Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Speaker A: Hi, I'm John Ko and welcome to.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Icons of D.C. area real estate, a.
[00:00:14] Speaker C: One on one interview show featuring the backgrounds, career trajectories and insights of the top luminaries in the Washington D.C. area Real estate market. The purpose of the show was to explore their journeys, how they got started, the pivotal moments that shaped their careers, and the lessons they've learned along the way. We also dive into their current work, industry trends, and some fascinating behind the scenes stories that bring unique perspective to our industry. Commercial Real Estate before we dive into today's conversation, I'd like to share some exciting news.
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[00:02:47] Speaker B: Welcome to another episode of icons of D.C. area real estate.
In this episode, we welcome back Kathryn Buell, who previously joined us while she was Director of the Amazon Housing Equity Fund.
In that earlier conversation, we discussed her significant leadership roles, including serving as President and CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority, chair of the D.C. historic Preservation Review Board, and executive director of St. Elizabeth's East Campus Redevelopment. Since her last appearance, Katherine has attended Harvard University and become a Loeb Fellow. Katherine she has also founded a new company, Wellness Real Estate Innovations, which is the focus of our conversation today.
Inspired partly by her mother's personal experience with dementia and loneliness during COVID Catherine's new venture explores innovative housing solutions at the intersection of health and housing.
She delves into her philosophy that housing is health care and what it truly means to build with care.
We discussed the lessons learned from her time leading Amazon's significant corporate housing initiative, particularly realizing what large corporate funds could not do in addressing the full spectrum of housing needs.
This has shaped her current focus on bringing together different partners such as healthcare organizations and exploring innovative approaches.
In this interview, Catherine elaborates on her current focus on wellness, real estate and innovation.
She highlights how intentional community design can combat loneliness and advocates for alternative housing models like shared rentals, co housing, and accessory dwelling units to integrate more people into existing housing and address changing demographics and cultural living preferences.
She also touches on the need for more data to understand the true cost of inaction and the economic benefits of addressing health and wellness through housing.
Join us as Kathryn shares her vision for creating communities where people can thrive across generations beyond traditional approaches.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: Welcome Catherine, to your second interview on Icons of D.C. area Real Estate.
You are leading the Amazon.
[00:05:22] Speaker D: Thanks for having me.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: You're welcome. You were leading the Amazon Housing Equity Fund at the time the last interview, and we discussed your prior background, including significant leadership roles such as president, CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority, chair of the D.C. historic Preservation Review Board, and executive director of St. Elizabeth's East Campus Redevelopment.
Since then, you attended Harvard University's Kennedy School and became a Loeb Fellow and now lead a new company called Wellness Real Estate Innovations.
Please share your mission in the new company and how it evolved from your role at Amazon.
[00:06:01] Speaker D: Yes, so Wellness Real Estate Innovations is inspired by the wellness real estate movement, which is an emerging asset class of real estate. And we're looking to bring wellness real estate solutions, which really speak to community development solutions that sit at the intersection of health and housing, to everyday people, to diverse and urban audiences, and come up with new innovations that don't necessarily exist in the housing market at this time.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Okay.
Based on my research, your mother's experience with dementia and loneliness during COVID was cited as a personal motivation for exploring innovative housing solutions.
How has this personal experience driven your focus on models that address loneliness and social isolation?
[00:06:51] Speaker D: I have to say, my mother's journey with dementia really transformed my thinking during the day I was living this fabulous life, running and saving up a $2 billion effort, which I have to say, coming up with an idea and then seeing it come into fruition is an experience.
It's hard to put into words, but it really transformed the way that I think about things.
But in my free time, seeing the housing Continuum and the lack of options for people as they age.
And my mother's actually in a decent retirement village. It's a continuing care facility, but it's expensive.
And during COVID they shut down. And a lot of the activities that, where it was once very vibrant, a lot of those activities died down.
And I started to ask a lot more questions about, well, is this a feature for all of us? Because something is shifting in the market that we're not talking about. I don't know what it is. I want to explore it more. But I also know that this is not a great experience for people as they age. And making sure that not only are you aging with dignity, but you have a high quality of life and you can fill out your, your elder years with vibrancy. And it's not something that I wanted to do. So I started to ask a lot of questions in my free time and decided after standing at the Amazon Housing Equity Fund that I wanted to dive full time into what those solutions could be.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: Could you elaborate on your philosophy that housing is health care and what it means to build with care?
[00:08:30] Speaker D: Yeah, it sounds like a general statement which I recognize and I'm out of the business at least for the time being, trying to move large scale public policy.
But really two things struck me. One thing, the situation with my mother definitely started to make me question. Well, this housing continuum seems to be limited. Where there's apartments for when you're young and you're coming out of college and places for you to move downtown, you can move then move into a single family home, whether it's a townhome or an actual single family home. And then the idea is that eventually you move into these retirement villages.
And I just didn't see that continue necessarily adding up for everybody. There's some of. It has financial implications. The senior housing continuum is pretty expensive. There are not a lot of options for diverse populations.
So there just seemed to be a few cracks in the system that I started to see. At the same time, I also started to see beautiful places being developed. And I talk about this space all the time. Serenity. It's one of my favorite communities. I actually came across it when I was in Atlanta. I would on the weekends go and see beautiful places to relax and gather myself. And I started to see that there was movement in the real estate and community development field, creating really beautiful places that you wanted to be. And when you got there, you would smile, you'd say hi to all the neighbors, whether you live there or not. There was something in the air.
And I was just so curious about it. And I started to see more and more of these communities starting to pop up and that people, certain people, particularly those who had financial resources, were electing to move into communities that made them feel better.
And given my mother's experience and even my own, I bought a house in upper northwest D.C. i was overhoused, overhoused for a little bit. I started to feel the implications of not living in my town home in Anacostia and not having a lot of neighbors around me and what that actually meant. And for me personally and for my family members, I started to say, well, you know, there's something to do. This where you live has an impact on how you feel. And it's not just the financial aspect of it, although that is major.
It's also whether or not you can get out and take walks. Do you know your neighbors? Is there a real sense of community? Do you have access to the things that you need? And it's more than just, okay, do we have a grocery store here? There are some fundamentals, absolutely. But do we have a vibrancy that I need to really thrive in this kind of community? And so when I talk about the link between health and housing, that housing really can be a cure for our health needs, it's really from the aspirational angle of same communities that in fact are starting to inadvertently address these issues.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: That's great.
Reflecting on your role as director of Amazon's Housing Equity Fund, you've mentioned lessons learned about what large corporate housing initiatives could not do.
Could you expand on this realization and how it shaped your subsequent focus on well being and health in housing?
[00:11:52] Speaker D: Yeah, well, you know, I'd actually love to flip that kind of comment and sentiment a little bit on its head.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:11:59] Speaker D: Corporate investments have an ability to influence the market. Corporations are not our housing authorities, they're not our housing agencies. So they're not primarily responsible for addressing the housing issues, but they clearly can have a major impact.
But that being said, depending on what the angle is for that corporation, they're not going to solve the entire housing spectrum, but they can start to introduce innovation. And so one of the things that I'm keenly focused on is health care organizations. Health care organizations are bearing the brunt of a lot of our social ills. We've talked in the housing world a lot about the housing first model, and you're seeing more and more health care institutions invest in affordable housing, particularly at the low income level, to make sure that, that individuals in their communities that they Service are able to fill their basic housing needs. So you have the Centene foundation as an example that underwrote $1 billion portfolio by McCormick Barron. These are major investments. Kaiser Permanente, honestly, the list goes on and on. Aetna, United Healthcare, all investing in housing.
