♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Distinguished writer and editor Harriette Cole and Christopher Donald, executive director of the D.C. Housing and Finance Agency next on "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

♪♪ >> We're most honored to have Harriette Cole.

Welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Well, thank you for having me.

It's an honor to be here.

And I love that you knew my daddy.

>> Absolutely.

Well, let's start.

I know Baltimore, Maryland, you brought up.

Talk to us about your beginnings.

>> So I am Junior.

There were no boys in our family.

So I'm the middle child.

But my father was Harry A. Cole.

I'm Harriette A. Cole.

There are three girls.

My father was the fifth of five children.

And he describes that his family grew up so poor that he had to wear his sister's shoes.

Actually, when he went to Morgan, he shined -- >> Morgan State.

>> Morgan State University.

He shined shoes before getting there so he would have enough money to pay to go to college.

My father was meticulous in every way, including taking care of those shoes.

It was, "You better make sure that the heels are good on your shoes."

He just -- Everything was important to him in terms of being excellent.

He taught us that excellence was the only option.

So, my father was a lawyer.

He became the first Black state senator in Maryland, later the first Black judge on the Maryland Court of Appeals.

And he helped Judge Robert Bell, who was the second Black judge on the Court of Appeals, to become the chief judge.

So he was always helping others throughout his career.

My mother, Doris Cole, is from Baltimore.

My mother was a kindergarten teacher, and then she retired to take care of my sisters and me.

She is 93 years young.

She's still with us and beautiful and bright.

And th-- on both sides, my mother's mother, Carrie, lived to be 101, and she was a domestic worker, and she retired at 93.

We're like, "Grandma, you don't have to keep working."

I remember something about her, and I named my daughter for my grandmother.

My -- At some point, I remember -- this is in the '70s, you know, Black pride.

I'm a little girl.

And I was mad that she was working for these rich white people.

And I said, "We can take care of you.

You don't need to work for them."

And she sat me down, and my grandmother was a foot shorter than me.

She was a tiny woman.

She said, "Don't you worry about me."

She said, "I love my work and I love the people I work for.

And your job, when it's your time to work, is to do the same."

She neutralized that, whatever that race hatred was that was brewing, she didn't allow us to have that.

>> Your grandmother had a lot of wisdom.

>> So much wisdom.

>> And a lot of experience.

>> Absolutely.

>> This thing about striving for excellence is certainly a part of your family legacy, and it's part of what you do now, one of America's leading editors, writers.

Tell us how you wind up at Essence magazine.

At the time, Essence was the premier publication not just for Black women but I would say women in -- you know, the burgeoning women's movement was catching a lot of steam in the 19-- late 1970s, early 1980s.

>> Right.

And I -- So I went to Howard University.

I was an English major.

I should back up and say when I was 12 years old, I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I was also interested in fashion.

And so I pursued these two things for my whole career in some ways.

At Howard, I was a model, and I had the opportunity to go to Paris to model or to pursue writing, and I thought writing was something I wanted more.

I worked for a member of Congress my first year out of college and did not like that, Dr. Chavis.

That wasn't for me.

So I convinced two newspapers in D.C. to let me write fashion stories for them.

I created internships for myself and then called everyone I knew who worked at a magazine after a year of having clips, and one of them was at Essence, and I was offered a job not in fashion.

So I tell young people all the time, "You have to be patient."

I got a job in the lifestyle department.

I was promoted in that department every year until I became the editor of that department.

And then Susan Taylor said to me, after seven years, "Would you like to be fashion editor?"

And I had always wanted to do that.

So I ended up having a full menu of experiences, telling our stories and then marrying my interest in fashion with writing.

And I worked there for 11 years.

>> Yeah, you mentioned Susan Taylor.

She's another one of the great pioneers.

>> Absolutely.

>> How -- Describe your relationship in working with and for Susan Taylor.

>> I learned so much from Susan.

You know, really, the first job that mattered to me was working at Essence.

And Susan wanted all of us who worked there to understand who our reader was.

>> Yes.

>> And that meant she traveled all the time, all over the United States, meeting Black women where they were, listening to what their challenges, dreams, hopes were, and bringing it back to us every week in editorial meetings so that we would understand who we were talking to.

And as you mentioned, Essence was started in 1970 when the whole movement for Black people in business and commerce was burgeoning.

By the '80s when I got there -- '84 is when I started -- Black women were really powerful.

There were so many great roles that we had in every sphere, and she wanted to make sure that we told those stories well.

In terms of fashion, which at -- by -- I was the fashion editor from 1990 to 1995.

She wanted to make sure that we reflected the style that we all had and that we reflected across all sizes.

>> So you had a modeling career before you really -- >> I did.

