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Research and Justice For All is a podcast from Health Affairs that provides perspectives on how to dismantle unjust systems and structures that have long impacted health outcomes in historically marginalized populations. Hear how to challenge injustices in health care – rooted in racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of exclusion – through research, evidence, community-building, and other potential and innovative solutions.
Each season of the podcast is sponsored by organizations dedicated to eliminating health inequities.
This is Research and Justice For All, season 2. I'm your host, Rhea Boyd. Thanks for joining us today. If you like what you hear, click and subscribe to listen to future episodes. Today, we're going to be joined by Kimberly Driggins.
Rhea Boyd:Kimberly is the executive director of the Washington Housing Conservancy, a non profit based in Washington, DC, that is reinventing the housing system, to create a more equitable pathway to opportunity and prosperity for folks living in the DMV or the Greater Washington DC Metro area. Kimberly, welcome to
Kimberly Driggins:the pod. Hi. Thanks for having me, Doctor. Boyd. Of course.
Rhea Boyd:So to start, tell us a little bit more about yourself because I know like many of our guests, you wear a number of hats.
Kimberly Driggins:I'm Kimberly Driggins, and I'm the executive director of the Washington Housing Conservancy in Washington, DC. My career has really been, really in urban planning and development, mainly here in the DC area, but also did a stint in Detroit recently in the last 10 years. And I have really spent my life really thinking about urban places and really thinking about mobility, economic mobility for people of color and how best to achieve that. I've worn many hats. I've worked in the private sector as a consultant.
Kimberly Driggins:I've also worked in government. My longest stint has been in local government, 15 to 16 years total. And now I'm in the not for profit space and loving it. And, really, that perspective, that vast perspective, really helps inform the work that I do and really, the challenges that we face. And so, very committed, to cities, very committed to making sure that African American and other people of color really thrive in cities, especially cities that are experiencing great, great pressure on the market and displacement.
Kimberly Driggins:And I think DC is a city that is, ground 0 with respect to that.
Rhea Boyd:Tell us more about the Washington Housing Conservancy or the WHC and what it is you do there.
Kimberly Driggins:The Washington Housing Conservancy, we're a young organization. We were established 6 years ago in 2018, and we're really filling a gap in the market. We really focus on, workforce or essential or attainable housing. I gave you three words mainly because, workforce is a little controversial, but it really is for, people who make, make a decent living, but they don't qualify for subsidized housing. So this this class of housing is often called workforce or obtainable or essential.
Kimberly Driggins:And the who, this is like your teachers, your first responders, your day care workers, your hospitality workers. Again, folks that make a decent living, but their wages haven't kept up with the cost of living. And they are quite frankly the most rent burdened proportionately, like high levels of being overly rent burdened mainly because, again, they don't qualify for your traditional subsidized housing or your traditional affordable housing. So the Washington Housing Conservancy, we specialize in this market. We specialize in being mixed income, so we serve a range.
Kimberly Driggins:We serve everyone from a voucher resident to mixed to a market rate resident. And we believe in the mixed income model. We believe that that is a key pathway for economic mobility and really solving some of the challenges that traditional affordable housing often experiences. And we also are committed to the region. So we work in not only just DC, but we work in the, suburbs and, inner city, or inner rung suburbs of the Greater Washington area.
Kimberly Driggins:And so we really, are focusing on an area where there's very little resources for this group. We are also focused on making sure that we're acquiring buildings close to high quality transit and in high opportunity neighborhoods. And, you know, I'd like to talk a little bit about, you know, the high opportunity neighborhood. And most of our affordable housing in this country is really in places where the dirt in the land is the cheapest. It's so expensive to build affordable housing, and it requires a lot of subsidy, especially at the lowest income band, the housing often is not where people have access to fresh and healthy food, where they have access to amenities like quality, transit options, and and it's just a a matter of fact.
Kimberly Driggins:So the Washington Housing Conservancy, we are a preservation strategy. We acquire existing apartment building communities, and we keep rents reasonable. And we keep rents reasonable where the pressure on the market is the greatest. And so this is where, your affordability, no matter where you live in the country, is being lost at the greatest rate. These apartment buildings traditionally go to for profit developers who are looking to buy these buildings and to make improvements and to raise rents ultimately pushing people out.
Kimberly Driggins:So we are a complete disruptor, in the system and in the market. We are having some level of success, and we hope to be able to scale our model over the next 2 to 3 years.