And much of that is driven by the notion that they're trying to target their most expensive clientele. They're trying to target people who go to the emergency room regularly, who are hardest to serve because they are housing unstable and kind of directly addressing the problem.
But also we're seeing the shift in age demographics that nobody likes to talk about. For whatever reason, we're all uncomfortable with getting older, but our country is getting older. One in five Americans is soon to be over the age of 65. And we're not seeing a lot of innovation at the other end of the housing spectrum. And so is that a place where healthcare institutions can say people are living longer. We wanna see more innovation. We wanna see, for example, co housing, we wanna bring back golden Girls houses. Cause we know that having that social connection in really important.
We want to see an expansion of wellness communities. We want to see innovative models around dementia and memory care that currently don't exist. And we're willing to put capital behind it. And so when I talk about what corporations can't do, some of it is because it's not necessarily their responsibility to take on the housing issues. But at the same time, there's a lot that they can do and filling in the spaces in between that other people can address for whatever reason or won't address.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: How do these prior experiences in public and community development inform your current private sector focus on wellness real estate and innovation?
[00:14:41] Speaker D: Yeah, honestly, it leaves me encouraged Being able to see how focused people are in doing the right thing through the Amazon Housing Equity Fund was humbling.
Seeing how committed people were at Atlanta Housing and anybody that I worked with in government was also equally humbling to know that people will pay attention to the details and show up every single day, even when it's hard.
Being able to innovate at St Elizabeth, that was actually my first platform where I could make it up as I go. And it's gotten bigger than little me. And the ideas that we put forward showed me the power of an idea. And so just taking all of that kind of background and influence and saying, hey, there's an opportunity to do something totally different out there and respecting what other people bring to the table.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: How does your current focus at wellness real estate innovation, which sits at the intersection of commercial real Estate, Wellness Real estate, Health, housing and community development. Build upon or differ from your work leading Amazon Housing Equity Fund, as discussed in our last interview.
[00:15:58] Speaker D: Yeah. One builds upon the notion that we can't innovate in the market and that capital can really shift what we are capable of doing. And so Wellness Real Estate Innovations is six months old. We're still a baby.
We're having conversations with development partners and capital providers about how do we start to shift things.
So innovation and opening my eyes to that, that there are some practical limitations that you have to work through is really important, but also that there is a world of opportunity.
It really, my experience has left me hopeful that a few people can open up new opportunities that don't currently exist. We don't have to do things the same way all the time.
We can start to develop new models. We can start to pair people together that normally don't go together. So I'll give you an example.
At the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, we brought in the transit folks. That was our first big announcement that made people stand up and say, hey, this must be a real thing. We committed $300 million to development at transit stations in partnership with local transit agencies in three US Metropolitan regions.
Most people didn't think about transit as being a partner.
A lot of people don't think it's healthcare as being a partner. So bringing in people into the conversation and say, hey, how do we all start to address each other's problems is really critical. And my experience, particularly at Atlanta Housing, started to teach me that you don't always have to go to the traditional folks. You can go to some people who think outside the box. Atlanta Housing, we were partnering with the Atlanta Beltline, Atlanta public school systems and starting to say, hey, we all know that this is addressing us one way or another, affecting us, so we want to do something about it.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: You've noted the U.S. surgeon General's report highlighting loneliness as an epidemic and how community design contributes to it. How can intentional community design be leveraged to foster social interaction and combat isolation across different age groups?
[00:18:10] Speaker D: Yeah, that is a great question. One of the developments that we've seen in community design is this new urbanist model, particularly in the South. You see a lot of communities that are townhome like communities that are essentially designed to be walkable, to have the downtown stores and kind of have the vibrancy that you see in a traditional urban area. But they are new development.
And seeing that shift is great, but it can go further. We can add in different housing types. We can design the spaces so that they are organic methods of connection. So you happen to run into your neighbor. Maybe there's an oversized green space or shared lawn that people can use. Maybe there's a big house where people can share different kitchens and other utilities that they have, amenities that they have.
So thinking outside the box in terms of what's next is really what I hope to push the conversation on in urban design, that urban and community design.
We already have some frameworks that we know that are working. We already have some frameworks that are rethinking traditional models. But what's the next iteration of those frameworks and how do we start to innovate on them?
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Your sip and solve conversation with Adakis LeBlanc. I think that's how it's pronounced.
[00:19:29] Speaker D: Atticus. Yes, Atticus. Okay.
[00:19:32] Speaker A: PadSplit is this company.
[00:19:34] Speaker D: Pads like yeah.
[00:19:35] Speaker A: Highlighted the potential of shared rentals and addressing the many empty bedrooms in the U.S. how do models like co housing, shared living, or accessory dwelling units. Adus fit into your vision for future housing beyond traditional approaches?
[00:19:53] Speaker D: Oh, my goodness. It's something that I'm a little obsessed with. And I will say that conversation with Atticus was such a pleasure. I've had a couple of conversations. Conversations with him beforehand and was just impressed that somebody would take on kind of a technology approach to a housing issue.
Talking to him was the first time that I learned that their average household earns $27,000 a year.
And most of these folks are the security guard, the receptionist, the food worker, the healthcare worker that we all walk past every single day. And you don't realize that moving into an apartment, there's many. So such huge barriers. You have to buy the, you have to pay the deposit, you have to make sure you're credit worthy. You have to have, you know, even if you're moving into an apartment that's, let's say, $2,000 a month, you have to come in with $4,000 plus to be able to move into that apartment. And then you have to share the utilities and figure there's so much to figure out. They streamline that model and they've made it possible for people to be able to move into an apartment that is a room, that is shared housing, that is already furnished, and that has all of the basics for a couple hundred bucks. And they figured out how to have flexible payment options. And when you think about it at a practical level, given the fact that 80% of boomers own their houses right now, for those of us who are lucky enough to take advantage of the drop in interest rates. We now have mortgages that have 2 to 3% interest rates on them. We're not giving up that mortgage. There's not a kind of movement in the housing market.
And so what that means is a lot of folks are actually kind of stuck in the places that they live, whether they think about it that way or not. And that's going to create its own challenge. The market is not going to see as much movement and we're not seeing a lot of unique products being put on the table. Co housing adus our way and these kind of alternative housing models are a way of integrating kind of co use, whether you're sharing just a kitchen, a living room area, a yard, but adding in more people into kind of the existing housing fabric. I, in my background, I'm a preservationist and it's something I love doing in my free time is looking at and admiring old buildings. I see ADUs, co housing and those kind of shared housing models. It's creative ways not to totally change the character of a community, but to start to think about who's living there and how can we add more dynamism, if you will, to how people are actually living.
