Catholic schools are closing their doors all across America, leaving future generations with nowhere to turn for the high-quality academics and values-based education so many families are seeking. The number of students attending Catholic schools in the US fell from about 5.2 million in 1965 to around two million in 2008.
Pioneer Institute believes these schools are worth preserving. For over a decade, we have raised our voice in support of these excellent academic options, and tools such as tax credit scholarships that would enable more families to attend.
Pioneer has held public forums, published research on the benefits of Catholic education, on successful models such as Cristo Rey, and on policy changes that would stop the Massachusetts education department from depriving religious school students of special needs services and school nurses. The Institute has also convened key stakeholders, appeared in local and national press, filed amicus briefs, produced a feature a documentary film, and much more.
The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO program, has successfully educated thousands of students for 56 years, but several minor changes could make it even better, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.
Download METCO Funding: Understanding Massachusetts’ Voluntary School Desegregation Program
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara Candal and guest co-host Derrell Bradford talk with Prof. Paula Giddings, Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College, and author of A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Professor Giddings shares how her experience watching historic events like the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Rides shaped her career in academia and journalism. She discusses her definitive biography of Ida Wells, a late-19th-century Black female journalist and writer who is an unsung figure in American history. She reviews Wells’ underprivileged background – she was born into slavery in Mississippi during the Civil War – but also how she learned to read, attended a Historically Black College, and developed an appreciation for the liberal arts. She offers thoughts on how educators should use Wells’ many public writings, diaries, and firsthand accounts of the horrific crimes of slavery, segregation, the Klan, Jim Crow, and lynching in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help students recognize this nation’s history of racial violence. They also explore Wells’ work as a reformer during an era known for overt racism, as well as rapid industrialization, corrupt urban political machines, and suppression of women’s rights. The interview concludes with Professor Giddings reading from her Wells biography.
Story of the Week: Cara and Derrell hold a moment of silence for the victims of the Uvalde school shooting, and discuss what is (and is not) being done to address the hundreds of thousands of disaffected and distant kids across the country who are struggling with mental health issues, especially in the COVID era.
Guest:
Paula Giddings is Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College. Previously, Professor Giddings taught at Spelman College, where she was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar; Douglass College/Rutgers University, as the Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies; and Princeton and Duke universities. She is the author of In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America; and, most recently, the biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions – Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, which won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. She is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications. In 2017, Giddings was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The next episode will air on Weds., June 8th, with Chris Sinacola & David Ferreira, co-editors of Pioneer Institute’s new book, Hands-On Achievement: Massachusetts’s National Model Vocational-Technical Schools.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Welcome to the learning curve listeners this week. Gerard is out, but I have the pleasure of being with my friend, friend of the show, Mr. Derrell Bradford, Derrell. How you doing? Thank
[00:00:37] Derrell: you for having me. It’s always, it’s a delightful to stand in for Gerard when he’s on one of his global jaunts.
[00:00:44] Yeah,
[00:00:46] Cara: Jaunting globally. Well, we appreciate you being here. So Derrell, you and I have decided today. I know I personally, wasn’t ready when we recorded last week show, but we’ve decided that instead of our usual format, going to go ahead and talk [00:01:00] about some pretty heavy topics we’ve got a guest, who’s going to talk about some pretty heavy topic and you and I have been, we’ve had people.
[00:01:08] The children, the community of Uvalde, Texas top of mind. and let’s start first by observing a moment of silence for those lost and those affected. And then we can wrap up.
[00:01:35] And that moment, probably feels really long. It felt long to me, Derrell, can only imagine what the moments have felt like For the families who have lost so much in these past couple of weeks. And just want to start off by saying think for a lot of us who are parents, probably the second or third things that comes to mind after something like this happens, which had happened.
[00:01:57] So. Far too often in this country,[00:02:00] is, should I tell my kids and how will my kids handle this and will I make my kids feel more unsafe than they already do? And so I want to share that a couple of days after it happened, I was in the car with my 12 year old daughter and I asked her. we haven’t even been listening to the radio in the car for this reason.
[00:02:20] And I asked her if she knew what had happened, knowing that there, she was going to hear something at school, et cetera. And you know, her response was both so mature and so frightening to me because she just looked right at me and she said, you know, mom, kids of my generation just understand that this is the country we live in.
[00:02:40] And so. I hate it and I am frightened by it and it enrages me, but I also just get that this is what we have to deal with.
[00:02:55] Derrell: Yeah. I can only imagine what it’s like to have to be a [00:03:00] parent. And, I think this through, you know, I was talking to a, colleague of mine who, was getting on a plane. He goes to a place and she was saying, my five-year-old is sort of noticing that all the hubs are a little bit tighter and a little bit longer.
[00:03:15] And my five-year-old no something is wrong. And obviously there’s something incredibly ephemeral, which many parents outside of the horrific events of last week deal with all the time, they send the kids to school and they don’t know whether or not they’re going to come home. And this is perhaps more widespread, a fear and like awfulness that American families deal with, but I really wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
[00:03:43] and it is truly, truly terrible. I know like two things, if I can throw two things out there, and one of them is going to sound cynical. , it’s not meant to be or clinical. It’s not, it’s not meant to be that either. You know, as a person who’s sort of [00:04:00] a creature of advocacy and policy change, you keep looking at these things and wondering why nothing happens.
[00:04:09] I can remember after the mass shooting in Parkland, the level of unrest, outrage, demonstration seemed like overwhelming and ubiquitous and. What like bump stocks got banned? I think books last got, bad, but, in the end it was just like, about all of that? Didn’t translate into more substantial policy change and that’s the kind of thing we sort of analyze all the time.