Rhea Boyd:I mean, first, you've got me. Right? I am absolutely fascinated by this model and your approach. Because I think from my manager, someone who doesn't work on housing but has some kind of cursory sense of how housing is a critical driver of health, often the conversation I have about housing is about the unhoused or folks who are housing insecure. And so you're focusing on a really unique population that I I kinda wanna drill a bit more into.
Rhea Boyd:Because I wonder if we include in our interventions the folks who we really should be focusing on in the nation's housing crisis, the population you're talking about, it gives me the sense that we're actually talking about maybe most Americans. Like, it seems like we're talking about a lot of people, a lot more people than the sometimes more niche population that we can describe as the unhoused. So can you tell us a little bit more about who these folks are? You mentioned some of their jobs, and if you have any numbers for the DMV or that greater DC metro area, like how many people are you guys trying to serve?
Kimberly Driggins:You know, it it is really, we're more I always say we're a more upstream solution. Right? Like, we definitely need people focused on the unhoused and we need people focused on the lowest income. You know, but it's a continuum. And the people that I'm talking about really are, you know, your everyday average citizens, residents, people who are living paycheck to paycheck.
Kimberly Driggins:You know, one event, you know, one medical event, one, you know, losing your job, like, that they could be homeless. Like, we saw during COVID, we saw during the pandemic. We've seen, you know, a spike, when you have a crisis, that leads to the unhoused or the homeless, you know, increasing their numbers. And we're trying to prevent that from happening at all. Right?
Kimberly Driggins:Like, you know, trying to prevent that. And so we're also looking at, you know, a population where, you know, I think you need a lot of solutions and you need a lot of innovation. Let me just say that. I think in the housing field and the housing industry, there really hasn't been much innovation over 40, 50 years. And you can see it as a result of the housing crisis getting worse and worse no matter where you live.
Kimberly Driggins:And so there are more solutions that are needed. And we just thought that, look, there are a lot of great not for profit affordable housing organizations that are working at those at the at the, level in terms of the lowest income and even some great organizations that are doing work with the homeless. And we do have some PSA voucher residents, and those are folks who are formerly homeless. So we actually do touch that population once they're actually in our buildings. But the folks that are what we what you say middle income.
Kimberly Driggins:This is middle income workers. This is, blue collar workers, middle income workers. Again, people who have a steady paycheck, they could be salaried, but their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living. That's just the bottom line. And in high cost markets like the DC, the DMV area, the Bay Area, New York, Miami, I mean, you name it.
Kimberly Driggins:I mean, even parts of Vermont. I mean, we're seeing a housing affordability crisis across the country in places that we haven't seen it before in addition to the metro areas I just outlined. And, you know, you really do have people that need, affordable housing that wouldn't necessarily say that they do. I think that there's a stigma actually around affordable housing and I think we've othered it in a way that's actually not helpful, not useful. And, you know, what we really should be talking about is housing affordability and not really being overly rent burdened.
Kimberly Driggins:You know, there's a rule of thumb that you shouldn't be paying more than a third of your expenses to rent. And when you look at that, you asked me about the numbers. I could tell you about, you know, close to 50% across the country, pay more than 30% of their income goes to rent. That's that's almost half the population. I mean, these are some seriously big numbers, and, you know, we need these solutions and we need to be more upstream.
Kimberly Driggins:Some of us need to be thinking more upstream to help mitigate, you know, what's being experienced, at the lower income levels and homeless because it gets a lot more challenging, and it gets a lot harder in terms of pulling together resources than at the band that I'm working with. And I will say, we use a social impact investing model. We don't rely heavily, on government funding because we feel that the government funding should be going to the most in need to our most vulnerable citizens. And part of our value proposition is that it's going to take more than government to solve this housing affordability crisis. And so the social impact funds that we've created, the ones that we tap, really, lean into, corporate America foundations, philanthropic foundations, private, donors helping solve, for for the crisis and for the issue.
Kimberly Driggins:And and that's unique. And I would say, you know, there's a lot of progress. There's much more progress to be made with respect to that. I'm not saying I I'm not seeing that corporate America is seeing this as a crisis, but it actually affects their workforce. It actually affects regional competitiveness, in a region in terms of it is it is so tied to, you know, this is a health show, but it's tied to health outcomes.
Kimberly Driggins:It's also tied to economic outcomes. You know, housing is just so fundamental.