If you are over the age of 65 and you're living in a five bedroom house, it looks good. It doesn't actually feel as good as it looks. You do want people around and so if you can add in a couple of additional household members into your household because you're renting out rooms, so be it. If you can figure out how to add an additional ADU unit to your backyard so you can have more folks, so be it. And maybe one day we'll go further. Maybe we'll have Golden Girls houses integrated into some of these communities so that people don't have to displace their social networks in order to age in place, if you will. So I do see a lot of those shared models as the future. The other thing I will mention is that younger people, what's interesting and I'll be interested to follow this as we talk about folks like Atticus and what he's doing with PadSplit, they are actually a bit more comfortable with just purchasing or renting the part that they're using the notion of I need to own the whole thing and that's the only way this will work. I don't know if this next generation necessarily believes in that. So you see it in car shares, you see it in clothing shares, you see it a little bit in the growth of the co housing market. So Housing shares. So some of these alternative methods may actually make it easier for people to come into the housing market with lower barriers, but also be more appealing to younger folks who don't see the need to own everything and have the responsibility of ownership.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: You mentioned that the housing field isn't catching up to the growth of wellness real estate. What are the key gaps or challenges you see in broadly implementing wellness principles in housing development?
[00:24:13] Speaker D: Yeah, some of it is that wellness real estate is new and it has not been studied. So going back to that CRM example, one of the things that Steve Nygreen, who essentially founded with the brain child behind it, they said that we don't have the rates of asthma that you would see in other communities in our surrounding neighborhood or even in the city of Atlanta because we really focused on biophilic landscape design. So you don't see large green lawns, highly manicured green lawns. They actually focus on eliminating green lawns, shrubbery and plantings that were appropriate for their community.
Also, because you have such a walkable community, they thoughtfully planned out the streetscape and all of the sidewalks and also walking trails. People get out and walk a lot more.
People live differently. And so you don't see the harsh outcomes that you do in other areas. But it's not documented. So some of it is. We need to document the benefits that we're seeing in many of these wellness communities, many of which were established in the 1990s and early 2000s.
But even if we just follow the anecdotal evidence, what it shows us is that if you make 20 tweaks in your community design, take out those huge green grass swamp lawns that if you're anything like me, I hate maintaining and focus on some sort of alternative landscape design that encourages people to walk. Maybe that's a way that you can start to shift the energy in your community and encourage people to come out and walk more.
And so really learning those best, best practices, those lessons from some of the kind of now early movers in the field and what we can translate into community design.
[00:26:02] Speaker A: The Global Wellness Institute identifies trends like wellness as a infrastructure, wellness as a service, wellness return on investment, and in the wellness real estate sector. How do these concepts from wellness real estate trend trend influence your approach at wellness real estate innovations?
[00:26:24] Speaker D: Yeah, well, what it means is that we need to think about wellness more broadly. So wellness is infrastructure. As an example, Bhutan is actually one of the countries that has is trying to build out a mindfulness city. They have a happiness index as a matter of course, in their culture, so they're a little different, but they're thinking about how can they create infrastructure that encourages wellness. So there are different scales of it. How can you think about the return on your investment in the wellness field? A lot of folks think I don't want to have to overbuild this amenity space. It's not actually going to do anything. It's not going to increase my return.
And the truth of the matter is what wellness real estate investments are showing is that the return on your investment is actually significantly higher. People are seeking out these resources in these communities that make them feel better.
And so when they talk about a return on investment, the return on investment is higher. And most people don't think about it that way. And thinking about kind of out of the box solutions, the Global Wellness Institute has really been an eye opener as to what's possible and what the range of products and the range of solutions are in the wellness field.
[00:27:35] Speaker A: So you know, it's interesting. Wellness as a service is something that, you know, I think of as, you know, software as a service, you know, the SaaS or that kind of thing. How does that, I assume that's a technology interface. How, how does that work or have you explored that at all?
[00:27:52] Speaker D: It can be, it can, it can run the gamut. We're actually, I'm teaching a course at Harvard this summer on health and housing solutions and one of the case studies we're going to follow is Serendee is doing an aging in place model.
What they learned is that if they did an age restricted product, 55 older only housing people didn't, they weren't excited about moving there.
They didn't create this vibrancy and excitement, take off the age, but provide the same services and the same products, right? So you can make sure that you have all of the cleaning services, you can make sure that you have all of the nursing and the caregiving services it packaged in to what you're offering, some of which will be included in base rent, but much of which will be add ons to your to your rent if you so choose and need those additional services.
It can also be having amenity rooms. In the D.C. area, there's a retirement village called the Mather that has really started to push the market and they promote all of their wellness amenities. And so having easy access to the service from services for many people make it worth paying the deposits. That can range anywhere from $400,000 to over $1,000,000 to be able to live in a high rise building that promotes Wellness and wellness services.
[00:29:18] Speaker A: It is expensive and I did investigate it. And matter of fact, I'm thinking about having an episode with the people there. They're actually from Evanston, Illinois originally. I did a little investigation. So it's a fascinating enterprise. It would be nice to be able to go down socioeconomically into the lower, a little lower area. And that may be an area you could explore potentially.
[00:29:40] Speaker D: So in most people think when we say go down the socioeconomic ladder, that means low income people. And the good news, the good and the bad news is is that there are jurisdictions are thinking about how do we address some of these issues with lower income populations. So D.C. for example, has their third fully subsidized assisted living facility coming online. They're starting to think about how do we make sure that housing that needs an additional layer of healthcare services are provided for those who have the least.
The people who are really missing the mark actually. And this surprises most people, our middle income households.
So those who have done everything that they're supposed to do, there are a lot of pension holders. The DC area actually has some of the highest retirement incomes in the country because of the large presence of the federal government and federal government and government retirees, which means that you can come out of your kind of full time job and be making anywhere from $80,000 to 100 to $120,000 in your retirement.
And when you look at solutions like the Mapper or you look at some of these kind of late wellness solutions, there are two different challenges. One is the price tag and the second one is the location.
While it looks appealing to move to North Carolina or South Carolina, a lot of folks don't actually want to leave the region. They don't want to leave their friends, they don't want to leave all the social connections and their family members that they've spent a lifetime building and then sued. Have to take all of your retirement savings to have to sell your house.
And that's the only way that you can be able to live in this community is a real challenge, particularly when you factor in future healthcare costs and those future healthcare costs are unknown and eventually can really drain your resources.
And you meanwhile spent all of your money to be able to afford to live in this kind of high end community. And so one of the things actually in my course that we're going to talk about is this gap in resources, particularly for the middle income households who want to be able to access these resources but don't want to have to give up everything they have in order to live a healthier life.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: Let me expand on that a little more. Your Sip and Solve series explores the connections between health, housing and well being.
What specific topics or conversations such as universal design, multi generational living or co housing are you most excited to highlight through this platform?
[00:32:17] Speaker D: Yeah, well, we are. Sip and Solve is kind of something that I'm testing out to see how do we start to introduce these creative concepts. Because I recognize and I share a lot on LinkedIn that when I started talking about health and housing, people, people really did think that I was talking about low income housing with supportive housing solutions. And that is very important. That was absolutely not what I was talking about. So some of this is educating people into the range of options that are out there in the wellness space. And so really what I'm trying to do is show people the gamut from healthcare leaders. We had Karen Dale from Their Health come out. She talked about some of the great work that she's done at the intersection of health and housing. She's a former board chair for Volunteers of America. Air Health actually has a wellness and opportunity center in Anacostia. And I loved her comments about it's different for residents when you can actually come in and you know, where people we know your people, we have a conversation. There's just a very different rapport that you would typically have with your health insurance company.