[00:04:39] It’s really important. and I not, no have a, have an answer for it, but I know somebody needs to have an answer for it. And then the second thing is just like, I forgot. Certainly a behavior that we wouldn’t sort of categorize as normal of all kinds has been on the rise. [00:05:00] And seemingly started to peak in, 2020, when we, as a nation made sort of a policy change that we.
[00:05:08] Weren’t going to be around one another for two years in the interest of everyone else’s safety. And full disclosure, I always say this, like I followed all the rules and spent two years in my house. The moment that people were talking about locking down schools, I was at the front of the line saying we should do it, but all of these policies have trade-offs and I fear that we have unleashed something.
[00:05:31] Atavistic and angry in the American psyche that is presenting itself in ways that nobody really wants to acknowledge fully or act on in a fashion commensurate with the expansive nature of it all. And the adults in, you know, um, in New York, like. What’s going on in the subways. This is pretty, you know, for instance is outrageous.
[00:05:55] , it’s almost like a bad movie. out of control it is. And[00:06:00] what has happened to what must be like thousands, if not more of disaffected high school kids who had their schooling and lives disrupted over the same period. was a policy choice and the trade-off and we got to live with that and an incredibly serious way for them and for us and for everybody.
[00:06:22] And I just want somebody to be an adult about that and acknowledge it and start talking about it in a genuine and meaningful way.
[00:06:28] Cara: thank you for that. I think, to your second point first about the unforeseen impacts of the pandemic. I mean, I remember listening to. Podcast with our now surgeon general actually pre pandemic when he was warning folks that loneliness is an epidemic in this country, right?
[00:06:46] The people are profoundly loneliness country. And I think that that plays a lot into what you’re saying and that, the pandemic. Exacerbated that, and, those of us who were locked down, you know, if you’re locked down alone, [00:07:00] you, might be lonely. but you might also be safe. You might also have the resources to keep yourself healthy and fed.
[00:07:07] and a lot of people in this country, many of them children were locked down in environments that absolutely weren’t safe for them. And weren’t healthy for them or the whomever they were in the home with. But it also, I think, reveals these fractures. Obviously the huge fractures in our society, which go much more to your first point, which I’m still, I think I said earlier, gone from like just sadness to a little bit of depression to just being so pissed off.
[00:07:36] But I feel like it’s, concerning because I go through that cycle every time and then life moves on and it probably shouldn’t. , but to get back to the idea of that, the kids are not all right here. It’s right. Our schools from good schools and many of them of all types are good schools. Provide centers of community, provide resources for [00:08:00] kids, socio-emotional mental health, whatever that is, to some extent, probably not enough.
[00:08:06] but that not only did the pandemic heightened, whatever. Dystopian feelings that kids are experiencing, blame it on whatever you want. Blame it on social media, blame it on set, blame it on 1,000,001 things, right. It probably doesn’t even matter at this point. It’s that too many of the adults. Who work with these kids in the system?
[00:08:25] don’t have I hate to talk about the resource question. I’m not usually wanting to say, oh, resources are gonna fix the problem, but just aren’t I can’t imagine being, for example, a school counselor, or even a teacher and being even emotionally. mean, I can barely deal with the emotional stuff with my own family, half the time, let alone understanding what these kids are going through, have been through and how they’re going to continue to deal with that and take it out on one another.
[00:08:51] And we have in this country for a very long time, we fight right about the language of how to support kids when she would call it SEL [00:09:00] no Canada like that, which we call at the end of the day. If we can’t understand. That people are not okay. And kids can’t learn. If they don’t feel safe, kids can’t learn.
[00:09:10] And that goes to bullying or mass shootings and they can’t, they can’t learn, they can’t be present. So I feel, yeah. And I am wondering though, as you know, I’m, more of a policy creature and less of an advocate security than you are. Is, the larger conversation, the very important conversation around the change that needs to happen, changes that have happened in places like Australia and Scotland after similar things have happened once not 27 times in one year.
[00:09:39] but then there’s also this conversation that I think you’re pushing at around. What do we do to support women? Okay.
[00:09:48] Derrell: Yeah, I was talking to my boss about this and it’s like, we’re education policy, experts for the most part, not, gun policy experts and I’ve been unwilling to step out of that lane because I, [00:10:00] take what I do seriously and I don’t, want to be sort of too.
[00:10:04] flick about what you prescribe from an area in which you don’t have a ton of expertise, but couple of things actually come to the surface and they are not merely sort of the glib take that kids are resilient that you found that, Valerie Strauss put famously in the Washington post.
[00:10:27] When talking about, school closings year ago, the first thing is that I can’t remember who said this, but it’s like very specifically the issue of, school shootings. , there’s a lot that happens to a child before they get to the school that we could intervene on. And I think it’s sort of important to think of.
[00:10:47] Series of opportunities that we have to intervene as something longer and more nuanced than just being there at the school house door or hardening that door. , and that’s the first thing. The second thing is [00:11:00] actually a little bit counterintuitive the move right now. I think this asylum move, which in many might be, you could look at it as practical, but you can also look at it as political to consolidate all of the.
[00:11:15] things needed to intervene for a kid who is stressed, unwell, , whatever you want to call it, like under the mental health umbrella, the push to consolidate all that in school to me is wildly mistaken, , and hugely detrimental. and here are my reasons for asserting it. One is that, you could say, oh, the last, like two years there.
[00:11:40] Like three and a half million teachers in America where there’s like 8 million of them. there’s 8 million of them. If you count all of the churches, retirees, mentors, and mentees coaches, docents, and every other person who stepped in to the lurch to help kids do [00:12:00] something with their learning. When the ritual of K-12 was disrupted, , as it was because of COVID and those people are a part of the.
