S2E6: Protective Lending with Monique Gibbs

In Episode 6, The Move Podcast interviews Monique Gibbs, Policy Innovation Specalist at MassHousing (The Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency). Co-hosts Ceasar and Ayushi discuss the paradigm and racialized history of lending and the trap of homeownership as the primary path to wealth accumulation in the US.

Monique Gibbs: [00:00:00] What is something that you can kind of really change to say, like, you were only letting two people in the door, now with just, like, a change in language, oh, now we have 15 people in the door?

Ceasar McDowell:Hey, Ayushi.

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:18] Hey, Ceasar.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:18] How’s it going?

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:19] Good.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:20] Here we are again.

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:21] Here we are again. And we found our guest in a pretty cool way this time.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:25] Yeah, that was so cool. We were-

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:27] That was cool [laughs].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:27] We were at this uh, folks, we were at this mixer for people who are basically doing stuff around civic engagement in the Greater Boston metropolitan area.

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:36] Ignite.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:37] Yeah.

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:37] Please join us if you’re ever around during one of our next mixers.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:00:40] That’s true, yeah.

Ayushi Roy: [00:00:40] We’ve been organizing it with MAPC, the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission. And, at this mixer, all of a sudden Caeser like pulls me aside. He’s like, “We have to go to talk to this person.” And I was like, “Who, who is this person, Caesar, and why are you whispering?” [laughing]. And it turns out to be Monique Gibbs, who is currently an Innovation Specialist-

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:02] The Policy Innovation, especially for-

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:03] Policy Innovation-

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:04] … for Mass. Housing.

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:05] Unbelievable.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:06] Now, for you who don’t know this, Mass. Housing, you hear that name, you may think, Oh, what is that? Bi-, you know, lots of housing all over the place?

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:15] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:15] It’s not mass that way. It’s Mass. for Massachusets.

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:17] [laughs.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:18] And it’s housing, yes, but they are actually not a producer of housing. They are basically a bank.

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:24] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:24] They are quasi- public institution-

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:27] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:27] … that basically funds, supports, and banks low income housing and mixed income, uh, housing developments throughout the state of Massachusetts. So they’re a big player in the financial, uh, market of actually making housing possible and affordable in the state of Massachusetts.

Ayushi Roy: [00:01:45] And we are so excited to have Monique Gibbs here with us today.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:01:50] Yeah. It’s going to be great.

Monique, it’s really wonderful to have you here with us. Two weeks or so ago, we were at this event in Boston called Ignite, which was bringing together people who do different kinds of work around community building and p- public participation, and civic engagement and, you were there. We met you. And after having a conversation we said, “We need to have you come on our show.”

Ayushi Roy: [00:02:16] [laughs] It was literally instant. We were like, “I’m sorry, your title is what? Policy Innovation? Okay. All right.”

Ceasar McDowell: [00:02:23] And one of the reasons is because on our show, we’ve been paying a lot of attention to what people have been doing through a- actual practices on the ground to actually help build civic life, create community, development to, you know, kind of, as we always sometimes say, stitch together this very complex public we have. And we know that people, in different sectors of society have responsibilities for that, so like, government has a responsibility, civil agencies.

But this season, you know, we’re really focused on this other issue about the other actors out there.

And now, you work for who?

Monique Gibbs: [00:02:58] So, I work for Mass. Housing, which is a public private agency for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:03:05] Okay. So, you, now you got us tricked up, so it’s neither, it’s neither private. It kind of lives in a lane by itself, right?

Monique Gibbs: [00:03:11] [laughs]

Yes. So it functions as a bank. So, they, they do lending and bonding and all of that great stuff on Wall Street, but they’re still held accountable by the Commonwealth.

So, members of the board are publicly appointed by the governor and they still have to do reporting and held accountable by the legislature.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:03:33] Very interesting, very interesting.

Ayushi Roy: [00:03:34] Wow. Wow.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:03:35] And you do policy work for them.

Monique Gibbs: [00:03:38] Yes.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:03:38] And what does that mean?

Monique Gibbs: [00:03:40] So, it means a couple different things. This role is very new to the agency. The policy innovation space is very new in general, but to kind of do a quick summation of the work that I do is really thinking of trends and prior practices and trends towards the future and thinking how’s the agency meeting its currents goals and how can it meet the new challenges coming forward from the market, from government, from demographic change, from all the different forces that are within the Commonwealth to address the housing needs.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:04:15] Well, I actually love this idea that, actually there’s innovation in policy. They didn’t just call you a policy person, they said, “No-

Ayushi Roy: [00:04:21] Right.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:04:21] … we need someone to do some innovation and policy.”

