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Fix SLP is grassroots advocacy firm here to challenge the status quo in speech-language pathology by driving real change—from insurance regulations to removing barriers to full autonomy like the CCC. This podcast is your space to learn, engage and take action in the field of SLP. We don’t wait for change, we make it. So let’s fix SLP!
Hosted by Jeanette Benigas, PhD, SLP
Jeanette Benigas 0:00
Hey fixers. I'm Dr. Jeanette Benigas, one of the cofounders of fix SLP. Our platform exists to discuss the biggest challenges that are currently holding back the field of speech language pathology. We present the issues with facts and invite you to be a part of joining this movement to make things better one conversation at a time. So let's fix SLP.
Hey, everybody, welcome back. It's Jeanette. We are without Preston today, the man took a vacation. How dare he? He's on vacation. He's told me I could send him the link so he could pop it. And I said, No, go go enjoy your life with your family. So he's not here. But today, I have Elisabeth Nielsen. She is of tiny voice therapy fame. But she is also formally part of the fix SLP team as what did I name you, Elizabeth, director of content? Of what?
Elizabeth Nielsen 1:05
Content coordinator I believe.
Jeanette Benigas 1:08
Yeah, something like fancy. She is contributing very heavily to the content. We've done a lot of collaborations together, she is amazing with her digging and her finding. And so I wanted to have her on today, because we've been talking about Asha assets, specifically their land and their buildings. And, you know, just poking around in numbers and seeing what's going on. So, Elizabeth, thanks for being on the team. Thanks for being here. Why don't you tell us? How did how did we get on this topic? What what led us to this in the first place?
Elizabeth Nielsen 1:47
So when Asha originally announced that they were raising their dues, a lot of people were going on social media asking, Where are these dudes going? And then a lot of people were responding with oh, well, they have their financial report listed on their website. So for me, I'm all about numbers. I'm a business owner. So I started to look at their financial reports. And that was back in February. And that kind of got me fired up. I couldn't believe the numbers that I was seeing. So then, sort of looking at their 990 forms as well, just to get an even bigger breakdown, just because the financial reports still had leading me more questions than answers. And we know with ashes, transparency, that they're not going to tell us where all these numbers are coming from. So that's kind of where I started to dig. So their financial report that they have on their website, anyone can access it, the one that really stood out to me was the property and equipment, the building and building land improvement, being over $37 million. I was like, how are they paying for this. And so that's kind of what got me going into it. So what we've been posting about is their most recent buildings, so their fifth building that they built in 2007, then I started to kind of dig around with the most recent building. And that brought up some articles on the ASHA leader about building their fifth building. And the one thing that stood out to me in the article, so this article was back in 2006, that's when they broke ground on the building. And the last part of it was that the sale of their fourth building was going to substantially pay for the fifth building. So the one that was built in 2007. So I started to dig around on that substantial number I wanted to figure out like is this half of the building is this all of the buildings that they're going to be paying for? So then I really was going into a bigger rabbit hole with that. And so I had looked up then the address of their fourth building, when that pulled up on Google Maps, it wasn't really leading me to anything, it was just like on the side of the road. So then I had to kind of dig around on the map and figure out like, Oh, it's a development. Now there's houses on that property. Then I had to figure out who owns that property. And then I had to register myself with the Maryland State Records archives. And then once I figured out who owned that property, then I was able to pull up the deed between Symphony Park and Asha. And then that's when I found out that so in 2010, is when that deal went through. And Asha got $6 million for that 18 acre land that's now with houses.
Jeanette Benigas 4:50
And I'm gonna pause you there because some of our content has caused a little bit of confusion and that's fine, like people are scrolling and looking quickly, but I just want to say Hey, ASHA has not built those houses like we said in one of the posts that was to be used for private residencies. That announcement came from Asha. Correct?