[00:12:09] And they need, to be, we need to lean on that, right? The idea that we should. Recreate a paradigm that basically excluded all of them, is absolutely the wrong way. And if that means like, fun families, you know, or like give everybody a, mental health voucher or like a cop sports are free for the next two years or whatever it is.
[00:12:29] Like all of those things that help people build connections and help them find who they are and like mediating institutions. So they are less lonely. so more people can see them and support. we absolutely have to invest in that. That’s the one thing, the second thing. And I’m sort of a little tongue in cheek, but not really is it.
[00:12:47] We just have to realize what schools are good at and what they aren’t. And the primary job that we’ve been asking American schools to do. And some of them do it really well over the last, [00:13:00] like, I don’t know. My lifetime has been to turn out literate, numerate kids. Who could go on and be rational participants in our democracy.
[00:13:10] So, you know, so we’re free from tyranny, right? And so people can live out our ideals. And in 20 19 1 in five black fourth graders in this country, tested at, or above proficient on that. And that was before the unrest, the crisis, the friction of the last two years, the idea that now we want schools to also be centers of all of this other expertise is ludicrous.
[00:13:40] When you think about the fact that the core job we need done for many American kids has not been done well. I would just throw those two approaches out there as any approach for. what I think is like right now, I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Like, I think to your point, you said it, the [00:14:00] kids are not all right.
[00:14:01] That is expressing itself in lots of different ways. Like you can look the New York times and high school principals are saying, freshmen showing up back in like sixth graders. I was talking to mark, my boss and he was, reading a thing was counselor.
[00:14:14] So like kids are late or absent, 88 to a hundred times over the last year. Right. And nobody seems, nobody seems to want to do anything about it. It’s just all outrageous. And it’s a serious problem with. imagine our way out of it. It’s going to take serious people who want to get along and bring people together and do what’s right for the.
[00:14:35] Yeah, and
[00:14:36] Cara: I would, agree. And I would add to that, that I think that, the kids are not all right. And they’re being led to slip through the cracks by not showing up to school or always being later because so many the adults aren’t all right. Either. Right. Just people feeling like I can’t, there’s only so much I can do.
[00:14:53] There’s only so much I can give. I know, personally, I just had a conversation with a friend yesterday. I have [00:15:00] stopped. Like I’ve always prided myself on being a person who read the news and listen to the news and I do all the right things. Right. I can’t do it anymore because, you know, I don’t find a moment of joy.
[00:15:08] There’s still good stuff in this world. Right. But it’s a scary, depressing place. If you spend your time listening to that and. I would agree with you too. I think, I remember as far back, as long ago in grad school, having this debate over can schools be everything to everyone, and I agree with you.
[00:15:23] They cannot, agree with you that if we can barely do the core function of making sure that all kids can read, then we’re in a bad place, but we’ve also been so not innovative, right? For the most part. How do you like there’s this great school here in the Boston area called Codman academy. it’s cold located in a health center that is like everything to that community, that health center.
[00:15:49] If you ask anybody in Codman square, like what defines COVID square, I guarantee you that many people are gonna tell you about the health center. And they’re going to say, and every family that walks through that door, they might not want. [00:16:00] They might not think need it. They get assigned somebody who’s there to be a resource to the family.
[00:16:06] Whether it’s, you need somebody to talk to, you need to make sure that your blood pressure’s in check, like all of the things. And therefore they’re there. Not just for the kids. They’re there for the parents. They’re there for the siblings, Thinking through to your point, how you leverage civil society in the ways that we used to at some point, right?
[00:16:27] We weren’t bowling alone, is really important. And I think our kids and our families are absolutely feeling that. And one of the big concerns I have is when you talk about, yeah, I would be for how do you get resources into the hands of people that need them, but, people have mean. there observant might be able to look at their kids in purchase the therapist.
[00:16:48] That’s $500 a session and not covered by insurance and all of these things. So we know who’s getting left out of the equation. We know who doesn’t have the access that they need. And it’s just quite frankly, [00:17:00] it’s not a priority in this country. And I think part of my anger stems from the fact that we can’t seem to, gosh, darn figure out how to make.
[00:17:10] A priority, even though when I think so many of us are feeling the same thing and walking around with a bright smile on our face and doing the good work and doing our jobs in the inside, sometimes we’re falling apart.
[00:17:21] Derrell: Yeah. agree. And I, just want to want to say again, it’s like, while it is always, a joy to do the show with you, I’m glad we had a chance to.
[00:17:33] I acknowledged the tragedy of these 19 young people and their families and to educators that lost their lives because of it.
[00:17:41] Cara: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I agree. And maybe who knows you and I work in very similar circles, maybe this will become more of a priority for the kind of work that we all do together.
[00:17:53] And, new era of, not just education reform, but just supporting families and students. So. [00:18:00] Yeah, I would like that too. Let’s see. New project coming up right after this derail. We’re going to be speaking with professor Paula Giddings and she is the Elizabeth a Woodson professor, emerita of Africana studies at Smith college and the author of Ida, a sword among lions, Ida B Wells in the campaign against lynching.
[00:18:21] So learning curve listeners, please come back to us, right.
[00:18:52] Learning curve listeners, please help me welcome Paula Giddings. She is the Elizabeth a Woodson 1922 professor emerita of [00:19:00] Africana studies at Smith college. Previously, professor Giddings taught at Spelman college where she was a United Negro fund, distinguished scholar Douglas college Rutgers university as the Lori chair in women’s.
[00:19:12] And Princeton and duke universities. She is the author of in search of sisterhood, Delta, Sigma, theta, and the challenge of the black sorority movement when and where I enter the impact of black women on race and sex in America. And most recently the biography of anti-lynching activists, AWS. Ida a sword among lions, Ida B Wells and the campaign against lynching, which won the Los Angeles times book prize for biography and was a finalist for the national book critics circle award.