Monique Gibbs: [00:04:23] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:04:24] Sounds like you might actually, uh, and they may actually re- realize that there’s something wrong with the policy process it is already.

Monique Gibbs: [00:04:31] I think, I wouldn’t say that there’s something wrong with the policy process, it’s about systems that are in place that makes-

Ceasar McDowell: [00:04:39] Yeah.

Monique Gibbs: [00:04:39] … policy change very difficult. So I really came into the policy innovation space two years ago with a fellowship at the Housing Innovation Lab for the city of Boston. And the Housing Innovation Lab uses a model developed by MONUM, Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics of kinda working as consultants for city agencies.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:05:00] Yeah, they’re guests of ours. We, we, they’re our friends.

Monique Gibbs: [00:05:02] Yes. [laughs].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:05:03] [Laughs].

Monique Gibbs: [00:05:04] So, a lot of it is there are people on the ground in city government or in government in general who are doing really great work.

So you have developers, project managers working on housing development. You have the BTD folks, you have street cleaners who are doing the work that they need to do based on whatever the city charger says or whatever they’re charge from the, the Executive or the Legislature says.

However, a lot of these folks don’t have time or the capacity to think differently about their work. So there could be the street cleaner who is been doing the same job for 20 plus years and his goal is to look forward to retirement. But, there are changes that happen within our streets, so there’s, changes in automil- automobiles, our cars are very different from 20 years ago. They way that we-

Ceasar McDowell: [00:05:51] The bikers and-

Monique Gibbs: [00:05:52] Bikers and all of these different-

Ceasar McDowell: [00:05:54] … ride shares, scooters-

Monique Gibbs: [00:05:55] … all of these different things. However, he still has to keep doing his job. So he doesn’t really have the capacity to think, how am I going to do system-wide change to address all of these different changes in our street.

So, policy innovative folks, like myself [laughs], who are kind of like a new emergent thinker within the industry, we’re th- we’re looking at it from a higher level. So, you want to make sure that this street keeper can, street sweeper still able to do his job but still be able to do it in a way that meets the needs that are happening, the changes that are happening right now and the changes to come.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:06:28] Wow.

Ayushi Roy: [00:06:28] Wow. That’s really cool. So, could you maybe give an example of, like, what’s, what does this look like? Like, what do you do actually? Do you kind of like follow, you know, the guy who’s working on the street around to kind of see what his job is like or do you do maybe more like desk research about how the actual process or system has changed? Like, could you walk us through what, what innovating on a system really looks like?

Sure. So, I follow the model that I learned at the Housing Innovation lab, which focuses on the three E’s, so that’s Explore, Experiment, and ooh, I always forget the [laughs].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:07:05] Engage?

Monique Gibbs: [00:07:06] Not, enga- well-

Ceasar McDowell: [00:07:06] No?

Monique Gibbs: [00:07:06] … well, engage is part of the explore side.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:07:08] Oh, explore, experiment, maybe execute. That’d be a good idea, for policy.

Monique Gibbs: [00:07:11] And evaluate.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:07:12] Oh. [Laughs].

Monique Gibbs: [00:07:14] [Laughs]. And evaluate.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:07:14] Well see you never have, you never have to do it. [laughs] Which one?

Ayushi Roy: [00:07:17] I don’t think, I don’t think evaluation is so important

Monique Gibbs: [00:07:20] So the explore stage is the biggest part of this pipeline and that is the engagement. So it’s a level of research, so understanding the work. Like why do you need a street sweeper? What do they actually do and how do they go about doing it? So understanding that sometimes that could be major, that could be like a case study dive into things. But first of all, before you even do that, you have to identify what the problem is. So we’re not just innovating just for the sake of innovating and thinking what is the actual policy problem that you want to change.

So once you identify that problem, you can think of the research that needs to go behind that. And then also the engagement and engagement process, especially within innovation is very important because you’re not just engaging one stakeholder, you’re gauging multiple types of stakeholders. So you want to speak to the actual person who’s doing it, the person who is affected, who’s affected by this. So this is the neighborhood, these are the people in the community. You want to think about the, you want to think about it from a budget side. So you may need to speak to the Treasury Department and think about what’s the budget towards street sweeping and are there any changes around that. So engagement is very important. And then also thinking of once you identify the problem, you have an idea of what you fixed. You want to think about how do you fix it?

