scenes. I've started some of those conversations, particularly with health
health care groups and health finance groups who are equally thinking about how do we start to create
different solutions for what's happening in the market. And then of course, building out Love
Village. I would love in the next five years for Love Village to actually really be a real place.
And I'm encouraged that so many people are thinking about these solutions. I was actually just on a
panel with the mayor of Bogota and she talked about Mayor Lopez, she talked about how they
created care communities in Bogota. So there are other people who are thinking about how do we
care for our own, how do we show up differently for people who need the support and create that
safety net system where it's not a public health system, it's not an external third party, but
it's us helping each other. And so that's really something that I am committed to.
Excellent. Well, that's going to wrap us up with another episode of the Real Estate Shop.
Catherine, thanks for stopping by and chopping it up with Curvin and I.
Really, really interesting stuff. And we look forward to following which of the next steps will be.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.
Great. So that'll end the podcast. Really good stuff, Catherine. I mean, I really loved it.
You threw a name out there, Andy Altman, me and him with the middle school and filling together.
And I hadn't seen Andy in years. But. Yeah, he's developing. Oh gosh, right there on Rockville
Park, I've drawing a blank at the Strathmore Music Center. He's developing kind of an art-based
community out there and we finance their affordable housing. So they, they should be almost done now.
They had a big hole about a year ago. Wow.
Yeah.
No, but I have to reconnect. I still get back to the DMV area. It's still
have a house and up a marble. So yeah, tracking folks down.
Oh, that's just so beautiful. That's so beautiful. I mean, there's so, there's so much going on in
the DMV. And so I will say I've stepped away for a year, but going back is going to be a thing to
see these properties coming out of the ground where I knew there was nothing.
Right, right. Absolutely.
From New Carrollton, you know, I said that was my, my metro station between Silversburg and
New Carrollton when I grew up. So to see, you know, what they're doing out there, it's, it's
going to be fabulous. Absolutely.
Yeah.
Gerv, do you have anything you want to wrap up with?
Yeah, I think the listeners are going to like your perspective on just mental health and
taking care of yourself to bring that self to conversations or whatever is in front of you.
I think that's going to land well because I know internally my office for the first time in my life,
you know, I've got folks asking for mental health days, right? Hey, I just need,
I just need to work from home for the next two days or just need any day off.
Yeah.
And like five years ago, I would never get those phone calls, a text message, right?
Just kind of like push through it. So that's starting to really change the office environment.
I think people, oh my gosh, the president of Essence, I love her. She came to Spelman.
And one of the things she said is she says she has care instructions.
I was like, yes, ma'am, please tell people about your care instructions.
She requires that she have at least two 15 minute breaks of silence every single day.
She requires that if she gets overstimulated and overwhelmed, that they will cancel her speaking
engagement. She comes with require meds, care instructions. And I was like, we need to normalize
this behavior because particularly because I'm an introverted black girl. And sometimes
when I don't talk or I just show up and I'm just awkward, so just awkward. People think I got an
attitude. And it's like, no, I'm just overstimulated.
No, for real. I mean, I think we're kind of all in that situation. I know I'm an introvert,
although it's hard to believe, because you look at social media, but sometimes I'll go out and
I'm perfectly fine being that guy in the corner just watching. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent.
Well, so when are you going to get back to the DMV?
I am. My mom is still there, so I will be there and bouncing around. I'm not committing to any
like one city. I hear you. I hear you. No, but DMV DC will always be home. It'll always be home.
Gotcha. Yeah. I'm sure we will run into you somewhere because you were out there.
So much for reaching out. This is such a pleasure. I can't tell you how much it means to me.