[00:19:41] She’s a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington post, the New York times, the Philadelphia Inquirer Juna freak and Paris and the nation and Sage, a scholarly journal on black women among other publications.
[00:19:59] In [00:20:00] 2017 Giddings was elected to the American academy of arts and sciences. Professor Paula getting thank you so much for being with us today. And I am going to invite my friend Darell to take it from here.
[00:20:12] Paula: Thank you. Yeah.
[00:20:13] Derrell: Thank you for being with us professor Giddings, but because I am the king of understatement, I’ll start with the.
[00:20:20] You have an impressive career in academia and journalism,
[00:20:27] Paula: who was that woman you were talking about
[00:20:34] Derrell: previously? You said that, uh, I think this is very important. Given the moment you said you think America runs on rage and courage, would you, , share with our listeners some of your own story and how like historic events, like the civil rights movement and freedom rides shaped your life and thinking about the country?
[00:20:53] Paula: Indeed. Well, thank you for having me looking forward to this, talking to you and well, I’m [00:21:00] a child of this civil rights movement. I grew up in the period of the civil rights movement and, Incidents and experiences that are so , and so defining may sort of stay with you for most of your life.
[00:21:14] And this was true of the freedom rides that, for me, that took place in 1962. I was 15 years old at the time when I saw this. And when I saw the freedom rides on television, And as those of you who may not remember, or who don’t know very much about the freedom rides these were a ride, this was the idea of, civil rights workers to take buses from the north and go south, to, integrate waiting rooms, et cetera, in the.
[00:21:47] and, the, , ride started off, they were very dramatic and there was some success, but there was some of the rides. And I remember when one of the buses hit Anniston, Alabama. other places [00:22:00] there was such violence. Buses were stopped.
[00:22:03] People were taken off the buses, some of the buses were bombed. People were beaten. it was the first time I saw such rage. That’s the idea of that rage came from. but, instead of being the. Especially the young people who are, involved in the rides said they just would not stop.
[00:22:24] They were going to continue to ride. They were not going to be defeated. And that was the courage that I saw. And then I started thinking about it as a teenager. I mean, what is this thing called race that brings out both that rage and that courage. And I think that’s really been my defining mission, for my writing, my professional life in particular, I’ve always searching for that answer.
[00:22:49] Derrell: that’s wonderfully said and probably pretty good segue to , my next question. your biography. I’ve spent some time learning about Ida B Wells down, but,[00:23:00] you were Ida B Wells, sword among lions, , Ida B Wells in the campaign against lynching, is your definitive volume on the often underappreciated, wildly unsung figure of IDB Wells in American.
[00:23:15] Could you give us brief overview of her life and why she’s so vitally important as just like a person, as a figure for school children and for the general public to just know significantly more about than they do.
[00:23:29] Paula: Yes. It’s very dangerous to ask biographers flush.
[00:23:35] I will do my best to be weld. What drew me to her. as a figure was her current. If you want to talk about courage in the face of rage, because she started the first anti-lynching campaign, in the country in 1892 from the south, from Memphis, Tennessee. And she had such courage, not just physical courage, dural, [00:24:00] but also a kind of social courage in which he had a conviction about stopping lynching and understanding the real reasons for.
[00:24:10] And she followed that conviction, even though, it went against, , so many of the mores and rules of the society that time, you know, we’re talking about Victorian period when no one talked about certain kinds of things when women, didn’t write about politics or, speak out loud about things.
[00:24:29] or certainly he didn’t, as she. Became an investigative journalist traveling alone often in the south investigating lynchings. This is in the 1890s century. I was
[00:24:42] Derrell: stunned by this, not just the, to your point about the ability to sort of bring this career as an, investigative journalist into existence.
[00:24:51] But the fact that she did this sort of alone in this, in the face of sort of all of this. the threat of physical violence, enormous [00:25:00] physical violence, right. And obviously being black woman in the south, trying to report on this, obviously racial violence is right there too. It was really astounding.
[00:25:12] Paula: Yes, indeed. I think it’s wonderful for students to have models of, people who do this guy, who had that kind of courage and that courage of conviction. Which was so important, quick overview, she was born into, I like to say on the cusp of slavery in she grows up in the reconstruction period, which is a great period of course, hope and change to borrow a phrase.
[00:25:44] she, comes of age. Though in the post reconstruction period, which has been characterized by numbers of historians as, the Nader in our history because of the disenfranchisement of African-Americans of the [00:26:00] increase in violence. and certainly is what stands out is the increase of lynching, of black, men.
[00:26:09] The rationale for this lynching, because remember you had to have a rationale because this is extra judicial fraud. This is outside of the law. So there had to be a rationale that justified such an act. And that thing was the, accusation that black men in particular, were raping white, this had sort of broken out, in this period of time.
[00:26:35] And unfortunately it was affirmed by much else that was going on in this society, including the sciences. This is a period of the emergence of the social science. And even those, , scholars in the Ivy league schools, talked about the fact that blacks were regressing, because there were no longer under the tutelage of slavery and that they’d [00:27:00] become vicious and more and more primitive, and therefore lascivious, and criminally prone.
[00:27:06] so this was the justification and lynchings became, they became even not only more numerous in the late 19th century, but also more vicious in 1892. And Wells is 30 years old, a friend of hers in Memphis, Tennessee, by the name of Thomas Moss is. And to shorthand it. The only crime Thomas Moss, ever committed was to, , out-compete a white, , proprietor Thomas Moss was a co-owner of a grocery store, , that competed with that number or the white.
[00:27:41] Incidents that happened. Right. And he is lynched because of that. And well, begins to understand, that lynching doesn’t have anything to do really with rape, but it really an effort to keep blacks down in a period, , where there’s [00:28:00] industrialization, where there’s a great deal of economic competition.