So how do you develop a policy or program to do that? And then from there you want to develop metrics. So to evaluate that there are a lot of policies that 2030 years ago that seemed like really great ideas but nobody really knew how to evaluate them. And this whole idea around data, that’s a very new thing in the policy space because we just started collecting good data like 10 years ago. So being able to set good metrics behind your policies or your, your idea that you hope to explore even more. So once you have a framework in place, you can go into experimental stage. So working with cities, it’s really difficult to just have rollout a system wide policy change with no idea how that’s gonna really work. What are the externalities of that actual project? So a lot of it are pilots, so you often hear now there’s so many different policy pilots going on in the city.

Um, there’s a pilot with for this particular neighborhood. And the purpose of that is really taking the scientific model of just saying we want to study a sample of the population. And see how that really impacts the population or impacts that sample group. And then from there, once your experiment, your, your pilot is finished, you want to evaluate it, did you solve your problem? Did you meet your goals? What are your metrics and your datasets? And then if, if it was, if it worked really well, then you want to scale up.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:10:00] So tell me one of those, uh, projects that you are working on now?

Monique Gibbs: [00:10:04] One of the projects I’m working on now, is really looking at home ownership and looking at the racial equity gap for home ownership within the Commonwealth. And thinking what are steps that the different stakeholders in, in home ownership within housing development can do to address this home ownership gap. So first we had to understand what causes home ownership gaps. So we know that this is generations of [laughs] of discriminatory practices in our policies as well as in our lending practices throughout the state, within the country as well. And now trying to think of what are actual solutions that we can address in today’s current policy framework and then what are things that we can push. So look, can we kind of push to help move the needle a little bit more? So we know that we have certain policies in place and we can either put more funding towards them, we can elevate them more through marketing and all of those types of things. But what is something that you can kind of really, really change to say like you were only letting two people in the door now with just like a change in language or just a little change. Oh now we have 15 people in the door. So really looking at how can we innovate within home ownership attainment.

Ayushi Roy: [00:11:19] So you were saying earlier that your job, even though you’re reporting to the Commonwealth and you’re a public agency, that you are effectively serving like a, a lending agency as well. So since you guys have that sort of power of the purse, what does that look like in terms of like rethinking how lending could be less discriminatory or rethinking who gets in the door? Like, how does, especially if there’s no, I don’t know if it’s possible to have metrics around the population that you’re lending to, to make sure it’s more equitable, but you know, what would it look like to like what does that, I even know how to frame this question actually. [laughs] Yeah. What, can you tell me more about how the lending agency part of this fits in?

Monique Gibbs: [00:12:00] Yeah, definitely any, so the Racial Equity Group is a interdisciplinary council that was, is really being led by MassHousing. So the strategies that are going to come from this council won’t just be implemented by MassHousing. But we’re also looking at as a lender, what are the things that we can do? So one of the things, there are a lot of metrics. So there’s this thing called HMDA data, which HUD collects and looks at the racial demographics of lending from different mortgage originators.

Ayushi Roy: [00:12:30] I’m sorry, what’s a mortgage originator?

Monique Gibbs: [00:12:32] [laughs] So mortgage originator is essentially the bank that tells the borrower that they’re going to give them the loan. And then from there they do all the financial underwriting. So they say we’re going to preapprove you and then approve you for this mortgage at this rate and to buy this property. And then from there it comes to a larger bank like MassHousing who then purchase it and then sells it. And there’s all the financial aspects of that all. So the way of the HFA, which MassHousing is, they have a lot of ability into meeting the folks who do not go to traditional banks. So a lot of first time home buyers cannot go to Bank of America, cannot go to Chase or to the low- those large banks because their loan products don’t really meet their needs. They’re more likely to be denied a mortgage at these large commercial banks. So MassHousing works with a lot of community and small banks that understand the needs of their patrons and their buyers. And I have specific products to adjust their needs. So MassHousing mortgages are low interest mortgages, low down payments often come with down payment assistance and things of that nature. So they are more equitable in nature to be able to prove- to serve a wider range of folks compared to more commercial banks who are not really looking at it from that lens.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:13:54] Okay. So I’m going to put you in an unfair position. I know it, but I hope that’s okay. You know, ’cause I really appreciate everything you’re saying, what you’re doing. But I’m also wondering, you are hear in Massachusetts, MassHousing considers the whole state but a, you live in the Boston area. Is this a Winni- winnable gain some insight of where you sit, do you think? Well with our policy stuff we can do a little bit, but, and I’m not putting this on you ’cause it’s not your problem. I mean, right. I don’t mean it’s not your problem, but it’s all of our problems who live here. Right. But it’s like sometimes, you know, how do you keep, how do you keep hope alive for yourself?