Elizabeth Nielsen 5:10
Correct. So that was on that same article in the leader, That's Symphony Park. So Symphony Park bought that 18 acre land that belongs to Symphony Park. It was property. So Asha doesn't have like additional investments in real estate.
Jeanette Benigas 5:24
Homes. Private homes. They're not building housing for their board members. There's not a compound before the CEO. No, none of that, that it was sold free and clear Symphony Park, that is what they use the land for, or, you know, whatever. So just to clarify that, because we have gotten quite a few questions about well, what are they doing with these homes, not their homes. So they sold the land in 2010. And they in 2007, I want to clarify too, they built the building that they are currently in the LEED Gold certified building five storeys, that is the building they're in. They aren't renovating we haven't reported that. But we've seen a lot of comments about oh, and now they're doing renovations to our I mean, they might be renovating, I hope not. But to our knowledge, they're not renovating, they are not building another new building, they are still in the 2007 building that was built. That is where they are operating out of kind of ish, I'm sure we'll get into that. So just to put that out there very clear. They didn't build homes, they sold the land, they build a building in 2007. That is where they sit. That is where what we're discussing.
Elizabeth Nielsen 6:37
And I think part of it was my follow up naff sourcing all those articles and the dates of everything. But I guess the point of that post was to really talk about the word smithing that Asha does have like, oh, this selling of our previous land is going to substantially paid for this new building the 2007 building. And that's where I found out, it was only 12% of the 2007 building costs. So I wouldn't consider that substantial does even pay for a down payment of 20%. So in that Asha leader article, they say that the costs of the 2000s have been building what's going to be $48 million, all together that include fixtures, furniture, all these things, so you know, only selling their land for 6 million. And then you're left with 42 million to pay for like, I don't consider that substantial. And so that kind of led to that and just looking a little bit more on the 990 form. And so this form is from 2022. And this, again, what we recently posted was on their assets. So their building being over $37 million. The land that I believe that is the building that's on is 7 million. And then you go into the equipment, if you look at their financial report on their website, their equipment kind of gets broken down a little bit more. So you have computers and software's 19 million furniture and fixtures, over $2 million on furniture, fixtures, software in progress development $174,000. And then there's another equipment section that's almost $900,000. And then art and statues. They're paying $120,000 In art, and statues.
Jeanette Benigas 8:36
Love that for them. That's where yeah, that's where our dues are going. And I did the math last night knowing we would be talking today. That's about $24,000 of floor for art. Yep. Yep. So I just want to shout out our colleague Ruchi who made sure we had some of this information apparently, Elizabeth knew some of it already. It was like brand new to me because she's been taking care of this. So yeah, great. We love when fearless fixers and colleagues and people who care send us source documents. So please send away team at fix slp.com
Elizabeth Nielsen 9:08
When I googled the new building, that she doesn't find the building, I call it the new building, because it's just the newest one. When I googled that address, it came up with a lot of lease information. Because in the ASHA leader article from 2006, they also mentioned that their plan was to lease the fifth floor. I was digging around that I saw that what seemed like all the third floor, and then most of the fifth floor is currently up for lease
Jeanette Benigas 9:40
Meaning, there's no tenant. They're not making that revenue stream they were hoping to have to pay for some of these expenses. Yes,
Elizabeth Nielsen 9:52
yeah. If you add up all of the leases that are currently available, it would generate a mess million dollars a year. So that's a million dollars a year that they're not getting. So it's not a reliable source of income for them. What's their plan? Well, we're a reliable income source for them. That's my assumption is, hey, we need to raise our dues because we need to afford this big building that no one's using. The CEO, the live chat announced, like, oh, well, there's a do increase, because we need to pay for things like paper. And that was all just paper, this 1980 Everything's electronic now $5 million, and paper, and then we'd be transparent here.