[00:28:02] and were blacks were doing so well, they really were emerging in these communities, and beginning to thrive. And so when she understands that lynching is really at the heart of big, because it is mentioning, is within the context of all these terrible stereotypes around black people that she decides that lynching is the thing that, when she unpacks it, it makes people understand what’s really going on.
[00:28:30] she will helped deliberate sort of ideas around black people in there for, you know, facilitate equality later. But very, very quickly. She is exiled from Memphis for anti-lynching editorials. her office is destroyed. , she goes to New York for awhile and finally settles and marries and continues her reforms, in Chicago.
[00:28:53] And we can, if you want to ask him about that, I can tell you more about that. She said it just the epitome of [00:29:00] a great reformer around women’s suffrage, , around, creating a settlement house. for blacks and they’re in Chicago, she’s a co-founder of the NAACP.
[00:29:10] Derrell: Wow. yeah, my, research, her economic insights on lynching were also incredibly powerful.
[00:29:17] absolutely. last question from me. so Ida B Wells was born the, in the slavery, as you sorta noted earlier, to taught herself, to read, attended a historically black college, and was also widely read like a Shakespeare Dickens, you know, Bronte. would you talk about how this kind of.
[00:29:38] Liberal arts learning help define her life and her writings and her ideals, as well as like what we can draw from who she became from how she, became
[00:29:50] Paula: educated. Yes. she is a great example of the power of reading. , she read everything that she could get her hands on, , and lots of women’s literature [00:30:00] as you’ve just, , , noted.
[00:30:01] And when you think about what she was reading, , many of those carrots there’s, Alcott and Bronte, number of them were young girls. Who just had a lot of challenges in their lives and had some tragedies in their lives they overcame it. A number of them are orphans. Like she either was orphaned at the age of 16 because of the yellow fever epidemic.
[00:30:26] some of these girls, these characters were, offered and as well, but they were impounded. was particularly struck, with a phrase from middle Jo in little women when little Joe is determined to leave the family and go to the city, become a great writer and write things that people will always remember help to change the world.
[00:30:49] That was her aspiration. and in terms of even Shakespeare, either, love the theater and she even, played lady Macbeth once,[00:31:00] and I think from, so when I saw the comments that she should probably, you know, kept her day job. but if you think about lady Macbeth, which asks the gods on sex me so I can do what I have to do.
[00:31:15] you can see where this could be also affirmation and inspiration, for her. So she was also a lonely young woman, and she had great joy in the world that literature.
[00:31:31] And of learning also help you write your great storytellers and she became one as well.
[00:31:37] Cara: Hello professor getting, thank you so much for being with us today. have to say I’m staring. I always have a copy of little women.
[00:31:46] Paula: Love the dead end,
[00:31:48] Cara: always at the coffee table here at my office because it’s one of the things.
[00:31:52] Paula: I could go back to get it, to get it
[00:31:53] Cara: again. Now, compelled to follow up on a question, I think is related to one that [00:32:00] Derrell asked. And I want to preface this by saying that, I guess about three years ago, pre pandemic, I had the great fortune in the organization that I work for, took every single employee on a retreat, that legacy museum and.
[00:32:13] of the many, many ways in which that plays left an impression on me. One of the biggest was that, I’m a child of the 1980s. I thought I went to pretty good schools and oil boy being there, making me realize I learned nothing about the history of this country. it was a rude awakening, , for me in many, many levels about my.
[00:32:30] school education and myself education. and so the question I want to put to you is when we think about folks like Ida B Wells and her works, including not only her public writings, but her diaries and her , experiences witnessing the events That shaped our history in such horrific ways.
[00:32:50] how can reading these things help today’s students understand the history of race in lynching in America?
[00:32:58] Paula: I know Wells [00:33:00] understood. you have to not just write history, but write a narrative, a story about what was really going on. And that was one of the power she had as a, journalist.
[00:33:11] one of the things , she made sure to do because she also consider herself. she was very upset for example, that, a number of victims mentioned, you know, that they were, that their names were never known or that it, they don’t want to sound too gruesome, but often families were afraid to even , retrieve the bodies because they.
[00:33:33] penalized punished. and so she always made sure when she did her investigative reporting to talk about who those people were and to name names, , and. to give them a place, in history and I think that’s a lesson will the humanity of what she was doing, not just an ideological or a political, mission, which of course it was those two, but a [00:34:00] humane mission, as well.
[00:34:02] I’ll tell you a very quick story. I was on a panel, it was a panel on the Ida B Wells with a number of others who had worked on her. And, I was on the day is, and a woman comes up to me before the panel starts and takes my hand and she said, we learned what happened to my great grandfather by reading your book.
[00:34:24] I had quoted Ida Wells writing about, , some men who had been lynched outside of Memphis, Tennessee. And this woman’s great-grandfather who was one of those. She said he had disappeared. No one knew what happened to. So, right. Flabbergasted, right. but very, very moved. And I said, well, that’s why I’m doing this right.
[00:34:48] I mean, that’s very important. her diary is very interesting. and what I got alphabet was, well, first of all, You read the diary? [00:35:00] it is, as far as we know, the only kind of eyewitness to, the community of a place like Memphis, the Memphis, in the 1880s and in this.
[00:35:12] And you, read about all the, daily life than what people were doing, and even what people were wearing, either Wells with the clothes horse who spent too much money for clothes, which I loved. I mean, she’s very, I love this. and in other ways as well, uh, so, you get that sense, but you know, the greatest gifts that diary was for me.
[00:35:34] Was that because of her experiences of being orphaned and sort of being taken advantage of in the community, which is a whole nother story. , she was a very angry person, but she was also self-reflective and you see all this in the diary and she understood that if she didn’t get a hold of her anger, that it would destroy.