Monique Gibbs: [00:14:32] I grapple with that a lot, man. Even just within this job, even when I was in Grad school like it was looking at before I even got really into this position of housing, just looking at Grad school in general of the stuff that I studied in public administration is just saying how can we really build an equitable system when the scales are so on unbalanced. But in the framework of housing, I think we have to focus on the small wins sometimes. The way that the housing market is set up, it is a, housing is a commodity, so housing and land is a commodity, so like kind of goes, it doesn’t really work well when you say housing is a human right. But then also housing is a good investment. [laughter]

Ceasar McDowell: [00:15:16] Little bit of a contradiction there?

Monique Gibbs: [00:15:17] Right, it’s a bit of a contradiction, so really trying to figure out what are the, how’s a way to make that a little bit more fair for folks? So first time home buyers could be a number of things. First of all, when the definition of first time home buyers is very broad, because to be a first time home buyer, you just couldn’t have owned a property within three years.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:15:39] Oh, so you mean you could own one 10 years ago…

Monique Gibbs: [00:15:42] Right? Lost. You could have had it for close, lost that and then now all of a sudden you need to purchase a home or something like that now and now you’re a first time home buyer.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:15:49] So it’s like first again, home buyer?

Monique Gibbs: [00:15:50] First again, home buyer. So there are a lot of, there’s like these different policy definitions that kind of get in the way of sometimes of the mission. But to your point it can be a winnable game. I think it’s looking at if you want a place or people strategy. And that’s something that we think a lot about when we think about housing. So are we helping individual people find sustainable affordable housing either for them to rent or to own. So there are strategies that directly affect them in that way. And then we look at it as the play strategy when we think of the Metro region of Boston. And just the scale of raising… Of unaffordability of the Metro region and the strategies that you use to address that. So I guess that goes to like the idea of problem definition and really understanding what the problem is and how do you want to address it.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:16:44] So as a quasi public agency who’s in this really interesting space, how do you see your responsibility to the public? And what I mean by that particularly like when you’re thinking of policies, are you going to make changes?

Monique Gibbs: [00:16:58] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:16:59] The city, for example, has its regulations about how it has to hold meetings and everything to make a decisions and stuff. And the state has its. And some private actors have theirs. What is yours and how do you, how does MassHousing see its relationship with the public?

Monique Gibbs: [00:17:15] So MassHousing is a, it’s a very interesting agency. So I should preface this by saying that I’ve only now been in my role for less than 90 days. So I’m still really learning a lot about the agency.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:17:26] That’s okay.

Monique Gibbs: [00:17:27] Um [laughter]. So one of the things that I’ve really noticed, especially in their lending, they try to be very forward facing and very transparent. So they are really trying to think of the borrower and being held accountable. So really saying like we want you to see us as a great place to come and get a mortgage and to be able to purchase your first home and build equity for your family or build wealth for your family through home ownership. And then there’s also the side on our rental lending side for the big rental development side of just saying like we want to be able to build, invest in our communities to invest in the Commonwealth to provide safe and sustainable affordable housing to folks. So a lot of it is really thinking of the internal mission of the agency and how is it helping the actual people who live within Massachusetts.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:18:15] I guess part of why I was curious is I know that you know, even in a structure of MassHousing, you do for, particularly around your rental housing and not just that. Also, I think of some of the places in which you, you’re the lender to the developer. You pay a lot of attention to community building inside of those places. Right?

Monique Gibbs: [00:18:33] Yeah.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:18:33] You see that as a, as an integral part of your role?

Monique Gibbs: [00:18:36] Absolutely.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:18:37] Now so as a bank, I wouldn’t call you a bank for this question. Okay. As a financial institution, why do you bother?

Monique Gibbs: [00:18:45] I’m learning more about this [laughs].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:18:48] It’s all right.