>> So writing and fashion, I mean, that's a great intersection for you.

>> It was what I wanted to do.

My dream as a little girl was to be a writer and be involved in fashion.

And I am a big believer in dreams.

In fact, in 2016, I created something called Dreamleapers, which is an educational platform designed to help people.

And I teach people how to go inside, find that dream that is just waiting to come out, and then have the confidence to access it and make it happen and not just say -- you know, a lot of people will say, "I want to do something," but are you doing it?

Like, I knew I wanted to write books.

I've now written seven books.

Why?

Because I did it.

You know, you have to do it.

And this is the thing.

I learned this from Susan.

I learned it from Essence and from my family.

>> Yes.

>> First from my family.

Learning how to take action is not enough to just have the idea.

But what are you going to do with the idea?

You have to manifest the idea.

All of us have great ideas.

But for me, many of my ideas literally came with a dream.

I had a dream that I had a business.

I was probably at Essence for four or five years.

I woke up in the middle of the night and typed out everything that was in the dream and printed it.

You know thermal paper?

It was on thermal paper.

>> Yes, yes.

>> Printed it and put it on my refrigerator.

It sat yellowing on my refrigerator for years until it was time.

And when it was time, I activated.

And that's what I help people to do today.

>> What has been some of the response from young people to this opportunity to learn how to dream?

>> So I'm going to say it's young and not so young.

A lot of people come to me when they're in transition.

So it's "I know I need to do something different, something else.

It's time for me to make a change."

And as you know, when you feel that friction to make a change, you often feel afraid.

And so I look at friction as an opportunity to make a change and it's a good thing.

What they say to me is that I help them to build their confidence.

And that's what we often need a cheerleader, you know, someone to say, "You can do it, you can do it, and you have to do the work, but you can do it."

>> So change is intergenerational.

You don't have to say, "Well, I'm no longer young, so I can't change."

>> Exactly.

I know so many people who get deflated a little bit and feel like, "Oh, maybe it's too late for me."

I just interviewed Daymond John from "Shark Tank," who also was a founder of FUBU, and he said it doesn't matter how old you are.

You have an idea, manifest it.

>> Right.

>> Just manifest it right now.

I think when we hear people reminding us of the goodness that lives within us and telling us, "You can unlock it now," that cheerleading that comes from many people in our communities can remind you, "Now is your chance.

Now is your moment."

It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter your circumstances.

Now you can ignite that light within and make it happen.

>> James Baldwin was a close friend of mine, and he once said to me that the pen is mightier than the sword.

How do you see the use of the pen, your pen going forward?

>> What a great question.

So when I told my daddy that I wanted to be a writer, he paid for me to take the LSAT because he wanted me to be a lawyer.

He said the best kind of writing is the law.

He was an appeal -- appellate judge.

I said, "Daddy, that's not the kind of writing I want to do."

What I have done -- and now I've published seven books thus far about how to live an empowered life -- What I do every day is to help people in whatever way I can to access that power within.

I write an advice column for the past 20 years, I think, called "Sense and Sensitivity," where I answer people's questions with the intention, through writing, of uplifting them, of helping them to see another way to live the best life possible.

So every single day I'm writing, using the words that I hope will inspire people to leap into their greatness.

That is my mission.

>> For those potential writers who are listening to you, or those who may contemplate being a writer one day in life as a career, what -- give us your recommendation.

How do you get on a career path to be a good writer?

>> Write every day.

Every day.

You have to get good at it and you get good at it by practicing.

You also have to know things.

You have to study.

You have to pay attention to what's going on in the world.

You know, when I was 12, I told you is when I knew I wanted to be a writer.

I didn't know anything then.

So that stuff that -- I wrote poems and hid them in my closet.

When I started learning about culture and the world and politics and the things that my parents cared about that I then learned to care about and started writing about those things, when I started working for Essence and started writing about the topics that Susan and others told us we needed to focus on, then I had rich subject matter to write about.

You have to study the world.

You have to pay attention to what's going on around you.

Figure out what you care about, what matters to you, find an audience and write every day.

And I tell people, whether you're a writer or whatever your dream is, for your dream to manifest, you have to work on it every day, at least one hour a day.

That's my biggest gift to folks.

If you work on it one hour a day, at the end of a week, you've got a harvest of something.

>> So dreams have to be worked on.

Not just thought about, but you have to work on your dream.

>> To activate them, you have to work on them.

>> Your career in writing, your career in fashion, as an author, distinguished author, what gives you your greatest hope for the future?

>> My greatest hope for the future I see through my daughter, who's a sophomore in college and smart, grounded.

You know, I taught her from a little girl.

"You're a leader."

And I see leadership through her.