Rhea Boyd:I'm so excited we're getting to talk today because I feel like we can drill down into some of these issues that sometimes we and health, absolutely, but even as a society, I think, in America just have, like, a cursory understanding and that housing has something to do with economic outcomes, especially for, like you said, African Americans, black folks, and other communities of color. And I think society probably has a cursory understanding of some of those relationships being partly government driven and partly private driven. Right? The history of redlining, the Federal Housing Administration actually supporting the devaluing of homes in areas that were predominantly black and other folks of color, and how that affected the ability to build wealth in black and other communities of color. So I feel like people have kind of some level of understanding of those connections.
Rhea Boyd:But maybe we can drill down a little further because I think it's really interesting to say that this this isn't just on the government. Because the role of the government in backing those mortgages, both historically during the beginning of 20th century, during the problems of redlining, and more recently, right, with the financial crisis in 2008, where, again, it's not just mortgages, subprime mortgages that are issued by private lenders, but there's the ways the government also, failed to fully regulate the industry to protect homeowners, which had a disproportionate impact on communities of color and black folks in particular. And so some people might say, actually, it is the government who owes people something. And I am based here in California, and there are a number of projects underway. By projects, I mean policy, initiatives to have a serious conversation about what reparations means in our state.
Rhea Boyd:And part of that conversation is driven by the underdevelopment of communities of color and black communities in particular, and the ways the housing market has excluded black folks, from participating, and how that has shaped economic outcomes over time. So say more about why you think it's not just the government who should be on the line for fixing this housing affordability crisis and what it means to hold kind of private agencies also accountable. I'm gonna put reparations in the parking lot for a moment, but I I think
Kimberly Driggins:I'm a realist and I'm just, I have a sense of urgency. Right? I have a sense of urgency. And I think that the reparations argument, it's a valid one. I just think it's gonna take longer, and I'm trying to move quicker, faster, and I'm trying to bring more people in.
Kimberly Driggins:And, you know, I also think that it's bigger than the government is willing to spend and allocate. So let's just talk big picture. You look at Department of Housing and Urban Development and you look at their budget and their appropriation. It's pretty minuscule when you compare it to Department of Health and Human Services, when you compare it to Department of Defense, I mean, you barely register. So what I'm saying is that like, as big of an issue as housing is, we actually don't appropriate that much money.
Kimberly Driggins:When you look at the budget, the federal budget, and you look at those key agencies, HUD actually isn't one of them. It's, you know, the Department of Defense, Health and Human Services, Department of Transportation, they're way more, Department of Labor, like those agencies, when you look at their way more money is appropriated to those agencies than housing. I'm not saying that housing doesn't get money, but when you look at it proportionately, when you look at it across agencies, it's pretty small. We it barely registers. That's so that's point number 1.
Kimberly Driggins:We actually and then I actually think that we need to be looking at budgets like Department of Human Services and thinking about the intersection of health and housing. And can some of those dollars actually go toward housing production? Right? Like, you know, need to be looking at some of those other agencies, the infrastructure bill, that Department of Transportation has. Like, I'm I'm trying to cobble resources wherever I can find them.
Kimberly Driggins:But part of housing, when I said we I said earlier that we've othered housing, it's almost like who we think of, you know, I think there's a lot of stereotypes around housing, just like the 19 eighties and welfare and who was on welfare. You think about affordable housing and many people think public housing. Right? That's that's not the only that's not the entirety. Right?
Kimberly Driggins:They think public housing, they think assistance, and they often think, you know, black folks, people of color. Right? And and, you know, there is these explicit and implicit biases about, you know, they need to work, go get a job. I mean, like, all of that, right, I think feeds into, you know, kinda where we are. What we're saying, is that, you know, the the people who are in need, it's greater than just a defined sort of, like, what you've what you might traditionally think of, homelessness or very low income.
Kimberly Driggins:That, yes, that segment is hurting. Yes. They are in need of quality affordable housing, and people need to be dedicated to that. But that's that's really not the tip of the spear. That's kind of like the tip of the spear is actually, you know, in this workforce essential housing and really trying to make sure that those folks stay afloat to try to help, prevent possibly a backslide, right?