Monique Gibbs: [00:18:48] So asset management is very important to banks. So you want to be able to protect your assets. So if your assets is building housing for people in the Commonwealth, you want to be able to one, protect that assets and protect the people who live at then your communities that you built. So the asset management on the side of the lender, like our customer service department is amazing and keeping, like keeping homeowners within their homes when they fall on hard times and really trying to think of ways to help them keep up with their mortgage, restructure their mortgage and do different types of things. Like the… Just had a conversation with them like their last, they, they do everything they can to keep somebody from foreclosure, from being taken out of their home and to lose this property. And then on the rental side we have a very, a very well known community service department that provides services and trainings to folks that live within our rental developments.

That all goes towards that asset management. You’re protecting your portfolio because if you are a mortgage lender, having people foreclosing on their properties on a regular basis, that puts your, your portfolio, your financial portfolio at risk. Having, on the rental side, having rental developments that are high crime written, that are known for having lots of issues. People don’t want to live there and you have high vacancy rates where people can pay their mortgages on those rental properties because they’re not, they’re not rented up. So I think people lose… When we think about economic systems, I think people don’t see how customers are so tied into the financial stability of if you’re a business. So I think MassHousing’s investments within the actual customers really keeps them in business because people, one will trust MassHousing, refer them to MassHousing products and to properties and all of those great stuff. And then it also makes sure that we keep doing business within the Commonwealth.

Ayushi Roy: [00:20:43] Wow! Somehow the idea of people as assets. I know that might sound like even a little perverse in the way, I just said it.

Monique Gibbs: [00:20:54] Yes. [laughs]

Ayushi Roy: [00:20:54] But even tying more than money I guess is what I mean to say, time more than money into the conversation around asset management is so incredible. I mean, if banks had, even in the slightest resembled MassHousing, I don’t know that 2008 would have happened. Right? I mean like this is insane to think about, oh we care about not just your money, but we care about the person who’s actually giving the person behind the money. And if we, you know, focus on your success, then we inevitably have that guarantee of, of funds coming in as well. So why not tie the two together and look out for you as a, as a member of this community as opposed to just your, your wallet or the land that you sit on? I mean, that’s incredible to me. Like, I don’t know, I, I just, it shocked like how did MassHousing come into this role? How, how was it built to, to serve this function and why is it that so many other banks and lending institutions don’t, don’t manage assets this way?

Monique Gibbs: [00:21:53] Well, MassHousing was created for this purpose. So MassHousing was created to be a response to commercial banks that didn’t see their borrowers as actual assets to the communities that they live in. So MassHousing through the work of the legislature was established for this purpose of creating mortgage products for Massachusetts residents to really keep residents within the state. There’s a self preservation aspect of MassHousing of other organizations like this have really one attracting residents to MassHou- to Massachusetts and then keeping them in Massachusetts so they can be productive members of society. So if you have a lender that is providing good mortgages, you’re more likely to stay in your house ’cause you have a good mortgage and you have good schools within that community. It’s all, it’s a direct investment within the community. So that’s how MassHousing really thinks about it.

Ayushi Roy: [00:22:51] Wow. So there’s this larger conversation then about like how housing and lending feeds into this greater sphere of like wellbeing, right? Like it’s incredible to me how they’ve begun to envision the public as more than just a borrower.

Monique Gibbs: [00:23:09] Yeah.

Ayushi Roy: [00:23:09] Right? Or more than just a resident or a renter. They even said begin to envision these people as like contributing back to the state of Massachusetts. And so what better way to actually create these contributing members then to allow them the opportunity to stay in this environment?

Monique Gibbs: [00:23:25] Absolutely. That’s…

Ayushi Roy: [00:23:26] Wow.

Monique Gibbs: [00:23:26] The goal, the mission of the agency.

Ayushi Roy: [00:23:28] Wow. Wow! The systems understanding there, it has to be so strong, right? Like it’s so rare for transportation agencies to think about their impact on housing or vice versa. Right? Or for workforce and employment to think about their impact on housing and vice versa. And for MassHousing to take up. Again, it’s like Caesar’s question, why bother? But for them to, to bother enough to take on this greater role and, and think about how the systems all plays together is just, I don’t know. I know that I’m beating a dead horse here, but it’s just so fascinating to me that the, this actually exists.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:24:01] Well, it’s not only that you’re beating… I don’t think you’re beating a dead horse because I, I think even, you know, Monique, what you said is that, well, you know, MassHousing was chartered to do this kind of work. But being charted to do something and actually being committed to this I think are really two different things. Right? And there’s a kind of real commitment I think in MassHousing about how to do that and how to hold that. Not only just one of those, as you say it on his mortgage products, but also what it’s doing around, you know, the rental pieces and building community there. I actually know a little bit about something related to that.