And I which I wanted to say amen to that comment to the founder of Whoroo Whoroo. I learned about Imani Joyce Samuels years ago and I was so inspired by her. She actually had a house in Brooklyn in D.C. in Northeast D.C. where she was providing essentially retreat weekends for people who wanted in town retreats, wellness retreats that were thoughtful, that were not your I want to go to a hotel in a hotel spa. Something that was unique, but something that was curated specifically for them. And since I first stumbled across her, she had two properties that she was essentially managing. She now has a platform where she has access to over 20 properties.
And so just understanding what her mindset is, what her thinking behind it is, and kind of who her clientele is, which now has grown from individuals seeking retreat weekends to corporations trying to provide alternative respite opportunities for their executives and key players. And so just understanding all of the things that are possible. And as you mentioned, Atticus LeBlanc, who would have thought that even in my early conversations I didn't have the appreciation for past that I had walking away from that conversation. And so just knowing that we don't all have to comment this wellness or health and housing issue from the same angle that there really do need to be 50 different solutions and 50 different approaches. Plus some of it is technology, some of it is overlaying thoughtful services with housing. Some of it is having health and safety health care institutions provide unique amenities within communities.
Being able to really talk through all of that is helping to open my eyes into what's possible. And I hope for those who are listening open their eyes to what's possible.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: So on that vein, what policy and funding suggestions do you believe are most critical for advancing wellness oriented and intergenerational communities?
[00:35:35] Speaker D: Yeah, one. We need the data. We don't have enough data that talks about the intersection of these two issues. So we don't have. And I'll give an example. In 2019, I worked with the Greater Washington Partnership as they supported the release of Urban Institute's Regional Housing Framework. That Regional Housing Framework talked about the fact that the Washington D.C. region needed 360,000 new in order to be able to sustain the growth that was forecasted for the region.
One of the kind of subtitles and sub data points there were many in that report pointed out that the fastest growing population in the D.C. region is the 55 plus population.
We never talked about it. What does that mean if our fastest growing population are not young millennials? That they are 55 plus. And like I said, the D.C. region tends to have a more highly educated, a wealthier retiree population.
And couple that with the fact that boomers I'm joking, when we say have all the money. 70% of the disposable income is held by boomers.
They could be their own economic driver if it's something that we paid attention to. But we don't have the data that actually talks about the kind of impact that these demographic shifts are having on our housing market and then ties it into these issues like health resources and wellness.
Why is this something that kind of has me a little bit worked up, some may ask. It's because it actually does cost us money. Most people think, okay, well the issue will go away. We've heard some comments from unfortunate comments from leadership that we all will die at some point. Well, the truth of the matter is is that if you have significant health issues later in life and you have to go to the emergency room or your diabetes or heart issues get significantly worse and significantly more costly, that costs all of us. Medicaid is direct pay for most local jurisdictions. So you're paying that money out of pocket. U.S. surgeon General estimated that the loneliness epidemic is costing $6.7 billion annually to the Medicaid system.
Loss of work. People are not as interested in working if they're dealing with these health issues.
But also because there's no individual health and health care company that's responsible for it. What that means is that we're all paying for higher insurance premiums. It costs us more to go to the doctor. When you do go to the doctor. A lot of those issues that doctors and hospitals are dealing with are extreme health care issues that could have been addressed with preventative health care.
And so we need to start understanding what are the implications of the do nothing strategy, which is essentially what we're doing now. What are the implications of the scattered site approach?
And scattered site means everybody's going to live in their home and you're going to ape in place and we're going to administer health care services individually in your private homes.
And we're going to hope that you can get health care workers. We're not going to pay them much. We don't know where they're going to live.
This is all going to work out. We need the data. We really need to understand what is the implication for an aging jurisdiction within an aging country that actually has some resources.
There's a positive silver lining for the D.C. area. We have resources. We also have a very sophisticated resident base who I think if you can do it here in the D.C. region, you can do it anywhere. There are a lot of innovations I see coming out of the south because they just don't have the same regulations that we have. But maybe we can learn from some of those models. There are also a lot of innovations coming out of Europe because they do have a more solid kind of care system, if you will.
But what are those lessons that we can learn and bring to the D.C. region and actually see the economic benefits of taking care of our shifting demographics.
[00:39:34] Speaker A: So on that vein, what narrative strategies are you employing or advocating for for to promote wellness oriented and intergenerational housing today?
[00:39:44] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. So one of my favorite projects that we're just starting to talk about, and like I said, we're six months old, so we're in our early stages, is we're looking at helping to create a dementia village in Ward 7.
One of the little known facts, this is a study done by George Washington University.
They have an institute for Brain Health and Dementia which is just a wonderful resource. Who knew that we had that here in the D.C. region? They have wonderful leaders there and they worked with the Department of Health to put out actual data about what's happening in the world of dementia. And what they pointed out is that 13% of seniors in the.
In Washington, D.C. proper have dementia. 13% of seniors have dementia.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: People over 65.
[00:40:32] Speaker D: Over 65.
[00:40:33] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:40:34] Speaker D: East of the river, that number is higher. It's 16%. Prince George's county actually is ranked amongst the top 10 jurisdictions in the United States for dementia. What causes dementia? It's things like diabetes, stress.
It's actually pretty common, just kind of age, if you will. But a lot of health issues do lead to dementia. But that's not the only reason that somebody will have dementia. But that's part of the reason why you're seeing higher rates in many of the African American communities.
The challenge that we're seeing is that there aren't a lot of resources. So you can either go into that memory care unit or assisted living unit. And most of those cost $10,000 plus a month, plus caretaking costs, which can run you anywhere from $30,000 a year to. I had one friend who is. She said she's paying $20,000 total a month for her father, which means they're spending $240,000 cash to be able to make sure that their father can live in assisted living facility and have the caretaking costs that they have. And so when you look at these numbers, these are ginormous.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Well, society can't sustain that for everyone, certainly at all.
[00:41:54] Speaker D: At all. And it's a system that really eats upon itself. So we are back towards seven, recognizing that there just aren't the resources, that it's very expensive. I'm working with a housing provider who already has a beautiful, fully subsidized and assisted living facility. The residents of Kenilworth, Kenilworth Gardens, which is such a vibe. It's a great assisted living facility in Ward 7.
They're opening one at Bedding Road Metro. They recognize that they have to build memory care, and they're open to the opportunity to build something that is totally different.
We've been looking at a model based out of the Netherlands, where they actually conceived of these dementia villages, which really are think of like a traditional village where you can go out, you can roam within the facility. It has a store, it has a pub, it has a church or a religious institution. It has an arts.
Very literal spaces, but designed for individuals who have dementia. But to increase their quality in their living experience, their quality of care and their life experience.
And something that is unique from your traditional memory care unit, your nursing home, which is what most individuals east of the river have to do. And also your senior center, which may not have specific services and professionals who are trained on how to care for individuals with dementia.
It also allows mom or dad to get out of the house and have that social interaction. So we talked a lot about my mother's personal experience with dementia and what I saw during COVID and how heartbreaking that that was. But making opportunities for people to have social interaction that is appropriate for the conditions that they have.
[00:43:38] Speaker A: How are you engaging with the broader real estate industry to encourage the adoption of wellness intergenerational principles?
[00:43:47] Speaker D: Yeah, right now I'm just talking to folks, so sip and solve is my little introduction. I. I find that for whatever reason people listen to me. I consider myself like an idea startup kid.
[00:43:59] Speaker A: There you go.