[00:35:57] And so you can see in this diary, her [00:36:00] efforts to reform herself first, and it’s excruciating, but she does it. there are psychological profiles, which showed that lots of leaders. Or really people who are because leaders, when you think about by definition, you know, are assertive and aggressive.
[00:36:18] And, and at the root of aggression is anger. but the best leaders are those who are able to transform the energy, that negative energy into positive energy. And in her case into reform, you can actually trace this in the diet. a
[00:36:35] Cara: fascinating observation. I have to say we’ve previously had a guest on this show , who made the point that, some of the most, whether they’re dynamic or popular or greatest, depending on how you find that leaders have been actors.
[00:36:51] but this notion of how do you transform that? I’ll also take with me from what you said, this idea that she had this compulsion to help name victims, [00:37:00] which I personally took away from my trip to the legacy museum, but I think is very relevant to some of the challenges Derrelle and I were discussing at the top of this hour, before we brought you on about, challenges we’re facing in this country, I would love to ask you one last question and you, began to talk about this and we put a little bit of a pin in it and I’d like to come back.
[00:37:18] So can you talk more about Wells’s work as a progressive reformer, a black, progressive reformer in thinker during this era? her gender alone. Right. But an era of overt racism and then you couple with that industrialization and corrupt urban political machines. Right. So tell us a little bit more about that and what, lessons would you have a straw?
[00:37:43] Paula: a great example. Let me explain it through an example. either Wells, Actually founded the first black women’s suffrage organization in Chicago. in 19 12, 19. And the [00:38:00] reasons why she did of course, we know that there was, lots of momentum towards suffrage and towards the 19th amendment at that period.
[00:38:09] But there was also a passage of legislation, in Illinois where women could vote in municipal elections. as a result of the progressive party winning a number of offices in Illinois. So she was preparing, black women to mobilize for this. And once that legislation was passed, and this is exactly what she did was to mobilize black women.
[00:38:33] Why? Yes, for the boat, but not just for the boat sake. There was, the black committee. and particularly the second ward, which is where all blacks coming from, the migration south were shoveled, right. was actually run by, , the, Chicago political machine. That was correct. paid people off so they could maintain their power, but at the same time, [00:39:00] the second ward and that area was deteriorating because no one was really paying attention, to it.
[00:39:05] And the quality of life of blacks was, declining. So her idea was because the men couldn’t be trusted so much. that’s mobilized. And let’s mobilize behind an independent candidate.
[00:39:20] So she challenges , the, she is so, so, and she was very, very, , successful, as a result, oh, also let me not forget that there was no black representation, even with a great, with a majority black population in that, area. So it because of her and solve a long story to unwind. because of her and because of what women are able to do, the machine had to at least give.
[00:39:51] had the, have emerged a black candidate to be a, an alderman, which is like a city Councilman and well, and her [00:40:00] people got behind him, ask her to priest who wins the election and becomes the first black older man, in Chicago. And later he will become the first black, to be in the house of representatives since reconstruct.
[00:40:14] what she did was she developed more than just one person. She developed a constituency, for progressive, reform. And ever since after her mobilization, people always had to come to the women, to make sure to get their support. And they made the difference in a number of elections.
[00:40:33] Derrell: I’m listening to all this, and I’m just saying. What have I done with my life?
[00:40:39] Paula: I’m listening to this
[00:40:40] Cara: and I’m saying, because the pen can’t be trusted, let’s mobilize the
[00:40:44] Derrell: women met. There are many lessons that many lessons,
[00:40:54] Cara: we’ve been talking so much about the writings of Ida B Wells, but we would love to hear some of your own. So,[00:41:00] would you read us a passage from your.
[00:41:02] Paula: will, this is from a chapter called the truth about lynching. What I, the Wells wrote after being exiled from Memphis, she was invited to write for an important black newspaper in New York when New York age, the column was called.
[00:41:17] The truth about lynching, which really becomes the first study of lynching. so I, tried to characterize the impact and the meaning of that work. And as it related to her, And this is also back to particularly social courage as well, physical courage in order for Wells to follow the logic of mentioning and to its ultimate conclusion, she herself had, had to take a deliberate flight from the radical innocence that was at the heart of Victorian thought.
[00:41:53] Is with no pleasure. I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. She told her readers either [00:42:00] replaced the language of gentility with reality and dispense with the quote false delicacy of the quote unspeakable crime, which was lynching. She was one of the few women reformers who actually used the word rape and had learned to do so without a problem.
[00:42:20] Well, it’s understood the radical implications of your message and was prepared to endure the consequences. Even if, as she said, quote, the heavens might fall, but she had made up her mind that her campaign, wherever it took her, was her calling and that she would see it.
[00:42:39] I just crusade to tell the truth about lynching gave her the means to reorder the world and her and the racist place within it. Once the famed yourself. Now she could expose that lies the Sully, the races may. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned [00:43:00] against, than sending wrote Wells who had found the vehicle of her destiny.
[00:43:05] And it seems to have fallen on the, to do so and quote. It’s
[00:43:11] Cara: amazing. Seems to have fallen on me. And if, even if the heavens may fall is quite a mantle to bear
[00:43:17] Paula: and the heavens didn’t fall. Let me tell you, she was like, know what they talk about? I guess it’s sort of sexist, but just talking about the little old lady driving down the middle of the street and everybody’s everything crashes around the.
[00:43:35] Cara: Amazing. Well, professor Paula Giddings. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been truly enlightening.
[00:43:42] Paula: Well, thank you. Thank you for your wonderful questions as well. please
[00:43:46] Cara: take care. I know our listeners will enjoy
[00:43:50] Paula: thank you so much.