Monique Gibbs: [00:24:37] Okay.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:24:37] If you want the story, you may have heard it, but um, this is from some time ago in the 80s, actually. Uh, towards the end of the end of the 80s where their community program was together, used to be called something else. I don’t even remember what it was called. This is before MassHousing was called MassHousing. It used to be called… Something else also too. But anyway, the story is really interesting because there was a gentleman from South Boston, his name was Tony Flaherty. And uh, he would do all these trainings sometimes and kind of low income housing or work with management companies about community building, what was going on. And he always said that he had thing he would do sometimes where he’d stand up in front of the room and he would put up a chart. And he would list all these things and it’d be like, things that they found in the housing. It would get very high alcohol abuse, drugs, sexual assault, I can’t remember what, the, the ones where, you know, urine in the hallway, dah, dah, dah. And then he would ask people to guess where it was, and they would always kind of name some place in Dorchester or someplace like that.

And he was saying, no, actually this is an elderly complex in south Boston. And the wake up for people is that we’re not paying attention to these things. And one of the innovative things that they did is. I understand this and that story is, one of the innovative things MassHousing did was as you create this kind of a relationship with this insurers where they said, look, we can work collaboratively together to actually build, put money into actually building the quality of life of people who live in our housing. And if we do that, then on the insurance and you’re going to have less, a lot less, uh, claims coming in. So we do this work where you reduce our premiums by such? As a vehicle for doing this, right. So in some sense they use another financial mechanism to actually fund some of the things that they were trying to do.

This is a story I heard from Tony a long time ago, but I may have gotten, you know, over the years, who knows? I may have gotten bit of it wrong. But it was fascinating because also in that, what he would say that when you know, he put that list up there and he’d say, why is this problem going on? And you know, he would say, well part of it is because management itself is living with the same problems. And if management has an alcohol problem that it’s not going to do anything about tenants having, if it has this other kind of problem, it’s going to turn a blind eye. So we don’t train upper management, right. And serve them. And if they’re having problems and help them be healthier, there’s no way they’re gonna support the community in being healthier. So this notion that it’s a whole system and you have to pay attention to the wellbeing of everyone in the system in order for the system really to support everyone.

Monique Gibbs: [00:27:28] That’s amazing. So that 100% predates me. [laughter]

Ceasar McDowell: [00:27:33] I know that.

Monique Gibbs: [00:27:34] That story. But to even know like the roots of that to see that now in terms of our management training. So we still offer management trainings now at MassHousing and um, a lot of it or training coming up, which I have on my calendar to attend is on racial and ethnic competency and being able to, as property managers being under- understand the, the racial ethnic groups that live within their properties. And really that goes back to being able to train these property managers to be able to meet the needs of the community even more. And I usually, I just wanted to bring up something that you kind of touched on before on economic development and transportation. So before 10 years prices, five years prices, there were a lot of silos. There were a lot of housing was built, transportation was done, economic was done and they kind of were done dispersively. Now we’re all in the same rooms, we’re all in the same rooms and we’re all talking to each other.

We’re all working towards solutions together because that understanding that we all live within an ecosystem and that if you want to have good, a good thriving economic center, you need to make sure that people are able to afford where they live and that they can travel to where they need to work and play and to and to live. It’s all in. I think the silos are really breaking down and as I really like the space that I, I work in within my job. Because I’m often the person that goes to that meeting. So I’m also the person that, so in addition to working a MassHousing, I’ll probably be sent to a meeting with the secretary of economic and housing development because he’s thinking of this from a more holistic perspective. Or there could be a partnership with mass development on a project that they’re doing and they’ll focus on the commercial side of things and we’ll focus on the housing side of things.

And then mass that would also say, all right, if you need that new building and there’s going to be this new store, let’s fix the roads. And then the next thing you know you have a new corridor that had this multilevel of investment. And if you think about it from more of an equity lens and to think about, just to add to that, to add equity and to fair and justice to that you can add different levels of affordability and think about affordable housing and cost and home ownership versus rental. Next thing you know, you really are moving towards building communities that the people have only dreamed of. And I think little by little people are becoming aware of this and are trying to move to that direction.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:30:10] Nice. Two things you mentioned that I want to go back on why, and really actually really nice to hear. One is that, so you’re doing this training for management, you’re saying it’s happening and they’re actually doing a training around racial equity and so many institutions in this day and age have right, kind of like moved to diversity. You’re afraid to say racial equity, you know, to actually name that as a thing that has to be dealt with. So it’s really refreshing to hear a quasi public institution. But an institution, you know of the statue of MassHousing, you know, being clear about that. The other thing is we started off this whole season and saying, you know, there are other actors that are out there who are part of actually building our new civic landscape. They are actually part of creating the spaces in which our new kind of complex public come together.

