Speaker 1: 0:00

This organization that to date, has invested about $400 million into the community, with another $250 million that we're working on. Currently we serve 24,000 individuals with a quality place that they can afford to live and, I think, differently than any other real estate development organization, we provide deep and comprehensive services to our residents to be able to help them be the best version of themselves. So, whether it's helping our seniors to age in place or helping our working adults get to live and wage career ladder employment so that they don't need our affordable housing anymore, that's what we're striving to do. Live and wage career ladder employment so that they don't need our affordable housing anymore, that's what we're striving to do.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Welcome to America's Healthiest City. I'm your host, will Melton, and today I am on site at the Better Housing Coalition. Our guest today is Greta Harris, the president and CEO of the Better Housing Coalition. She also sits on Dr Danny Avula's transition team and is focused on housing. This is a 10-year community partnership to make all of Richmond the healthiest in America by 2033. This is a 10-year community partnership to make all of Richmond the healthiest in America by 2033. If you're tuning in for the very first time, please check out americashealthiestcitycom to see our ideas board. Leave your ideas behind, leave comments on others' ideas and if you represent a business, a nonprofit, an academic institution or a government agency and you want to see this work move forward, please learn what it takes to become an ambassador. It's free and will help you tell the story of how you are making the region healthier Without further ado. Greta, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate this Happy to be here Will.

Speaker 2: 1:54

So you are our last interview of 2024. Hot dog and we're going to do a recap episode for the year, but I'm really excited about this. You're an influential person in the community. A lot of folks call on you for counsel and I have seen you speak up in many community meetings with very wise and sage advice. So the first question that I ask everybody for the show is are you a native to Richmond or did you move here, and if so, what brought you?

Speaker 1: 2:22

I am not a native of Richmond, um, I would be considered a newcomer because I've only been here 30 years, um. But I'm a native of danville, virginia, so about three and a half hours from here, right on the north carolina border in south side, um, um, and I went. Once I left Danville to go to college. I really didn't come back and I went to Blacksburg and then New York, philadelphia, princeton, and then decided to come back to Virginia after our dad passed away. So I've been here 30 years and this is home now. So I'm deeply rooted. My three sisters are here as well, so I just wanna work hard every day to try to make this community not only good for us but good for everyone.

Speaker 2: 3:20

So you mentioned the hard work. There's a reward to that, obviously. When was it that it became apparent to you that you were going to be instrumental in the community that you lived in?

Speaker 1: 3:34

I don't know if I ever thought that I would be instrumental. I am fortunate enough to do work that I really love. I'm fortunate enough to do work that I really love. I know that having a good place to call home can be so transformational in an individual or family's life. So it's a great honor to be able to do this work, which is harder than it needs to be most of the time. But it wasn't a goal to try to be influential. I think when you're passionate about something and you see need in the community, you continue to just work really hard to scale up the impact so you can serve more people.

Speaker 1: 4:22

So have you always been in community service as a function of your job or, more recently, yeah, I think you know my background is such that I grew up in Danville that is, the last Confederate capital of the South after Richmond fell and my parents were very active in the civil rights movement.

Speaker 1: 4:46

Most of the black community was very active as well, and so growing up in a community where there was a commitment to service and social justice sort of got into the DNA of my sisters and me. And so, while I don't think that it was my career goal to be active as a civic leader, it's not surprising, as I look back over my career, that I've gotten involved in a lot of things to try to provide opportunity, access to more people. I think it was also underscored when I went to Virginia Tech, whose motto is ut prosum, excuse me, ut prosum. There we go, not so great at Latin, but it means that I may serve. So great at Latin, but it means that I may serve, and that is just embedded in every hokey, whatever your field of study is, to be able to go out and take your talents and make a positive difference in the world. So I think, while it wasn't intentional, it has become a big part of my life in doing work that is meaningful work.

Speaker 2: 6:07

Maybe it is a result of my service at Housing Families First, or maybe it is just due to the immense need here in the community, but I've interviewed a number of people in the housing space, from Housing Families First to the Partnership for Housing, affordability and Caritas, and the thing that I keep coming back to is, I think, about the various solutions that are at work in our community. We have 44,000 unit shortage. We build 5,000 roughly units a year.

Speaker 2: 6:38

If anybody lives in Richmond thinks that we're going to have affordability anytime soon, soon. They're dreaming. I don't know how to convey that more urgently.