So I think that my husband and I have done a good job of setting her up for success.

I see her friends who are from all over the world and making smart steps toward their future.

It is the next generation where I see hope.

For me, I tell stories of triumphant people's lives, you know, of people who are choosing to manifest their dreams.

And that is why I intend to do forever, to help people to get there, to teach people how to tell their stories and to share their stories.

>> Harriette Cole, thank you for joining "The Chavis "Chronicles.

>> Thank you.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> It's really an honor to have the opportunity to speak to one of our nation's leading housing experts, Christopher Donald, executive director of the D.C. Housing Finance Agency.

Welcome to "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you, sir.

I really appreciate being here.

Thank you for the opportunity.

>> You have a major job, and given housing in all of the major metropolitan areas of our nation, it's a challenge.

You see homelessness growing.

You know, a lot of people who work, working families sometimes can't afford housing even after it's developed.

And here in the nation's capital, I want to talk about some of the innovations that you've done because I think that other jurisdictions could learn from some of the success that you've had leading housing in the District of Columbia.

First of all, background -- You're originally from California.

>> I am.

I'm from San Jose in the Bay area, grew up there, born and raised, went to school there, but got struck by the big lights in the big city here in the District back in the mid '90s, right after Marion came back to the city.

And it was an amazing place.

You had a Black mayor, a Black police chief, a Black firefighter.

And so the possibilities for somebody who was young and African-American were limitless.

And so it was a place that I certainly wanted to be a part of.

And I've been here ever since I graduated from school.

>> So tell us about the District of Columbia Housing Finance Agency.

What is that?

>> Sure.

So the Housing Finance Agency, I tell people to simplify it, it's a bank.

It's a boutique investment bank which facilitates the funding of affordable housing, right?

And so HFAs across the country have a mandate.

They can issue tax-exempt bonds with low-income housing tax credits.

They can also issue a different type of tax-exempt or tax credits which are 9% credits.

>> And these credits are for developers?

>> These credits are for developers to facilitate affordable housing.

Right?

So the tax law is structured such that if you limit the amount of rent that you will charge for a particular building, you can get these tax credits from investors.

Right?

To make building that -- a building more affordable.

So you get affordable rents and affordable capital to make that come together.

>> Your job is to make sure that with all the development, that it's still affordable, that there's still mixed family use or working families can still avoid some of the new housing because, as you know, the issue of gentrification, sometimes indigenous residents sometimes are priced out of the marketplace.

>> That's right, that's right.

>> How does your agency deal with making sure there's some equity and equality and accessibility to affordable housing?

>> Sure.

So I think there's two parts to that.

Right?

So number one is making sure that there are the resources that are out there to fund this housing.

Right?

And Mayor Bowser has done more than anybody else in the rest of the country.

Right?

And so that subsidy that fills the gap between what you can support to pay for the mortgage because you have lower rents.

Right?

And what you need to actually build a building is extraordinary.

Without that, we couldn't do our work.

So that commitment from the mayor was the first step, right?

The second step is to make sure that you have a strong constituency of affordable housing developers that are going to step into the mix, that are going to deliver good product on time and on budget, right?

And so with those two things kind of coming together, we can do a lot and have a huge impact on providing more affordable housing.

The way that we make sure that we can take care of the people who live here, though, is to identify those developers who are part of the community, right, who understand what's happening on each of the different wards and each of the different neighborhoods.

And they go out and they meet people where they are and deliver to the people what they need.

>> How do these major developers react to you one-on-one?

Just be honest because very rarely do I see a Black man over housing and finance in a major metropolitan area.

So how do you deal with these major developers who are normally not people of color?

>> So it's been interesting.

I've had a really unique opportunity to work in all three jurisdictions in Northern Virginia and Maryland, and in the District over the last two decades, and I've had an opportunity to develop relationships with people throughout that community.

And so when people are walking into the room, most of those people already know me or I've dealt with them or they've had some sense of where I've been.

Right?

And so it's made it a little bit easier.

You know, every now and again, I have to tell people that I can read and write, and I count pretty good, right?

But once we calibrate, I think the doing of what we need to get done is relatively easy.

Now, that might just be from my perspective.

But, you know, I take it as this, like I've been sent here to do a job to make sure that we do it equitably, right?

And to represent for our folks.

Right?

>> You mentioned the mayor.

Obviously, you have a close working relationship, but for our listening audience, tell us how important it is for you to not only have direct access to the mayor, but to have that ongoing working relationship.

>> The mayor in the city of Washington, D.C., is absolutely critical, and she's critical for a couple different reasons.

Number one, if housing is not on her agenda, if she does not put that first in her budget, then the work we do can't be done.

And she's done that consistently.