And it seems like not only is that happening by the fact that well you have a lot of rental income and new support people around mortgage. But actively engage in and in making people who live in your properties across the state actually feel like they belong somewhere and really around their own, own wellbeing. And for me that’s really a kind of fundamental part of, of building civic life. ’Cause if people feel like, Hey, I’m connected, I’m in a community with other people, then you’re starting to actually lay I think a foundation for them moving forward.

Ayushi Roy: [00:31:41] No, I love that. I mean there’s like a sense of connected planning or policy making on the back end leading to a more connected sort of civic environment and a greater sense of like connection within the community. And that sort of direct translation is just so evident to me when I hear, you know, Monique, what you were describing in the way that you guys have been working in the way that you’ve been part of rooms and conversations where there people from mass development, mass dot, et cetera, et cetera. So I mean this is just like one of the most heartening places I feel like to [laughs] to share with you guys is just thinking about how these quasi public agencies are directly shaping civic spaces.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:32:21] You know what one of the things also work for me that’s really exciting about this conversation. It’s about actually the two of you. Because I think we’re, both of you are demonstrating, I know, uh, [Nayu] she’s going in her own career, where you’re going in your own career.

Ayushi Roy: [00:32:38] Who me? Oh, oh.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:32:39] What’s that?

Ayushi Roy: [00:32:40] Oh, okay. [laughs]

Ceasar McDowell: [00:32:41] No I want to, want to appreciate this for a moment. Because basically, you know, our country’s stuck in a lot of ways and it’s so, and it’s so refreshing and for me really honoring to be, you know, with two women of color who are going to be stepping into the policy field and really actually, shaping policy from really different perspectives. You know, when we started this conversation, I just want you to realize that you started out maybe that you do policy work and you didn’t talk about big policies. You talked about someone who’s sweeping the streets.

Monique Gibbs: [00:33:10] Yeah.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:33:11] You know, if that’s your frame, right. Start there. As Reece always say from the margins and then you think about how you build things out to really work from that perspective. And both of you just being able to sit in this conversation. It’s just like I’m looking down the future and saying, Oh yeah, we’re going to be in better hands.

Monique Gibbs: [00:33:30] Well, I can only hope. For me, I grew up in the margins, so I grew up in the Bronx. My mother was customer service rep in a local bank. My father was a jack of all trades. He drove the tax- he drove a taxi sometimes, he was working in a fair cable companies sometimes he was just every couple of years my father had a different job. So and I’ve, for me I, I get out of high school, me just thinking of high school ’cause it’s 10 years now since I’ve graduated from high school crazy. And applying for applying for colleges. I remember I had this guidance counselor, he was our college counselor and my school was very large school in the Bronx and it was kind of notorious for all of the wrong things. But we were a select group of honors students that we were the ones that everybody kind of assumed that we would just go to college and all the resources got put into us.

We were only like maybe a 10th of the school and kind of just left everything else to students’ devices. It’s not a very enriching environment but for him, I remember my only framework of life and stuff like that of success and all of that stuff as teachers. Like teachers had always had such a big impact on my life. So I’m like, I just want to be a teacher ’cause I want to help another student like myself to aspire for something bigger than just the life that I’ve seen right there where I grew up in my neighborhood in the Bronx. And he was very much like, oh well don’t waste your money going off away to college or something like that, just go to CUNY, which is a City University of New York, which are really good institutions. However it is just kind of like I wanted to see so much more.

Like I’ve always been very big as- the city’s not big enough for me type of attitude [crosstalk] .

Ceasar McDowell: [00:35:13] New York city is no big enough for you, okay.

Monique Gibbs: [00:35:15] That type of attitude. But this is the thing like I start from a bottom up because people often think about that from New York City. Like how would you leave New York City? Everyone wants to go to New York City. It’s like that Manhattan life was very different from the life that I lived on the last stop of the two train in New York City. Like can you even really imagine how different those two things are. So for me leaving New York City was like this thing. I’m like to not be just what was within my view at that time. I had to leave the city. And when I think about policy, people often think about from just these big grand all ideas. But it really starts from just personal actions. So much. So many things that happened on I life for policy development and how systems work is from people’s personal choice, very stuff.