Speaker 1: 6:57

And I want to ask you personally for you, what was it that brought you to housing? Well, I have a background in architecture. That's what I went to undergrad and graduate school for, and initially I thought I was going to be this world-famous architect traveling around the world doing beautiful buildings, and that didn't quite work out that way. But now I get to work in partnership with architects and engineers and, at a different scale and much more localized, help people to have a good home, Because I really believe that home is the launching pad for dreams to be realized.

Speaker 1: 7:35

And so, you know, initially, working in Princeton and Philadelphia, I didn't know anything about affordable housing.

Speaker 1: 7:47

And then I got laid off, like people do from time to time, when the economy was going through a recession and I was a new homeowner, living paycheck to paycheck and I was scrambling to. Once I got laid off to find something and my cousin in Philadelphia said, hey, there's this nonprofit that's trying to do good work in our Germantown neighborhood. I was like, who wants to work for a nonprofit? And I got introduced to an organization that happened to be the largest affordable housing developer in Philly at the time. And you know, I tell young people when I'm speaking with them that getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened to my career because it changed the whole trajectory to introduce me to a field of service community building, community organizing and the built environment. And that was 35 years ago. And since that time I've worked locally. I've worked at national organizations and got a chance to work with amazing people around the country all striving to give people a good place to call home.

Speaker 2: 9:09

So you said that the work is hard and we know that the challenges are great and we don't have sufficient solutions. From your perspective, what is it about the work that is hard?

Speaker 1: 9:23

Well, especially now, everyone knows that we have a shortage of housing.

Speaker 1: 9:29

It's a crisis stage all across the country and there is awareness that's at an all-time high as well, because for many years we were like out in the wilderness saying we need more housing and it just wasn't getting traction.

Speaker 1: 9:46

But everyone is aware and most people are for quality, affordable housing, as long as it doesn't go into your neighborhood, and that remains a universal truth that we're fighting an uphill battle to overcome on a daily basis. And I think at some point or another, our humanity needs to be lifted up and there needs to be a greater willingness to have people as neighbors who may be different than you are, because that creates all of the barriers that we have to overcome, whether it's zoning barriers or regulatory barriers that are put up to keep certain people out, and that drives up cost, it takes longer to implement. So it's it's people's willingness to have someone different be their neighbor. I think, when you boil it all down, that that is the crux of the issue and then, if you go a little bit deeper, um, I think there are elements of um classism and racism that are still permeating under the surface of the body of work that we do well, um, I appreciate that perspective and we're going to take a quick break.

Speaker 2: 11:22

When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about better housing. Okay break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about Better Housing Coalition. Welcome back to America's Healthiest City on ESPN Richmond 106.1, part of the Mike King Biz Media Network. This is our last interview of the year. We are at Better Housing Coalition and we're speaking to Greta Harris, the president and CEO of Better Housing Coalition, having a great conversation about the hard work of affordable housing. And, greta, you again for for being with us today. I want to I know a little bit about better housing coalition. You guys are a substantial developer of housing here in the region. You guys have recently finished some great projects and.

Speaker 2: 11:59

I haven't had a chance to visit them yet, but just for the sake of our listeners, can you tell a little bit about better housing coalition, the work that you guys do, and maybe just illuminate excuse me like Kool-Aid or some recent project that you are proud of?

Speaker 1: 12:11

Okay, so thank you for the opportunity to share about an organization that I am passionate about. Better Housing Coalition, or BHC, is a 36-year-old nonprofit corporation that was started in Richmond by Mary Caller Cheek McClanahan If you have some more seasoned listeners they'll know her, she's iconic here in the Richmond region and Carter McDowell, who came together to really advocate for quality housing for everyone here in the region, and those two women, just with an idea of lifting up the need and benefits of quality housing, birthed this organization that to date, has invested about $400 million into the community, with another $250 million that we're working on. Currently we serve 24,000 individuals with a quality place that they can afford to live, and we're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish. But it seems like a drop in the bucket for the need right now, and I think, differently than any other real estate development organization, whether it's a for-profit organization or non-profit, we provide deep and comprehensive services to our residents to be able to help them be the best version of themselves.

Speaker 1: 13:48

So, whether it's helping our seniors to age in place, or helping kids to dream those small dreams because they've had exposure from an educational and cultural enrichment perspective, or helping our working adults get to live and wage career ladder employment so that they don't need our affordable housing anymore. That's what we're striving to do. We also do for sale housing to create wealth building opportunities for families, and I think we just crossed the 300 home sales number and we have another about 150 that are in the pipeline are those using the maggie walker community land trust model of, or is this total sale the land and the building and everything, uh, total sale, land and building, and I think, um, maggie walker is one tool.