[00:44:00] Speaker D: So I've, I've invited people to join my journey and learn as I'm learning. And I keep talking to groups. I was in Richmond actually of all places. I was so excited by the reception that I got talking to, to Virginia Commonwealth universities, their real estate schools, circle of excellence.
They really took the ideas and the concept seriously. You could tell that the home builders down there were thinking about the zoning implications of being able to look at and introduce unique housing products that allow for more of an intergenerational, multi generational setting. That there are conversations happening with our hospital system. So thinking about this issue of housing in a very different way and starting to push people to say, hey, maybe there's a different conversation we should be having in addition to the affordable housing conversation. It doesn't lessen the importance of the affordable housing conversation, but it does say that there's something else happening in this housing market that we need to pay attention to.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: In our past. In our last interview, you discussed advocacy for Don, diversity, equity and inclusion, including creating an accelerator program for emerging developers of color at Amazon. How do you see wellness real estate and inter generational living models contributing to the greater equity today?
[00:45:22] Speaker D: Yeah, well, first the housing. The accelerator, I guess our housing equity fund accelerator members, they wow me.
It's amazing to see what putting training, mentorship, trust behind developers who are really trying to get an opportunity to get their foot in the door has done. I've been amazed at the projects that they've been able to get off the ground and that we have deepened a bench of diverse developers who we can pull on. So that's actually one of the biggest challenges. If you go into a market and you say we want women, we want people of color to be able to be our development partners and you just find that people don't have the experience.
Making sure that you are building out that bench is really critical. And so I'm very, very proud of that work.
On the wellness real estate side, it's actually kind of a 2, 2 issue. It is the diversity 2 framed issue. It is the diversity of the partners that we're working with.
But it's also that wellness in communities of color can mean something different. Wellness doesn't always mean in communities of color, opening up a new yoga studio.
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:46:37] Speaker D: It may mean paying attention to that dementia issue. It may mean addressing the food issue. There are a lot of food deserts in diverse communities, but also people like to garden. Right. So thinking about what does wellness look like in that specific community?
The growth of multigeneral household, multi generational households is really driven by the growth of Hispanic and Asian households in our country. That's why we're seeing such large increases in demand.
And so, you know, paying attention to is this a multi generational house household, a single family house that you're building, are you building out the Grammy unit within the single family home to be able to accommodate different families who live differently. And so really paying attention to what are those subtle but very important cultural differences that will in fact make this place that is intended to make you feel, well, truly inviting for diverse populations.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: That's great.
So what is your long term vision for wellness real estate innovations and how do you hope to make a lasting impact in the intersection of health, housing and community well being?
[00:47:49] Speaker D: Yeah, so in the short term, my vision is to co develop and partner with institutions willing to think outside the box and really start small, not trying to take over the world. My ultimate vision is to be able to design and have this quote, and I called it Love Villages, to be able to build love villages for people like me.
This is actually a personal journey more than it is a theoretical journey. I love to talk about the big policy issues, but I'm worried about where am I going to live in 15 years. I don't want to be burdened with a big five bedroom house where I have to walk up and down the stairs and care for a large yard.
And don't you see but two or three of my neighbors because that's all I have. That just, that does not feel like an appealing quality of life. And what I'm seeing more and more is, particularly with African American women, that we don't have the resources, we don't have the places that are inviting for us to go. And so the conversations are actually slipping into a large expat Community. I don't want to move.
I'd love to travel, but I don't think that I want to move to a different country in order to have to retire. I don't want to have to move down south in order to have to retire. I want to be able to retire with my friends here. And so how do I start to create those communities? And my hope is that by giving myself a 20 year running start, that in 20 years I will have been successful. And whether it's something that I've created or something that somebody else has created, based on the work that I've been able to do, that more and more places exist for people like me who don't want to just live around other wealthy people.
I want to be able to live around people who of all income, of all backgrounds, but also enjoy a high quality of life. In my third trimester of life, because I intend for that third trimester of life to be long, that's another 20, 30 years that I want to stay engaged, I want to stay active.
You know, 65, pretty soon it's going to be the new 40, if it's not already there. So I want to make sure that there are real options for people like me who don't want to be divided by income, don't want to be divided by race or class, but also want to be in a place where we collectively can really enjoy each other's company, we can socialize more and there is a intentional sense of well being.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: That's great.
So what advice would you share with listeners about participating in wellness initiatives? What are the most effective tools available today for real estate owners and developers?
[00:50:34] Speaker D: I would say think outside the box and start to have these conversations early on.
One of the things that my company, I will say in our first six months is trying to prevent is more multifamily housing development next to townhomes. That is our innovative idea.
[00:50:50] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:50:51] Speaker D: In places that could intentionally be connected to healthcare.
Start having these conversations early on. Start thinking outside the box early on. There are communities that I've had conversations with when I initially launched that were really struggling with retail. But and I don't want to name the specific community, relatively affluent actually. So it's a little confusing as to why the retail was struggling, but turn their back on their aging population, didn't embrace it as a positive. And so the more you can have these conversations as you're looking at zoning opportunities and options and thinking about what do we need to do, what is the framework that we're operating under, what Are the innovations that are happening not necessarily in my city, but in other places that I can pull on.
Some of those ideas that have been at least tried, maybe not tested to the extent that they've been around for 100 years, but they've been around for 20 years.
What are things that we need to be considering and what are those demographic shifts that we need to be thinking about early on and reaching out to partners who are thinking outside the box. So just consider something different. See whether or not the numbers pencil out. But what the Global Wellness Institute is showing us and the reason they're putting out all of this data is that the return on investment is significantly higher when you do hit the mark on the wellness aspect. People are craving wellness. Anti aging solutions are all the demand. Some people think the longevity market, which I think is just an extension of the wellness movement, is going to be even bigger because half of the five year olds who are born today are expected to live to their 100.
The challenge that we're going to have in the United States is that that quality of life is not, not going to be the same for everybody. And so quality of life is going to start to be top of mind for people. We'll call it wellness, we'll call it longevity. But for those who are willing to think about how do I start to integrate different solutions into my real estate offerings early on, I think that long term they're going to see a much better outcome.
[00:53:01] Speaker A: You said earlier there's a shortcoming on data collection.
What statistics or data do you think is necessary to make decisions to finance and or educate people going forward in your space, in the wellness space?
[00:53:21] Speaker D: Yeah, we need to know the true cost.
We need to know the true cost of the do nothing solution. My public housing background has taught me it's easier to administer services if everybody is in a single building. If you have 250 seniors in a single building, it is a lot easier to make sure that you either have a bus to the healthcare clinic or you offer healthcare services within the building. But if we're taking the scattered side approach, where everybody lives in their individual homes, it is so much harder to administer services and to make sure that we're caring for populations the way that we hope to care for them.
And so understanding what is the cost right now, because we don't have the numbers, it feels like it's not our problem. The truth of the matter is it is our problem.
Also understanding the scale, the fact that it took me going to Harvard, the Harvard Joint center for Housing Issuing a study on aging, our report on aging, to finally say, oh my gosh, we really are getting older as a country and understanding what those numbers are.
We need more of that information to get out there and we need it to be localized and understand how is this shifting and shaping our housing market in ways that we don't necessarily understand, but that we need to understand.
Then last thing, the impact on rent. So New York City, their fed, has actually done a lot of conversation and talk about this issue. They're starting to see their homeless shelters not be occupied or the growth in their homeless shelter demand not be occupied by kind of your traditional individuals falling on hard times or has a drug habit or what have you. They're saying it by seniors who just can't afford the rent. There's nothing wrong.