And over the last couple of years, she's dedicated almost $1 billion of subsidy to affordable housing.

>> $1 billion?

>> Over $1 billion over the last three to four years of her service.

So that's incredible, right?

Number two, she's been laser focused on it.

It's something that you hear her talking about all the time.

It's something not that she just puts money behind but her policy and her staff resources across the board are coming together and converging on that topic.

And as a matter of fact, last year she convened a Black homeownership strike force where she really wanted to look at home ownership rates amongst Black folks here in the District of Columbia and making sure that Black people had access to the opportunity to become homeowners.

And one of the things that she did was she created this incredible new limit for our Home Purchase Assistance Program, our HPAP program.

Right?

So if you're a first-time home buyer and you're looking to buy your first home, you can come in and get a loan of up to $200,000, right?

As a first-time home buyer.

And that opened up homeownership to a group of folks who traditionally -- >> Low interest rate?

>> No interest rate.

>> No interest rate?

>> No interest rate.

You just got to pay it back.

>> Repeat that again, man.

That's unheard of.

>> Yeah.

So... >> First-time home buyer get a $200,000 loan.

>> Up to $200,000.

>> With no interest?

>> With no interest.

>> Man.

>> No interest.

So at the end of the day, creating that kind of loan, right, means that people who historically would not have had the opportunity to buy a home now have an opportunity to buy a home.

>> Okay.

>> And with that program, we want to do a couple of things.

You've asked a lot about indigenous residents.

>> Yes.

>> It was a very big focus of ours to make sure that as costs in the city for housing increased, that long-term residents who had been here, who had endured the District as it went through its changes and its growth had an opportunity to stay.

Right?

So that was the primary focus, how do we retain long-term residents.

Then also, how do we address the missing middle, that gap of folks who work hard every day but who make too much but not enough?

And so as we looked at designing this program, we wanted to meet those folks where they were.

And so we took some money off of our balance sheet.

We created an equity fund to partner with these emerging developers to build this housing.

And so over the last couple of years, every year we produced about 10 to 15 of these units that sell anywhere between $450,000 to $550,000.

Right?

And so more recently, within the last couple of years, working in partnership with the District, the Department of Housing and Community Development, we sold one of those homes to a sergeant from the MPD, the Metropolitan Police Department.

She has two little girls.

She's a single mother.

Right?

And she told her story about being divorced.

She said she didn't have enough credit to buy a pencil.

Right?

She was ultimately able to repair her credit to buy this home and to live in the community that she served.

Right?

And that's the kind of model that we're trying to build over and over and over again.

>> That's a very good example.

As the executive director of the D.C. Housing and Finance Agency, what gives you your greatest hope for the future?

>> I think it is what I shared with you just a moment ago about the work that we're doing around the missing middle.

The other story that I will share with you is we built a development out in Marshall Heights, D.C.

It's across the river, and we sold a home to this young brother who had grown up in the community.

He was on the ANC.

His wife was a teacher in a local public school.

They had one toddler who was running around and was two years old, and they had another baby and a baby seat.

Right?

And so when we talked about helping people who were indigenous to D.C., who had lived through the District, who had been educated by the city, right, be able to stay in the city and to build a family for generations to come?

That excites me, right?

Because here are people who've been committed to this city when nobody else wanted to be here, who are now going to be able to stay here when everybody else wants to come here.

Right?

That's the work that we do and we do really well that I'm excited to scale up and do more of all across the city.

>> Well, that hope is not only for D.C. residents but for residents across the United States of America.

Thank you for your shining example of excellence, success, but more importantly, the compassion that you bring to this new job on behalf of the residents of D.C. Christopher Donald, thank you for joining "The Chavis Chronicles."

>> Thank you for having me.

Pleasure to meet you.

>> For more information about "The Chavis Chronicles" and our guests, please visit our website at TheChavisChronicles.com.

Also follow us on Facebook, X, formerly known as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.

Major funding for "The Chavis Chronicles" is provided by the following.

At Wells Fargo, diverse representation and perspectives, equity, and inclusion is critical to meeting the needs of our colleagues, customers, and communities.

We are focused on our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, both inside our company and in the communities where we live and work.

Together, we want to make a tangible difference in people's lives and in our communities.

Wells Fargo -- the bank of doing.

American Petroleum Institute.

Through API's Energy Excellence Program, our members are committed to accelerating safety, environmental, and sustainability progress throughout the natural-gas and oil industry around the world.

Learn more at api.org/apienergyexcellence.

Reynolds American, dedicated to building a better tomorrow for our employees and communities.

Reynolds stands against racism and discrimination in all forms and is committed to building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.

At AARP, we are committed to ensuring your money, health, and happiness live as long as you do.

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