Speaker 1: 14:44

that, or the land trust model, is one tool of many. And you know we're asking. I'd say the high percentage of our buyers are first time home buyers. They're mostly people of color, modest means, and in many cases we've asked them to go into communities that were still evolving, and so it is my belief that I want them to get the full equity by being a pioneer to go into certain areas. So we don't follow the land trust model, but I'm glad that we have that as another tool in the region to give people optionality.

Speaker 2: 15:28

I'm a big believer. That I mean as somebody who's grown their wealth through real estate. It's a wonderful way to start building generational wealth.

Speaker 1: 15:37

And it's.

Speaker 2: 15:37

I think, something that too many people don't get to experience in their entire lives.

Speaker 1: 15:42

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 15:43

So I appreciate that. Now let's talk a little bit about the work of providing service. And so there's 34 different organizations in the entire region that are doing something in the housing space, the continuum of care. Tell me a little bit about the breadth of service that Better Housing Coalition provides. Is it permanent, supportive? Is it a range of services? You said deep and comprehensive?

Speaker 1: 16:09

Yeah. So I think there is a continuum of housing need, from those that are unhoused all the way up to market rate, and we've done housing along that whole spectrum. On the end, where people are more vulnerable, we've had partnerships with the Veterans Administration and have housed upwards of 40 formerly homeless veterans at our properties. We've worked with the YWCA and had apartments that were secretly located and furnished for victims of domestic abuse so that they wouldn't have to go into a shelter. We have a partnership with Children's Home Society and we've helped over 100 formerly homeless, aged-out foster youth. So everybody needs shelter right.

Speaker 1: 17:06

So we've done that. We have senior housing. We're working on a development in Midlothian in partnership with the Community Services Board where we'll have individuals with developmental disabilities living in partnership with other individuals, so in an integrated fashion. We have the working poor who are out here working one in two jobs every day and providing great service to our community. But the math isn't mathing anymore, as Richmond has been discovered and the cost of everything is up. We have more moderate income households that are usually our homebuyers, and then we've already we've gone all the way up to market rate development so that when we're doing homeownership subdivisions we're offering a mixed income model that we believe over the long haul has great benefit all the way around.

Speaker 2: 18:12

Well, it sounds like that moves us kind of beyond that NIMBYism that you talked about, because people who are moving into the community are choosing to move there and not so much, you know, having to have those consternations about who their future neighbors might be.

Speaker 1: 18:25

That's right.

Speaker 1: 18:26

I mean, one of the cool projects that we're working on here in the city is in Highland Park and it's a 125-unit subdivision in partnership with Eagle Construction that has helped with the land development and design of, I think, five or six different models development and design of, I think, five or six different models and we're and the city of Richmond has been a great partner in providing capital improvement resources, because we're taking the old armory site and an old abandoned park and a little bit of the former Dub Court public housing land and creating a new neighborhood that's adjacent between Barton Heights and Highland Park and we're putting in new streets, water, sewers, sidewalks, green spaces, and then we'll have 125 buildable lots that we're selling at a discount to Maggie Walker Project Homes, habitat and a couple of market rate builders, so that again we'll have a mixed income community there and you have smaller homes for those of more modest means all the way up to really nice four-bedroom homes for those who need it as well. Wonderful, yeah, really nice four-bedroom homes for those who need it as well.

Speaker 2: 19:46

Wonderful yeah. So when I think about this gap, this 44,000-unit shortage that we face, and in talking about the multitude of solutions that just aren't meeting the mark, are there any solutions on the horizon or any existing solutions that you see as being a linchpin and trying to really move the needle on this, that we can invigorate or introduce?

Speaker 1: 20:16

Well, since 2019, the cost of delivering a typical unit of housing has gone up 65% Ouch, that hurts. And the cost of operating a rental portfolio has gone up almost 70%. So that's mostly personnel, real estate, taxes, insurance, utilities, etc. And yet, unlike a market rate developer, if your costs go up, you just pass it on to the end user. We try to keep our rents down so that we can meet that affordability threshold. To keep our rents down so that we can meet that affordability threshold.

Speaker 1: 21:02

So, being on the mayor's transition team focused on affordable housing, the message that I'm lifting up is that we need a lot more money and really, even though there have been more awareness at the local level and I'm excited to see what Henrico County has done with a dedicated funding stream I think the city of Richmond needs that as well as Chesterfield County needs that and, in fact, other local jurisdictions in the RVA region need that as well. But at least for the big three we need to have resources that are commensurate with the size of the need that we're trying to address, and other cities comparable in size to Richmond are putting in like $100 million a year, and I think here in the city of Richmond they committed to $10 million a year. It's just not enough for the cost of delivery at this moment.