They just can't afford the rent. They're on a fixed income. And so having the data that shows, again, that this is going to cost us if we do nothing and that there are alternatives to solutions and that these alternative solutions work, that they can be a cure for not having to go take that pill, not having to go get that medical treatment, but maybe that having better walkability, having a place that has more greenery and intentional biophilic design has on your kind of physical and mental health, understanding the real implications of some of these investments, it'll make it a lot easier for not only for developers to sell these ideas, but also to get them funded.
[00:55:52] Speaker A: That's great.
In your last interview, you stated that your billboard statement, which is my classic question at the end of every interview, would be, this region cares. That was your statement.
Would you leave that or would you propose a different billboard after your experience at Harvard and also your redirection in the health and wellness space?
[00:56:18] Speaker D: Yeah, I would absolutely leave the billboard up and I would add, and there's more work to do.
[00:56:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:56:29] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm still inspired by all the work because it really was a regional effort. It looked like the Amazon Housing Equity Fund came out of the blue and just kind of stole all the news headlines. But it was the work of cog. It was the work of the Housing Leaders Group. It was the work of regional leaders who were willing to create housing trust funds and talk to their constituents about affordability and kind of take some of those hard questions on the chin. That's what made all of that possible. So I'm still, as a hometown girl, inspired by the fact that people will have these conversations. But I also do recommend there's more that we need to talk about.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: Well, let Me reframe what you did at Amazon to the wellness space and see, maybe you could do the same thing for a company like let's say Kaiser or United Healthcare or somebody of significant influence in the healthcare sector.
You wrote a six page memo to Jeff Bezos and the board at Amazon about forming this housing equity fund for the three different metropolitan areas.
It became a reality and you invested over $2 billion of those dollars from Amazon.
Why couldn't you do the same thing with another one or more health care companies in this space? If you, once you define what you're trying to invest in.
[00:57:52] Speaker D: Well, that would be my dream, that people would know that this is possible. And my hope is like, I honestly think that I am such a kind of accidental person to have led this cause somehow.
[00:58:06] Speaker A: No, you're not.
[00:58:07] Speaker D: I'm that person that tripped in the room.
But now that I'm here, I also hope that it shows people when you are willing to put yourself out there and make bold investments. They do shift the market and the market is shifting. Like even a little bit of data we have now says we need to do something else. And I know the D.C. region is spiraling because of the job loss and everything that's going on with the federal government, but let's not lose the assets and the resources that we do have here. And how do we genuinely harness those resources to make sure that the care and the well being of our community in our region is sound as we're going through this and that we're taking advantage of the fact that we do have higher income retirees here.
[00:58:57] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:58:58] Speaker D: So, yes, if there is a healthcare company, healthcare executive out there that is willing to do something that is bold, that recognizes housing may not be my lane, but what I'm seeing, I'm not satisfied with and I'm willing to innovate to show other people that it is possible. Please call me. I will make sure that you can call my cell phone any time of day.
[00:59:21] Speaker A: Well, you know, the initiative you could take is fundamentally just take the top 10 health care providers in the country and just, you know, rewrite your memo and send it to the CEOs of each company and say here it is. Yeah, but the thing is, you said you need more data and you need, I mean, it's clear affordable housing is researched much more deeply than wellness real estate. It's a fairly new field.
But what you pointed out earlier to me is the demographic trends are compelling enough that it makes a whole lot of sense to focus some energy on it.
Obviously. Yeah, yeah, Pulling together the right resources to measure everything and show it in a compelling nature to these people might make sense. And you can also get the new HHS secretary. Maybe he'd be interested in that. He's an out of the box thinker, RFK Jr.
[01:00:17] Speaker D: I will work with whomever will listen. And I bet he listened to political sides when it comes to let's innovate and do something good for the people.
[01:00:25] Speaker A: I'll bet he'd listen to you, honestly, anyway.
[01:00:30] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
[01:00:31] Speaker A: Having worked on large scale projects like San Elizabeth east and and led a major housing fund at Amazon, which you discussed before, what insights have you gained about driving progress in diverse underserved communities through large scale investments and new approaches? Which kind of plays off what I just asked earlier?
[01:00:49] Speaker D: Yeah, well, it takes time. St. Elizabeth took time. Even before I came along. Barras Consaye was running St. Elizabeth and he helped secure infrastructure money, got a master plan and our zoning pass the district required decided in 1987. So there have been years and years of work and as you're seeing 10 years later, it's still taking time for these changes to take hold. And so for folks who are listening, just give it time. But start, start somewhere. It doesn't mean we'll get to it eventually. Start small, start big, but just start and keep going and keep pressing and keep trying something new. Because like I said, I was shocked as being somebody who had a lot of conversations about housing and saw a lot of housing deals in our region and oversaw over a billion dollars being invested in housing in our region, which is what housing leaders were calling for when we launched the fund, that that still wasn't enough, that there's still more to do, there's still more innovation that is needed and there's still major pockets that are not being addressed. So just having one player out there with such a major commitment is not going to shift the market where we need. And like I said, while we don't have specific numbers, this issue is affecting all of us.
[01:02:11] Speaker A: Reflecting on your experience leading the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, what insights have you gained about the need for alternative or complementary approaches to addressing housing challenges beyond large scale corporate or public funds?
[01:02:27] Speaker D: Yeah, we need everybody's resources at the table.
So some of that may be your ability to collect data. There are institutions that are very good at that. Some of that may be in kind donations, land. We always love land being put on the table for innovative purposes and may also be just support and thought leadership. A lot of what may be affordable housing efforts possible weren't just people who gave it wasn't just people who it wasn't just people who were investing and the government that invested alongside the Amazon Housing Equity Fund to make many of those projects possible.
But it was also people who lent their support, who lent their applause cleared the way to shift public opinion to say this is a good thing. I'm still humbled by the fact that not none of Amazon's investments were opposed to large scale by community members. We didn't see the not in my backyard backlash that so many people were fearful of. So having that support really does mean something. So the more that people can share information, I post as much data as I can. I love it when people share things with me that I'm happy to go re share. But clearing the way and clearing the path to say this is a real thing we need to pay attention to is equal to.
[01:03:47] Speaker A: You were listed as a 2024 Harvard Loeb Fellow. How has this fellowship experience influenced your thinking on housing and community development since leaving Amazon?
[01:03:59] Speaker D: Oh, the fellowship was everything. I didn't expect it to be such a dynamic fellowship. The Harvard Loeb Fellowship we've had a lot of regional players. The person who actually sparked my interest 20 years ago when I was chair of D.C. historic Preservation Review Board, which is something some people remember when I chaired the board, Jair lynch had come before us with his first project and he said I just finished this really great fellowship. And he was glowing and I was like, I forget a year, I'm going to go do that fellowship.
He actually didn't know that fact until close to my graduation when I reminded him that he was the reason I was interested in But Harriet Trigoni, Marcelo Costa, Andy Altman, there's so many load fellows, Bob Hack, I should not start listing out people because I'm going to forget some very important lobes in the Washington D.C. area. But it is a year to step back, reflect and also be around some amazing people from around the world who are doing things that you just didn't think were possible. So I had always been wed to a job for example, held on for dear life for better or for worse. And I met people who one of my housemates, she was from Norway, she worked at the Thailand Burma border and started an architecture firm and built amazing schoolhouses and homes and highly sustainable buildings.