Jeanette Benigas 10:40
To be clear, we're not saying that this is why they raised us. No, it's certainly like, get your spidey senses going. Everything's more expensive down, the dollar doesn't go quite as far. So yes, their expenses have gone up. But if they were already used to a certain profit margin, and now that profit margin has been slashed, and they're not filling these, at least the one floor that they plan to lease out, and now they're trying to do too, there's a lot of questions unanswered. Again, they're not very transparent. And so that leaves people wondering.
Elizabeth Nielsen 11:18
There's also another article that I found, this is from 2021. And talking about how Asha is receiving like awards and recognitions for their telework, that even before the pandemic, they were having employees working from home, then league isn't even empty or building. I can even just quote right here in the article that slightly more than half, so they said 51% of ashes, 292 staff members in the Washington DC area, I telework, up to 60% of their total work days. That was before the pandemic. Now, after the pandemic, there's probably even more that percentage is probably even higher. And I know people have been also like asking about CEO exec salaries to and I know we've you've kind of touched base on this. And in that area, their salaries comparable to that living situation.
Jeanette Benigas 12:15
When we see a salary like that it wow, that's what could I do, like, I could do so many things with that money. But that's we've consistently said this from the beginning, it's not a good fight as to why we need change within Asha, and why we need more transparency, they're transparent about the salaries that are paid out, we know what people are making. And when you start to look, they are comparable. So it's it's just it's not a good fight. We can't be like Asher needs to give us all these things for free because the CEO is making this well. Again, it's not a good fight, we have to have reasons for why we're asking for this kind of change. And and so yes, while we do think it is an astronomical amount of money, it's not the focus of our platform or our fight. Now, if it was double the average amount, okay, then we have even some more questions. But we need to focus on other numbers and other things that make a little more sense.
Elizabeth Nielsen 13:14
And that's why we are focusing on the building because how are you paying for this building? This $48 million building, and millions of dollars in equipment and furniture? In our Yeah, I also looked up just to see like, where their headquarters is wages and things. And the one thing that pulled up is it's ranked 14 out of 273 cities across the US in terms of cost of living, it's estimated to be 135% of the national average, making it one of the more expensive cities in the US.
Jeanette Benigas 13:48
Yeah. And I've seen some comments, well, why don't they move it to a cheaper area, and that does make sense sell the building, move to a less expensive area. However, there are people working in Asha, that live in rockville now who have families and children and those types of you know, situations. And these are people at ASHA. So selling the building to move to a cheaper location would, in fact, uproot many lives and families and I could see people say, well, that's that's business. I don't know. I start to get torn there. When you're talking about uprooting the lives of families. We talked on a previous podcast that my dad was a pastor and he was a Methodist pastor in the Methodist church pastors are moved, they don't get a choice where they go. And so you see that in their children, you see what happens where they're leaving their friends and their lives and their sports teams and things like that their communities that they're building. For that reason. My dad was only part time until my brother graduated. He was a full time teacher and then the year my brother graduated he retired from Teaching and went into full time ministry because he didn't want to uproot our family, which I so appreciate. And so that kind of, and maybe that's why it hits hard for me a little bit too is because I know the implications of doing that to families. Anyway, it's a business, but there are families involved. But I could get a cheaper building it within a commutable distance.
Elizabeth Nielsen 15:23
Well, and even if they're all of them are working from home then to sell the building. We don't need the building.
Jeanette Benigas 15:27
Yeah. Let's talk about their DC location.
Elizabeth Nielsen 15:31
Yeah, so one of our colleagues also informed us that ASHA has a DC office location, which is 25 miles from their headquarters. The building is called Holiday estates, it houses big media and government organizations like C span NBC, I couldn't figure out how big their sewer suite is I so I don't know exactly what the costs of that office location is. But it just makes me question how a membership association is housed under the same roof as these government associations, organizations, huge media.
Jeanette Benigas 16:14
You can check out the posts that should be up by now that we are putting putting a screenshot of that in the carousel. But when you sent me that I was like, What is going on?
Elizabeth Nielsen 16:29
It's prestigious, like on their website, even started these prestigious offices with high end eateries and always thinks, like...