Kimberly Driggins:And I think when you're looking at the totality of who's in need, you need to get creative about how we address the problem. The government is finite number of resources, And I think that,
Rhea Boyd:you know, just like ESG 1st, just a little background for the listeners. ESG is a shorthand, right, for I'm looking it up now, for an investing principle that prioritizes environmental issues, social issues, and corporate governance. So it's like responsible kind of quote, unquote investing. Mhmm. So ESG is how you talk about social investments?
Rhea Boyd:It's about corporate responsibility. ESG is
Kimberly Driggins:a corporate term. You know, the the private sector already has a way to kind of tack into this, you know, get into this, ESG, you know, and I'm just putting out there that why can't ESG be more than the environment? You know, you talk about triple bottom line. It can also be about, you know, are people, you know, not overly rent burdened? And again, sometimes these corporations, help exacerbate a housing crisis.
Kimberly Driggins:Right? It's an unintended consequence sometimes of companies relocating to an area, especially high paying companies, high paying jobs. I mean, we've seen it across the country. The tech sector in particular, can sometimes have an outsized impact on, housing costs. And so, you know, it's not, it's not, it's not lost on me that that sector has actually dialed in, has actually dialed in, has actually helped create some of these social impact funds that I that I talked about earlier, not just the one that we created, but others that they manage.
Kimberly Driggins:And I think that, you know, for ed for eds and med sector, you think about hospitals. Let's let's, you know, let's look at that. Hospitals, the the ed the the, medical profession has the full suite of people that I'm talking about. Right? Just from who they're servicing, to who their workers are.
Kimberly Driggins:And they have to be close ideally to their jobs. So there is a value proposition in the medical field and the health field, I think, for housing, not just of its workers, but also who they're helping that you know? And they have funds. Right? They have pension funds.
Kimberly Driggins:Like, they're already investing their money somewhere. And what I'm saying is, can you take some of those pension funds and invest them in affordable housing or create impact funds? It's actually a safe return on investment when you look at it that way. So, you know, I have I'm full of great well, I don't wanna say great ideas, but good ideas. And I just think that we need to be thinking out of the box.
Kimberly Driggins:We need to be thinking across sector. And I spend a lot of my time doing that. I'm a blue sky thinker. I think, you know, how do we bring more people to the table? And I think that there's it there's there's there's a win win here, especially in the health field when it comes to housing affordability.
Kimberly Driggins:You know, it is critical to I see it as critical to y'all's mission. And I think it's also critical to your, you know, to to your workers. And, you know, I'm kind of shocked that more hospitals, that more people aren't in the health field talking about this and in real ways. Because the good news is the health care industry, health field, they don't actually have to even create the housing. They can partner with organizations like myself and others that, you know, we know what to do.
Kimberly Driggins:But it's that partnership, that's needed and resources that's needed
Rhea Boyd:to to move the dial. You also mentioned some of the similarities between or maybe a similarity is the right word. You mentioned some of the ways there might be some synergy between the housing industry and the health care industry. And, you know, I just did a quick little search. And another similarity is kind of the sizable slice both account for in our nation's GDP.
Rhea Boyd:Like, these are not small, tiny, little niche industries, you know, that you're talking about. Health care, according to CMS, the Center For Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency, is, as of a couple of years ago, about 17% of the GDP health care spending is. And spending in real estate is comparable. We're talking about 3 to $4,000,000,000,000 a year our nation spends in these industries. And when you have industries that are so large and so profitable, right, that money goes to somebody, there's often some more nefarious private actors, honestly.
Rhea Boyd:And there's a lot of competition. So for you guys to be an organization that is buying up real estate in communities that are growing, that risk gentrification, frankly, that risk shifting the population that's served by the housing stock while they increase the cost of living for the folks that live there. How do you manage such a competitive market? And what's your competitive edge? How are you even outbidding folks who want to change that into a, you know
Kimberly Driggins:Mhmm. Luxury condo. Yeah.
Rhea Boyd:And a luxury condo. Yeah.
Kimberly Driggins:Luxury condo. So we're swimming upstream. I said, you know, we're a disruptor. We're having some success, but it's tough. I'm not gonna lie.
Kimberly Driggins:Rhea, it's it's tough. I mean, we lose more than we win, but we, you know, where we're successful is in jurisdictions that have policies that value affordable housing. Right? And so one of those policies is right of first refusal. So pretty much in all of the areas that I'm working in in this DMV, the district, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, every place except for Virginia actually has, right of first refusal, meaning the government can step into a, deal and say that it has affordable housing goals and effectively sort of pauses the, market rate transaction.