Just knowing that that was possible was mind blowing to me. We had a writer for Slate who wrote about parking and traveled the country to talk about park parking. You just meet the most interesting people and it opens your mind to not think about issues in such a silo, but to know that there are so many different ways of approaching it, big and small and also being inspired by these young people. Our future is bright because young people are paying attention. They are thinking about these issues.
They're thinking about nuance, not just the big issues and how do I get the big corporate job, but how do I pay attention to, to the little details. They are hungry for knowledge, they are hungry for information.
And so the low fellowship people told me, going in, this is going to change your life. It's going to be magical and you're a little skeptical, you come out and it somehow does.
[01:06:16] Speaker A: That's great. Well, playing off on young people, how does your new teaching role at Harvard where you will be instruct a course on health and housing innovation inform or align with your work work at Wellness Real Estate and Innovations and your sip and solve discussions?
[01:06:34] Speaker D: Oh, it keeps me going.
I love talking to young people, hearing their ideas. I actually had a student at Harvard Business School reach out who's also been studying these issues.
She and her business partner have been looking at it five different ways and we'll regroup and talk about the pros and the cons of how they're looking at it. And they've asked me that they can come together and we can do an hour and a half, two hour kind of symposium, if you will, prior to the course launching. Just kicking around these ideas is really fun. And as serious as these issues are, we need to not lose the fun and the joy of just learning and exploring and considering and talking to different people. And so being able to teach this course, create a course, but teach it and almost learn from the students as much as they learn from me about how do we need to think about these issues is going to be really exciting.
[01:07:29] Speaker A: So you see in the future the potential of a new category of real estate that is studied, developed and managed operated.
So we have.
Let me just reflect a little bit on how the real estate industry has evolved. Ten years ago, there wasn't a thing known as a data center, except maybe, you know, very close to AOL and some of the original Internet operators.
Manufactured housing is an industry that's been around for a long time, but it's now much more sophisticated than it used to be.
Student housing really wasn't an investment play until about 25, 30 years ago.
So how is Wellness real estate going to become a category of investment in your mind? What is going to drive that?
The demographics seem to be compelling enough to be able to drive it. I mean you have nursing homes and senior facilities and senior real estate 55 and up.
But does it have though enough of the wellness focus to it?
Is there enough health care integrated into it?
More from a preventative, intelligent approach as opposed to just, you know, when you're ill, you go to the doctor type of thing? One book I'll point out, and I don't know if you've read it yet, it's a book by Peter Attia called Outlive and it's a book about the. He calls them the four horsemen of, you know, death basically being heart disease, cancer, you know, dementia and diabetes. Those are the four horsemen. So if you can address those issues effectively, you know, the average age of this country can extend considerably. As you said, half of the five year olds born today could live to be 100, depending on how the health care sector works.
Yeah, so that's a long winded question, but how do you respond to what I just said?
[01:09:36] Speaker D: My hope is that it doesn't. It may be kind of done asset class, kind of like senior housing or student housing. Have you. But my hope is that it gets integrated into all types of asset classes. And there are a couple of reasons for this.
Number one, one of the books that I love to talk about is Robert Putnam's work around Bowling Alone and the loss of civic institutions in the United States that so many of us, our grandparents, they would join the legion, they went to church a lot, that was their home base or whatever their religious institution was. As Barack Obama said, in the old days, we used to meet up, meet up with an actual meetup. We would actually talk to each other, that the civic connections that we has had in this country, that fabric is being lost. And for young people right now, I was talking to a professor at NOVA yesterday and he pointed out that these young people don't really know what it's like not to think in an individualistic way yet. They have 401ks, they have individual mortgages, they don't have, they're not reliant on. They don't even see that social institutions like Social Security Security and some of these other pension homes, pensions and what have you, they don't see them in the same way. They look at their individual computers on their phone and they only see kind of an isolated place of the world. And so my hope is that as we go through this kind of tumultuous time and we start to ask ourselves who do we want to be, how do we want to show up, that the well being of ourselves and our Community starts to fall to the forefront and that the reliance on institutions to come save us isn't the sole focus that we start to think about. What can we do as individuals to be healthier? What can we do to make our community healthier? What can we do to make sure that that social connection, that civic fabric that we've lost doesn't totally erode and that we maintain it in some form or fashion even if it looks different, even if it looks different in that day and age of AI, which we all know is going to shift how we live and quite frankly I think put more of an emphasis on our own quality of life as we don't have to take care of day to day tasks at the same level that we historically have.
And so as those shifts are happening, my hope is that we start to integrate wellness into all asset classes, even hospitality. I've actually been talking to a hospitality partner about how to create a unique experience for business travelers because I've learned myself business traveling, travel is lonely, it can be isolating.
And I would opt to go to the hotel that somehow created a sense of community and created interactive experiences or made it easier for me to have access to wellness amenities over a hotel that just provides kind of a standard stay opportunity. And so seeing wellness and which really can be social connection, emotional, physical and mental well being, show up in conversations across asset classes is where I hope this is going.
[01:12:48] Speaker A: Well, you mentioned the hotel sector and you know Washington D.C. is, is the center of the hotel industry. I don't know if you realize that more of the top five hotel management companies are headquartered here in the Washington region.
So companies like Hilton and Marriott and Choice are all here.
And to me, you know, they're really into branding big time. And if you've ever toured and they're, I mean I was at Marriott's headquarters in Bethesda.
Yeah, you know they, they have floors each, a floor dedicated to each of their brands and they have, you know, full rooms, they have hospice, they have four kitchens, the whole deal on each brand. And it seems to me that you could have a floor on wellness and actually have a brand focused on wellness, honestly, because people would stay in a place that focuses on wellness. I would, seems to me that would be a great branding tool anyway.
[01:13:48] Speaker D: Yeah. And some of it is very literal. They, the major hospitality flags have definitely tried it. Some of it is more subtle.
So you're starting to see brands like Marriott integrate co working spaces into their hotels, maybe in a lounge setting.
You know, the challenge they have is how do you scale it. Because wellness is not a one size fits all solution. But maybe you can take some of your unique flexible brands, like an autograph and do something a little bit creative that starts to move into wellness, but doesn't necessarily call itself the spa hotel.
[01:14:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I get it.
[01:14:27] Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
[01:14:28] Speaker A: Well, some of the boutique brands have really, you know, their health clubs or state of the art they, you know, they focus on, you know, here you are. This is a real opportunity for you to stay healthy and be involved. And it seems like over half the people that go there stay there, usually get involved somehow. The question is, can you organize something around?
Why would you stay at this hotel? Because it has such great health facilities or whatever it is. That's the reason I didn't go there.
[01:14:57] Speaker D: That's right.
[01:14:58] Speaker A: That become a driver of the hotel itself. That's all you know.
[01:15:02] Speaker D: That's right. That's right. And we're seeing it more and more. You're seeing it in the hotel airport lounges. I'm sorry, airport lounges where they'll have a wellness lounge. This is a place where it smells good, the energy is a little bit softer, the music is a little bit softer. So, yes, everybody is thinking about how do we start to focus on well being.
And I think it's going to move into social connection and quality of life. And how do we make sure that we embrace these principles?
[01:15:31] Speaker A: Well, one of the other.
I love this theme because I really think that each sector of real estate could grow from integrating what you just said, integrating it. So I could go one by one, but I'll start with the office sector, which seems to be the one that's struggling the most right now.