There’s a lot of self interest that goes into the way our our world is frame. So when you build policy from the down up, you really can affect more change from that reason. ’Cause you’re really thinking of why did somebody walk down? Like why did somebody turn this street that way? Why are they taking that route to get to work different from a different route? So it could be it’s quicker or it could just be they feel safer that way. Moving that route and for somebody who grew up in a community that like me, but that I grew up in things like safety and just access and all those things are things that I’ve always been barriers in my life. So when I think of policy questions, those are the things that come to my mind. Like does this person have access? What are the barriers that they’re going to need to get to that actual policy thing? Somebody who, who’s all, who’s lived a very privileged life, things come very easily to them. They may feel like, oh, this is a problem. This needs to change. But they’re not, they never really had barriers in their life. They can’t build policy for that.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:37:01] So well said.

Ayushi Roy: [00:37:02] That’s incredible. I’m on like the verge of tears in my eyes [crosstalk] . And my hair is raised ’cause I know exactly what you just, I mean, I don’t know. Right. But having lived and worked in Manhattan, right, not the end of the two train. I feel so deeply that like divide in the way that we get to know a place we get to know people and how that knowing ness shapes the way that you can then create this sort of change or this sort of innovation is just so drastic. Right? Policy is just code for people, but it’s often, it’s just rare that we think of our work as people first. Unfortunately, you know, when we go to these political science programs or go to public policy programs that just not, it’s, it’s almost never explicitly said. And so I just, I want to appreciate you and really, really thank you for saying it in that way and bringing it down to the very core of what we’re here to do.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:05] Monique, thank you so much for being with us.

Monique Gibbs: [00:38:07] Thank you.

Ayushi Roy: [00:38:07] Thank you so much.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:08] Hope you’ve enjoyed yourself we’ve certainly have enjoyed having you with us.

Monique Gibbs: [00:38:11] [laughs] Thank you. This is awesome.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:13] Cool. Well I really enjoyed having Monique on the show.

Ayushi Roy: [00:38:19] Yeah, that was incredible. I thought it was so great to be able to just hear the like sort of, I know details of how lending can be thought about, you know. I mean at 2008 is now more than a decade away, but it just feels like yesterday in terms of the amount of impact it still has.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:36] Yeah.

Ayushi Roy: [00:38:36] And the way that lending went so wrong and became just a tool against a lot of people instead of a tool for people. And you know, here we had this really cool, really heartening for me conversation around how capital formation can become community formation.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:38:53] Yeah. Really it’s just really nice and I just, you know, I love also the fact that in this large organization that has all this impact over the state, that they’ve said, you know, we need someone to do innovation in policy. You know, that policy isn’t just like one thing [crosstalk] .

Ayushi Roy: [00:39:09] A stagnant…

Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:09] It’s stagnant thing. It needs its own innovation. Given how the demands are changing our industry is changing, what people are needing is changing and to see that they’re out there actually seeing really clearly understanding, you know, back to this thing again about what their lane is, where they should be, what they should be doing, and also why building the strength of the public and their community is absolutely necessary.

Ayushi Roy: [00:39:39] Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:40] Right. If those two things aren’t not related to each other, and that’s kind of one of the most vivid examples of something being both transactional and relational at the same time are realizing you can do both, but don’t confuse…

Ayushi Roy: [00:39:52] Don’t confuse both.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:53] Don’t confuse them with each other.

Ayushi Roy: [00:39:54] Yeah.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:39:55] Yeah. Wonderful. And uh, in two weeks, uh, listen to us again and we will have…

Ayushi Roy: [00:40:02] Desiree and Candice from WBUR

Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:04] Oh. WBUR is in the house, man. Two weeks okay.

Ayushi Roy: [00:40:10] Stay tuned

Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:10] Stay tuned bye bye.

We’re a production of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. With support from MIT’s office of open learning.

Ayushi Roy: [00:40:20] Our sound is produced by Dave Lishansky, our content by Julia Cubrera and Misael Galdamez. I’m my Ayushi Roy.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:27] I’m Ceasar McDowell.

Ayushi Roy: [00:40:28] And you can find us online at themove.mit.edu.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:33] And on our Medium site at…

Ayushi Roy: [00:40:38] medium.com/themovemit as well as our Twitter and Facebook. Thanks so much.

Ceasar McDowell: [00:40:45] Good bye.