Jeanette Benigas 16:37
Why do we need to be? So? So? Okay, I see we need I can I can follow the line of thinking we need to be in DC because we need to be lobbying? Are we even lobbying to those organizations? Or are we even in the offices of the people that we need to be lobbying to? No, no. So why do we need to be in that building? And neither one of again, neither one of us know the actual cost per square foot we are guessing is not cheap.
Elizabeth Nielsen 17:13
And there's, like, offices in that building? That's like $67 per square foot. But again, we can't really guess how big that office is. But yeah, it's... I don't...
Jeanette Benigas 17:28
And the question then remains, who's working in that office? How often? Are they there? If most people are working from home? Are we just having that space just to have the sign on the window? What's happening there?
Elizabeth Nielsen 17:43
Especially when they are only spending 2.2% of revenue on lobbying? Right? Yeah, I can do that from home on my computer. When someone said, Oh, um, have you looked into their DC office? I'm like, Oh, that was not on my radar. Let me do more digging.
Jeanette Benigas 17:59
Me either, and then as the digging occurred, we saw there was an address for Nisswa. And we, that is within their rockville building that was built in 2007. That is not a third property, because then for a minute, I was like, Wait, is there a third property somewhere? No, that's all in the main building.
Elizabeth Nielsen 18:16
So two office locations. 25 miles apart from each other. I mean, I used to work in I used to do home visits. I drove more than that in a day in between clients.
Jeanette Benigas 18:28
You weren't prepared for this question. But what are some solutions here? We talked about they could move to a smaller building. Do they need to have a building at all? We have that question. Do they need a building?
Elizabeth Nielsen 18:44
I think, obviously, selling their building would be just a responsible business move. It's going to hurt them financially. But is it really because it's a big building? So I don't know. I like to think that we're all contributing to this bad business plan that they have right now with this huge building. And times are changing. This was built in 2007. After the pandemic, so many more people are working from home. And I think a lot of businesses are trying to figure out like, do we need these office spaces. And that's why they can't fill these office spaces, because everyone is working from home.
Jeanette Benigas 19:20
So I did some of my own research. And I wanted to see like I was looking for statistics, and I was having trouble finding it. But there are some really notable examples of high profile companies that have made some headlines by selling their office buildings or really significantly reducing their office space. So X, formerly Twitter did that sales force, Zillow, at least have announced plans I don't I didn't dig to see if they've started but they've at least announced plan plans to adopt a more permanent work from home policy and they're all adjusting their real estate strategies and some of these buildings are there converting that large office space into housing options, which I thought was a really like good solution to the housing crisis. I know. And you know out that way, certainly there's tons of apartments, and it's a great idea. Why couldn't we do that with that building? So we're interested in hearing solutions from all of you. I think today is a little bit of a shorter episode. But we at least we wanted to address some of this stuff out loud. And and we want to hear from you guys, what are some solutions to this problem? You know, we have a huge building that's barely being used, sucking tons of money. They're raising dues? Where do we go from here? How do we handle this real estate and asset issue? Certainly the $121,000 in art and statues could be sold off. And the colleague who sent us that just as an aside, she said, I wonder if any of that art was commissioned, which you know, then is a lot more money than is reported. They've spent way more than that was like, good point. But anyway, that's, you know, all speculation, but yeah, what do you guys think? What do you guys think about all this? You've been telling us on the posts, let us know. We'd love to hear from you. So this was a little bit of a shorter episode. Today. We both have stuff going on. But we didn't want to leave you hanging without an episode. And we at least wanted to address a few things out loud. Elizabeth, thanks for hopping on. You are doing amazing work, digging in and figuring things out and filling a hole in fix SLP having a team you've been amazing, and we all appreciate you. Thank you. Alright, that'll be it guys. If you haven't yet, subscribe. five star rating and review. Let us know what you think. Let us know what topics you want to hear about. And we'll see you next week. Thanks for fixing it.