Kimberly Driggins:It pauses it and it gives it has a prequalified list of mission driven developers for profit and an and not for profit. And if one of those folks can meet the price in a timeline, say, 90 days, a 120 days, you know, the the project goes to to to one of those organizations. And that has been tremendously helpful, for us. This region has some of the most progressive affordable housing policies in the country. I think that we are, definitely leading the nation and the tools in our toolbox to help solve the problem.
Kimberly Driggins:And we're still, you know, you know, we're still sort of just having our head above water, right? The the the jurisdictions have affordability targets. They have housing goals. They look at where the housing is needed, and it's not just in the lower income areas. Many like, Northern Virginia, Arlington, the district, we're looking at all of our neighborhoods and saying, you know, you know, about access and opportunity.
Kimberly Driggins:So I give this region a lot of credit. You know, you have to have an environment. You have to have, political leadership that's supportive. Also, I would say, you know, that that's really huge. So that's helped us.
Kimberly Driggins:We've also, relied on the power of partnerships, to meet the price. And so how we're held accountable is that our affordability goals are codified in our, legal documents. And so we're providing, you know, affordability for 99 years in 2 of our projects. Our minimum is, like, 20 to 25 years. That's that's you're doing good when you can do, like, anything over 15.
Kimberly Driggins:That's the low income housing tax credit minimum is 15 years. We're exceeding that. And the two deals that I mentioned that are 99 years, that's through a partnership with Amazon, Amazon's housing equity fund. And that's a social impact fund, for affordable housing. And they're operating in the 3 main areas, which is the DC region, Seattle, and Nashville.
Kimberly Driggins:And it's been a very powerful partnership because they're able to provide low cost, flexible capital, and we're able to access that capital and provide affordability where there wouldn't be, you know, an opportunity to do so for pretty much, you know, in perpetuity. Just to just to put a finer point on this, most affordable housing deals are 90, 95% government funded. And it's the low income housing tax credit when you're looking at new construction that is the main driver of and producer of housing affordability. It also is one of the key drivers in preservation, and gut rehab. So that tool in and of itself, is responsible for an outsized, proportion of the affordable housing that gets produced in the country.
Kimberly Driggins:And it's an amazing tool. I'm all for it, but it can't just be 1. And, you know, that that it I mean, just think about that. I mean, and think about, you know, how how much the problem is just getting worse and worse. So I just say, you know, it just demands more in terms of innovation, in terms of who, is thinking about solutions.
Rhea Boyd:Absolutely. I wanna switch gears to make a couple other connections. The first person I think of is doctor Martin Luther King Junior. Folks think of him obviously as a major civil rights leader and some maybe the major civil rights leader of his time. And perhaps we think about, you know, the March on Washington or the Montgomery bus boycott or some of his more publicized work.
Rhea Boyd:But towards the end, what became the end of his life, he was laser focused on poverty and specifically talking about housing and dignity and what housing what the type of housing, the quality of housing, the conditions of housing that people were living in said to people about themselves and their own worth, and what it said about society and what we think of certain groups of people, especially Black folks and folks of color. And I think that that thread, that national conversation he was beginning again towards the end of his life that he, you know, was unable to fully carry out, I think, was picked up in ways by Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond, who wrote the book Evicted, a Pulitzer Prize winning book. So I'm, you know, not somebody who's just saying, That book's good. It won the Pulitzer for exploring, I think it was 8 families, in Minneapolis and their experiences with housing insecurity, and eviction. And, again, he makes the point that there is something deeper about housing that says and the housing we allow people to live in that says something about their humanity, and how we treat them as a member of society.
Rhea Boyd:And so I wanna ask you more about what it means for us to house such a large population of people, because, again, you're focusing not just on the not primarily on the unhoused, but on most of us who may be a paycheck or 2 away from being housing insecure or being on the street or who may be 1 unpaid rent or 1 unpaid mortgage away from being out of housing altogether. And so I wanna ask you 2 questions here. 1, what for you is the connection between housing and larger social concepts like our humanity, our dignity, and maybe even loneliness, our relationship and care for each other? And 2, knowing that it's so important to keep housing and so many of us live on that razor's edge where we might lose our housing, what is your organization's approach to eviction as an organization who is housing people actively and perhaps as an organization who, like you mentioned, works on policies or things about policies that help kind of protect affordable housing for people?