One of my fellow podcast guests, Oliver Carr, who's pretty prominent here, focuses on hospitality in his office buildings. That's a really important thing for him.
And as a part of that is wellness. And he talks about it significantly and I think that because of that he's retained a very high occupancy level in his properties. And honestly, I think that's a big approach that office owners and operators should take, is looking at the health of their tenants. It's important.
[01:16:24] Speaker D: Yes, yes. And it's anywhere from, you know, kind of looking at certifications like the, well, building design, which is going to talk about things like the quality of air, which we all started focusing on during COVID and kind of those infrastructure, fundamental infrastructure items within your corporate office building. But you mentioned Marriott. Marriott and Amazon have redesigned the interiors of their office space to be able to encourage more collaboration and really think about the mental experience that people are having. People don't want to go from a house that has all of the smart amenities, that has a comfortable sofa that has vibrant colors, that, you know, the big coffee mug, into a very stiff office building.
So you're starting to see people play around with how do we, how do our employees actually want to work? They don't want to work in uptight environments. And much of that is centered around wellness, whether we call it that or not.
[01:17:20] Speaker A: And then the experience. Retail business as well. So which is a new trend?
You know, shop and then exercise or, you know, being in a more comfortable environment when you're shopping or in that retail experience or have access to things that are more oriented in that direction.
I don't know if you've seen any cutting edge innovation in retail for wellness, but I'm just curious if you've seen any.
[01:17:50] Speaker D: Oh, absolutely. I mean, we're seeing more spas pop up, we're seeing more wellness and fitness studios. I mean, even the fact that the mayor is talking about putting a spa at Poplar Point as a major driving amenity in the District of Columbia, I.
[01:18:06] Speaker A: Mean, there you go.
[01:18:06] Speaker D: Retail understands that people don't just want to run errands, they don't want to just go to the grocery store, but they do want to have more of those experiences. And it'll be fascinating to see how.
I've seen some ideas that haven't necessarily taken hold, but how technology really starts to shift and changes retail experiences from the colors, the sensory experience, the music that you hear, the smells that you smell, the move. I mean, I. In my lifetime, we've moved from closed malls to open air malls because of the experience. And so seeing more and more kind of either wellness features, wellness designs, or actual wellness amenities being used in retail is something that I expect will continue.
[01:18:51] Speaker A: Well, I think, you know, every woman I know goes to the hair salon and, or the nail salon every month. That's a big part of wellness for them that I've seen.
But is there such a thing for guys? I don't know. But you know, you go to the gym. I don't know if that's enough, but that's right.
[01:19:10] Speaker D: That's right. But people are thinking about it like, how do we, how do we create unique experiences where people can gather?
Maybe it's the, the. I saw that Friendship Heights did actually put in an old school arcade and some of their underutilized retail spaces because it's just a gathering space for people to have fun. Wellness doesn't always look like a spa. Wellness may look like a place to play.
[01:19:36] Speaker A: Well, the new food halls congregate people in a new way. I mean, International Square downtown has this big food hall on its ground floor. I was there a couple weeks ago for a conference. I was amazed at people. Not necessarily the tenants there, but just people coming on off the street, congregating in their great big bar. And I don't know if you've seen it, but it's quite something.
[01:19:57] Speaker D: Yeah, pretty impressive. And it's the idea that we can all be here together. No matter what food you prefer, we're all here, there's an energy in the space and we all get to enjoy it. And you don't have to only sit at your specific restaurant, but you can share different spaces and have kind of a unique experience away from your traditional restaurant.
[01:20:20] Speaker A: So is there anything else you'd like to share or say, Catherine, before we conclude, I've finished my questions and just wondered if there's any other messages you want to share with the group here, with the real estate community here in Washington?
[01:20:34] Speaker D: Yeah, really just thank you for taking the time to talk through this with me. It's such a new journey and I consider myself a startup kid and so that's really my claim to fame is I love taking on and while I'm in it, I always question why I do this, taking on kind of a new idea and helping to bring it to life. But I've been really humbled and excited that people are starting to pay attention.
And also my hope is that after this talk people start to see what I call glimmers of hope.
And what I consider glimmers of hope are opportunities or things you didn't pay attention to previously that you're now starting to see. Hey, this is a wellness solution that I didn't know was actually something that's interesting but that is of interest. So if you listen to this podcast and you see your own glimmer of hope, please share it with me. It encourages me. I love to share them with other people. But my hope is that this starts to open up people's eyes as to what is possible and start to see that things are happening in the real estate market that maybe they weren't necessarily paying attention to previously, but that there is movement in this direction of wellness and that there's going to be even greater movement. I predict as again, AI starts to have take a lot of the heavy lifting off of us and we can automate some of the day to day functions that our own Personal well being, our own quality of life, our own emotional and not just financial, but also physical stability, our ability to walk through communities and have that sense of community is going to be even more important.
[01:22:11] Speaker A: So how can people reach out to you and share their wisdom?
[01:22:16] Speaker D: And do you actually very active on LinkedIn? Okay.
[01:22:20] Speaker A: And do you, do you actually publish? I know you have your sip and solve thing, but do you also have a blog or are you putting out information to share and get encourage comments and that kind of thing at all?
[01:22:34] Speaker D: Yeah, I use LinkedIn primarily because I just find it to be very easy and I'm always encouraged when people find new information and they listed in my LinkedIn comment. It doesn't always have to be my own share, but people do read those comments and it's great to see the synergy. Also, this is a conversation that not everybody is having in their day to day work life. So in many ways my hope is that it's a bright light, okay. To distract us from some of the other things that are happening. And having these conversations about wellness can encourage all of us to smile a little bit more, be kind to each other and like I said, continue to see and seek out those glimmers of hope.
[01:23:16] Speaker A: So you mentioned Bowling Alone as a book that you think people should. Is there any other books that you'd like to suggest people read or look up within that relate to the wellness real estate sector, if there is such a thing?
[01:23:31] Speaker D: Not necessarily books, but I would take a look at what the Global Wellness Institute is doing.
[01:23:38] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:23:38] Speaker D: They actually put out a real estate report annually. They have another one coming out in June and they kind of take on different aspects of it. If you're anything like me, it you love to read a good report.
If you are looking for a book, I would look at Jeremy Noble's Project Unlonely. He's actually a professor at Harvard Medical School. He talks about how art can cure the loneliness epidemic. And then of course there are folks like Ezra Klein and others who are trying to think outside of the box. Kind of those more traditional conversations and more traditional untraditional conversations, if you will, that are always interesting. But I would start with some of those folks who are tracking this data to understand that it's a real thing.
[01:24:28] Speaker A: That's great.
Well, thank you Katherine, for your insightful research and thoughts In a sector that's relatively new to our industry, but obviously because of the demographic trends, we're all getting older or have to think about it.
[01:24:45] Speaker D: But even young people, thank goodness, it's such a blessing to get older. We forget that many times.
[01:24:53] Speaker A: I love sharing what people have been through in their careers. That's what this whole podcast is about.
But we don't talk necessarily about wellness as much as we should and things that we need to advocate for. So I really appreciate that perspective. I'll mention all the references that you've suggested in here and have a link to your LinkedIn page as well as your website.
And thank you very much for your time today.
I appreciate it.
[01:25:26] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:25:27] Speaker A: All right.