[00:43:51] Cara: [00:44:00] First of all, thank you to Derrell for being with us today and for the great conversation, sad conversation, frustrating conversation, but I think while worth having. And, we always appreciate you coming on the show and being such a good friend of the show next week, we’re going to be speaking with Chris Sinacola and David Ferreira, and they co-editors of Pioneer’s new book.
[00:44:51] Hands-on achievement. Massachusetts is national model of vocational technical schools. Darell, anything you want to share before we sign off?
[00:44:59] Derrell: [00:45:00] No. I,, can think of lots of places I’d like to be, virtually, but none of them better than being with you and the pioneer Institute and learning curve podcasts to thank you.
[00:45:11]: We
[00:45:11] Cara: love it. I’ve got a big smile on my face right now. I needed that. Thank you. All right. We’ll talk soon. All right.
[00:45:16] Derrell: Cool.
Recent Episodes
Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with real estate expert and broker/owner Pauline Donnelly about the disruption and trends created by the Covid-19 pandemic and steps buyers and renters can take to become more informed, prudent, and competitive in the frenzied market of Greater Boston and Martha’s Vineyard.
Guest:
Pauline Donnelly is real estate expert and broker/owner of Donnelly + Co, a residential real estate firm with offices in Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Pauline has more than 20 years of experience that includes sales, leadership and management positions, key responsibilities for sales and business growth, and a record of exemplary client service. Pauline has a Bachelor’s degree in Language and Linguistics from the University of York in England, and a Master’s degree in Education from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She is a licensed real estate broker in the state of Massachusetts and a member of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. Pauline is also a Certified Professional Coach through the ICF accredited coach certification program iPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching).
WATCH:
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. For more than two years, the COVID pandemic profoundly disrupted every aspect of our lives. Now the least of which was where we wanted to live, asked to stay at home for both work and recreation. Americans naturally became restless and began looking for more space, either in less urban settings or by buying or renting second homes. Unfortunately, this shift in demand for space could not be met with a supply for such homes leading to substantial upward trends in home prices in nearly every market in the country, in Massachusetts, where the cost of homes had already been among the highest in the nation buyers eager to enter or upgrade have seen double digit annual home price appreciation all as the backdrop of rising interest rates, looms in the background. What are those who want to find a home in the base date supposed to do as home prices and rents are slipping beyond their reach?
Joe Selvaggi:
What are the strategies that can offer buyers a better chance at finding a suitable home in a highly competitive market? And what pitfalls should those prospective buyers avoid? When shopping in this frenzied setting? My guest today is Pauline Donnelley real estate expert and broker owner of Donnelley company, a residential real estate firm with offices in Boston and Martha’s vineyard Pauline’s experience of 20 years in Boston. Real estate has seen many market cycles and the 2008 financial crisis, but little prepared her for the shock of the pandemic. Pauline will share with us her experience leading a firm of 30 agents through a pandemic, how the market changed and what she sees as the leading real estate trends. Moving forward, Paul will discuss useful strategies for becoming a more competitive buyer, including the importance of building a team of experts that understands clients’ unique needs to navigate the transaction Hubwonk listeners should also know that Pauline is also my wife, as well as an invaluable supporter of my work as host of Hubwonk. When I return, I’ll be joined by real estate expert and broker owner Pauline Donnelley. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now pleased to be joined by real estate broker owner and market expert, Pauline Donnelley. Welcome to Hubwonk, Pauline.
Pauline Donnelly:
Thank you, Joe. I’m happy to be here.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. Well before we dive into our topic on the state of regional real estate, I’d like to have you share with our listeners, I’ve introduced you as an expert but I’d love to hear how you became an expert, your trajectory from your first time in real estate to where you are today.
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. so I had personally been involved in many real estate real estate transactions of my own, and always was fascinated by the process and enjoyed the process and decided I took a leap of faith and made a career change and became a real estate agent when I was in my early thirties and just immediately talked to it. I, I was very quickly, very successful. I became a full-time real estate agent. I focused on the beacon hill market in the Boston marketplace and very quickly became the top producing agent in that marketplace. And over the years it sold many, many properties throughout the city of Boston, ultimately was given the opportunity to become a sales manager, which was a fantastic experience for me. Really got to see the real estate industry from the other side of the table. So I learned a great deal about how real estate offices and real estate firms operate.
Pauline Donnelly:
And then I it’s a long story, really how I became a real estate coach, but let me just say it was because I noticed there was a real void in the real estate industry with respect to the support that was given to real estate agents. And I became a certified business coach and started working exclusively. I had for three years, I had my own real estate coaching business and worked exclusively with real estate professionals across the gamut, really. First newly licensed real estate agents. Broker owners like myself now, sales managers, experienced agents, came to me, looking for support and guidance about how to grow their businesses or how to manage their businesses. I did that for three years and then really felt that I was missing out on the, a huge component about the real estate process. I would coach my clients and we would work intensely on a, on a listing presentation and a meeting with a client, and then they would disappear from my coaching office.
Pauline Donnelly:
And I wouldn’t hear from them until they came back to tell me the results of their presentation. And I started to feel like I wanted more and ultimately decided to start my own firm, which I did in 2017. So were in our sixth year decided to open my own firm so that I could be more comprehensively assisting real estate professionals in the development of their business. I am I’m a former teacher. I have a master’s in education and I don’t sell real estate myself anymore. I don’t work directly with buyers and sellers anymore. I am purely in a support role for my agents and for our clients and I’m managing the business. I had two offices and I just found the managing my own real estate firm offered me all the things that I loved about real estate. I’m very much involved in our transactions. And I’m also in that role of teaching and guiding and mentoring, coaching my agents. I love it.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. Okay. So now your role as a broker owner so you’re not competing with your agents as a, as a fellow agent, but you’re rather the coach, the mentor, and you, you guide them through, I guess, what are the most challenging aspects of real estate transactions? Which is great because I that’s what I wanna talk about the challenges of real estate, particularly in this market. So let’s start with some recent history very recent early 20, 20 you’re chugging along, you’ve got two offices. I don’t know how many agents you may have had then but you’re doing well. It’s early 20, 20, and suddenly COVID hit, let’s just give our listeners a little sense of what your immediate reactions were because you know, we all lived through it, but you were in the real estate business at that time. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> what, what was your first, your fear of what would happen and then share with us what ultimately did happen when COVID hit?