Kimberly Driggins:Yeah. Oh, wow. I wish we had all day. So let me start with the latter, the last question and try to go back to the first, although those are just, you know, that's an episode each. But here's the thing, you know, we're a mixed income model.
Kimberly Driggins:So we're serving a variety of residents at different income needs. And so that we know from failed housing policy that concentration of poverty actually doesn't work. Right? Like, you know, with the housing projects that were built, you know, almost all of them have been torn down and have been remade. Like, the public housing has been remade as mixed income.
Kimberly Driggins:The first iteration was HOPE 6, under the Clinton, administration. The next iteration was is really Choice Neighborhoods. These are all programs that came out of Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD. And this is really looking at their portfolio, which is public housing. Right?
Kimberly Driggins:And, you know, the public housing produced some pretty I mean, I think it was successful initially, but then I think that it really, you know, it led to, you know, poor health outcomes. It led to violence. It led to, you know, just even where it, where it was located, you know, the, biases in the environment, like environmental racism, where some of this housing was located. So, you know, I feel like, you know, there's a responsibility. You, you, when you know better, you should do better.
Kimberly Driggins:And I think that the current, affordable housing policy really does sort of, value and think through mixed income and not just, you know, kind of mixed income. We do it at the property level, but also like at the neighborhood level. Like I was saying, like, you know, housing, affordable housing typically is concentrated in lower income areas with less access. And you think about what that means around how you feel, you know, you know, where you're kind of in areas of lack, You know, we're in areas of opportunity, and that's intentional. So, you know, we have an anti racist framework, and, you know, we think about, racial equity.
Kimberly Driggins:And first and foremost, how WHC thinks about racial equity is where we're located, that we're in high opportunity neighborhoods where there's access to things, to amenities such as, again, high opportunity or or grocery stores, quality schools or schools are on the rise, access to public transportation, quality transportation, and good social services, networks, healthcare access to we we actually do asset mapping before we buy a property to understand where we are and how far we are to amenities like a quality health clinic or a hospital, you know, where the grocery stores are. We actually do that, like, on the front end. And it is a but for test for WHC. You know, and as we think about the people in the mix, because we have everything from voucher residents to mix to to, market rate, we think about how do you activate that mix? So for us, it's not just about not being overly rent burdened.
Kimberly Driggins:The activation of the mix of people is actually key to economic mobility. It's actually key. Like, can't we we feel that it's an inherent advantage to be in a mixed income community, but we know that people don't necessarily interact with people that they don't know, that they're not comfortable with. Again, you can't tell. We don't have anything.
Kimberly Driggins:Like, all of our units look the same. So you'd never know if you were a voucher resident or a market rate. Right? Our finishes are the same in the apartments. You know, we have no pour doors.
Kimberly Driggins:We there's one entrance. I mean, you really don't know. But we want to bring people together because we think bridging those lines of difference lead to strengthening community. Right? You talked about, you know, Martin Luther King and and, you know, one of the things is his beloved community.
Kimberly Driggins:Right? He wrote a lot about beloved beloved community and what that is. And, you know, we really want, you know, we have high ambition and high aspiration, and this work is not easy. You know, we we intentionally think about, okay, bringing people together who want to come together. It's not Orwellian.
Kimberly Driggins:It's not heavy handed, but we create compelling invitations to participate in community building. We do a number of community building events across our properties. And it really is about getting to know one another and and humanity. Like, our our our our differences, our strengths and uplifting, what the community is. Reflecting what the community is and our, and our communities.
Kimberly Driggins:And so that you know, we started during COVID. And, you know, we and that is when people were retreating. You know, you we couldn't come together, but, you know, we are coming when we were coming out of COVID, we were like, well, how are we you know, people were, were, you know, understandably reluctant. I think that, you know, we lost muscle as a society during COVID around interacting. And I think it reinforced.
Kimberly Driggins:I think the loneliness epidemic started before COVID. I think COVID exacerbated that, pandemic of loneliness. And I think that, you know, we have our communities are generally smaller. And it's good old fashioned, like, old school tactics around, you know, bringing people out, you know, bringing celebrating cultural events, heritage, thinking about, you know, resident led, engagement whether it's a paint and sip, whether it's a book club. We have women's healing and listening circles that we've created.