Speaker 2: 22:07

I also understand that that money is not being fully utilized.

Speaker 1: 22:11

Correct.

Speaker 2: 22:13

Another discussion for another day.

Speaker 2: 22:15

But no, I appreciate all those perspectives and I think that, as I think about the things that are in play right now and as I work with folks in this space, there's there's a lot happening that's going to change the face of what development looks like, and so I'm personally I've talked to folks from you know, the developers of the fall line trail. That's going to make a big kind of transit shift, but I'm actually really curious. You guys must be shifting your planning a little bit as you think about the introduction of the north south bus rapid transit line.

Speaker 1: 22:48

Yeah, so I think wednesday yeah, wednesday is our last corporate board meeting for better housing coalition for the year and the board is hopefully going to be adopting a new, pretty aggressive strategic plan that includes a significant step up in our portfolio growth and in that plan it specifically highlights opportunities along the new pulse line, along the fall line and where new schools are going to be located, and all we need is more capital and we're going to be going out and trying to raise significant amounts of that to fuel an unprecedented amount of activity within our organization going forward. I don't know if we can pull it off, but we're going to try.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Well, if you don't have a big vision, you can never get there.

Speaker 1: 23:46

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Speaker 2: 23:49

I look forward to seeing that when it comes out.

Speaker 1: 23:50

Me too, and honestly, because you have such a big audience, I'll put the number out there because sometimes, when you put it out into the universe, things will happen. But we're going to try to raise $100 million of capital and with our projected growth plan and with a lot of luck and hard work, we think we can do a billion dollars of investment in the region over the next decade and we'd like to give that our best shot. Well, that's a big number. It is a big number.

Speaker 2: 24:21

I love it.

Speaker 1: 24:26

As somebody who dreams big myself, go for it. We're going to try to.

Speaker 2: 24:28

Yep, we're going to take another quick break. We'll come back and talk about Greater Richmond Region and its future and, if that maybe isn't coming to mind, if there's somebody that we can interview on a future episode of this show, that might inject some ideas for the community to adopt yeah, yeah, I I think what.

Speaker 1: 24:47

You know, I'm biased because I just think that everybody ought to embrace and get behind and be an advocate for quality housing options, because when you look at the social determinants of health, the built environment is a big, big piece of that, and so just trying to help more of our neighbors have good choices as to where and how they live, I think will make a tangible difference. I think will make a tangible difference. So I'm just looking for, instead of a handful of very loud and active NIMBYs that seem to pop up with every new development that happens, I would love an army of others to come out and stand with us when we're trying to do more good, affordable housing work across the region. So the idea is be an advocate for affordable housing, and I think you know I attend First Baptist Church South Richmond and I love our ministers and I think they would be great to be able to interview.

Speaker 1: 26:02

It's both Dwight Jones and his son, derek Jones, and you may remember that Dwight Jones was a former mayor here in the city. But I love their message that is so positive and helps people to believe that the future can be better than their present, and I think that's half the battle when you're trying to go in and help facilitate positive change is you have to have faith and belief that that change is possible. And the last five years in particular since COVID, have been particularly challenging for everyone globally and I think having a message or someone to help you remove doubt so that you can dream and believe that those dreams are possible would be a really good thing.

Speaker 2: 27:01

Well, I'm remiss in not having reached out to the faith community. So that's a good opportunity for a future interview. Thank you. Somebody has a couple million bucks they want to give to Better Housing Coalition. How can they reach out to you?

Speaker 1: 27:16

They can certainly go to our website and all of our emails, including mine, are on there under leadership. Or you can just hit the donate button no limitation as to you know the size of a contribution and I guess to your audience I would just say thank you. The RBA community has been extremely generous to us over the years and I think we've worked hard to be a good steward of those resources and leverage them and do good with them, and we're prepared to do that tenfold as we go into the future.

Speaker 2: 27:56

Well, thank you so much for sitting for this interview. Our guests will appreciate the message. I appreciate the message, and happy holidays to you, happy holidays. So this was our last interview of the year, but we have one more episode, a recap, coming to you next week on Thursday at 6 am. You can tune in each week 6 am on ESPN. We'll have a special message for you next week, so please hop on and hear what that is. And to you all, happy holidays.