Kimberly Driggins:And that's really because we have our social impact coordinators on the ground. And their main job is to interact with residents to understand what their needs are, their desires. Because ultimately, we are trying to move from one of fear to one of aspiration. If you're not overly rent burdened and you're able to save money, what does that free you up to do mentally as well as, you know, you know, physically? What can you do?
Kimberly Driggins:Can you invest in going back to school? Can you invest in your children's education? Can you think about starting a business? When you're in when you're living paycheck to paycheck, it's a mentality of scarcity, and we're trying to move to a mentality of abundance. And that really starts with 2 fundamentals.
Kimberly Driggins:You know, the housing affordability and stability. We provide long term stability that homeownership typically provides. And knowing that your rent is not going to increase above a certain amount, say 2, 3 percent a year, and that's sort of locked in, and really thinking about the economic mobility piece. And those things reduce stress, you know, you know, that we're living in quality housing. So you're not looking at lead.
Kimberly Driggins:So like some of those health, some of those health drivers are driven by the stressed out nature of living in these these these buildings typically. And we're trying to mitigate that and we're trying to activate and maximize the, mixed income environment that we have because we see it as a competitive advantage. Last but not least, you asked about evictions. So that is absolutely the last thing that we want to do. Sometimes it is unavoidable.
Kimberly Driggins:So I'm not saying that we've never, evicted anyone, but that is certainly the last course of action. We have a rent relief fund. We created it. It's part of our model. This is prior to COVID.
Kimberly Driggins:What shifted is the need to fund that rent relief fund. It's called energy reserve upfront when we close. So we have a fund for people. We know that hardships are gonna come. And so we have, you know, it's an application process.
Kimberly Driggins:You know, we ask people to expend the federal funds or local funds that might be available. We also partner with a SISU, which is a, a credit building platform for renters. They also have a rent relief fund. So a SISU works you don't typically get credit, like, it does like, on time regular rent payment is not rep is not reported to credit agencies. Right?
Kimberly Driggins:And so when you're thinking about economic mobility, you know, most renters struggle with establishing credit. Right? So we've partnered with a platform that actually on time regular rent payment goes to building credit, goes to establishing credit scores, and it's a do no harm. Right? Like, you know, we don't we don't negatively report to the agencies.
Kimberly Driggins:And that partnership, they also have a rent relief fund that our residents can tap. So our residents can tap 2 funds, possibly more. But one fund that we have, and we have it across our portfolio, the Isisu Rent Relief Fund, as well as the local monies that might be available. Now those have dried up substantially, local funds, for rent relief. But some, you know, I guess, depending on where you live are are available.
Kimberly Driggins:So, you know, we're thinking about, you know, the ecosystem, what could come up, and, you know, there is an application process, but it's it's you know, we want people to be able to access, this funding.
Rhea Boyd:So one thing you talked about today is the value and power of bringing people together. Later this season, we'll talk to Sarah Hemminger, a local leader who founded Thread, a non profit based in Baltimore, Maryland, that addresses the impact of social isolation among young folks. And it's not lost on me that both of you are taking on different forms of division that have traditionally separated Americans by race, by class, by part of the country or neighborhood you live in. And it feels like you're taking on this issue of divisiveness when it otherwise seems at an all time high that we're so polarized and separated as Americans.
Kimberly Driggins:I think that there's huge, there's so many things that are gonna happen in the next 15, you know, 10 to 15, 20 years. And you're gonna have even more people, you know, thinking about or or housing insecurity, than we have now, unless we really get creative, leverage our funding opportunities, think about collaborative partnerships and really, you know, I think the health industry, health care, it's for me, it's a partnership that makes absolute, like, the most sense that we would be partnering more intentionally around solutions to combat the epidemic that that
Rhea Boyd:we're experiencing. Wow. You shared so many beautiful pearls with us today and just really helped us drill deeper into an issue that, like at the top of the episode, I said, I think all of us know something about. All of us know housing is important. All of us have some idea that there is an affordability crisis.
Rhea Boyd:And many of us have been directly touched by it in our families or perhaps the community or clients or patients we serve. So it's been really wonderful, honestly, personally, for me to get to learn a bit from you and your work, and I hope our listeners feel the same way. Thank you so much for joining us, Kimberly. Thank you for having me. Thank you.
Rhea Boyd:Kimberly Driggins, everyone. Thanks for listening. This is Research and Justice For All, season 2. If you like what you heard today, please click subscribe or send this episode to a friend.