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. I’ll be completely honest when the lockdown first happened, I would say the number one motion I was feeling was panic. Obviously none of us had lived through a pandemic before, and none of us had any predictions and speculations about what was going to happen in the early days of the lockdown. I would say the first two weeks of the lockdown, I spent eight hours a day on the phone talking to my agents, talking to attorneys, talking to our clients who were looking to meet for the answers. And it was a tough time because I did not have the answers. But let’s just say, I mean, fast forward, it didn’t take very long for us to realize that real estate actually was going to continue to be very healthy and very robust during the pandemic. It was hard to, to explain why when we were being told to stay home, our clients wanted to change their homes.
Pauline Donnelly:
And despite the risks associated with buying and selling properties, our clients wanted to do it. And I think changing their home, changing their living situation was giving our clients some level of control in a situation where there was no control in any other area. So I would say, you know, fortunately mine was one of the industries that fed extremely well. I won’t say it wasn’t without its challenges. There was a lot of ups and downs. We have to, we had to navigate, there were lots of things that changed in the way that we did business, but those of us in real estate are used to dynamic marketplaces. Our, our industry is ever changing. This was obviously one area pandemic that we had not had any previous experience with and didn’t know how that was going to change our industry.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now you’ve got two offices I think nearly 30 agents. And you’ve got your sort of finger on the pulse of both urban Boston, where you, where you started your business, but also you have agents who work in the suburbs. And of course even further out, we’re talking about Martha’s vineyard. Those are primarily second homes. Was there a trend the obvious I’m gonna state when the lockdowns happened is perhaps people wanted more space, particularly urban people wanted more space. Did you see a, a, a, a, a shift from one preference to another in the midst of a, a pandemic?
Pauline Donnelly:
Definitely. so I have the two offices, as you said, I have one in Boston and one on Martha’s vineyard. I have 30 agents between those two offices, and I would say again, difficult to predict, but that what ultimately happened was because businesses and offices were closing down and workers were becoming remote workers, all of a sudden one bedroom apartments in the city. Weren’t doing the job for couples living in the city, because if both of them, husband and wife were working remotely, they just didn’t have the space to be able to function. So we found a lot of our clients needed because they were working remotely, extra rooms and extra space. I would say many of the clients, we ultimately helped leave the city and go through the suburbs. Probably would’ve made the decision to do that a year or two in the future.
Pauline Donnelly:
But I think a lot of those decisions were precipitated and they left the city earlier and went to the suburbs simply because of the pandemic, the Martha’s vineyard office, I think again, a huge surprise there, secondary home market. Primarily we found a lot of our renters. So we do a large portion of vacation rentals in the vineyard office. A lot of the people that rented with us summer after summer, decided to spend longer periods of time on the vineyard. And so were looking for longer term rentals. Many of them turned into buyers. Many of our renters wanted to own on the vineyard. Many of our homeowners, existing homeowners on the vineyard wanted to upgrade on the vineyard. And of course we had low inventory. The same was true in the suburbs, as we were helping our clients move from Boston into the surrounding suburbs, inventory became the big issue because the demand far surpassed the supply.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’re leading me to my next question, which you have a huge increase in demand for more space. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> the people already living in that space, in those larger homes in the suburbs or the exces weren’t about to leave in the midst of a pandemic. So you have a huge demand, no supply an economist would predict that prices would go up substantially in that sort of frenzy. So share with us, have of mm-hmm <affirmative> prices in those markets gone up
Pauline Donnelly:
Yes. A hundred percent. Well, they have not gotten up a hundred percent, but absolutely yes, prices have gone up. And, and I would say, you know, pre COVID, the city of Boston was a very, very strong market. Most of our listings were selling immediately with multiple offers over the asking price, what happened in the island market, but also in the suburbs around Boston, during COVID was not even close to what was happening pre COVID in the city. And we thought that was an insane market. The suburbs, I would say some in some areas and in some price points, the prices had probably gone up between 30 and percent. We, some of my agents who focus in the suburban markets are on a weekly basis, writing six offers for different buyers, and some weeks don’t even convert one of those into a sale. It is such a competitive market. We are seeing 16, 17, 20, even more than that offers on one property. There’s only one buyer that can win that property. So you can imagine how competitive those markets are.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes. I’ve heard sort of anecdotally from of friends of mine that have been in those long lines, open houses and, and this frenzy competition to get those homes, but now, okay. We’re we’re here, we are in mid of 20, 22. Let’s hope we haven’t, I’m not planning any COVID episodes in the future. So things are starting to change now. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> you talk about a boiling hot market. I’ve heard that it’s starting to cool a bit. There’s a lot of components to that. Share with us if it’s, if we’re not in the throes of a, a pandemic or a frenzy to escape the city and, and perhaps returning to some more semblance of normal, what do you attribute the, the change?
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. So, as I said, I have 30 agents and I would say, you know, every Monday morning I call my top agents and I say, okay, what happened this weekend? What did you see? My a I’m not selling at the moment. So my agents are the ones who are in the trenches. They’re there on the front lines, working with buyers and sellers. The weekend is obviously our busiest time at this certainly in this season. So I call my agents and say, what are you seeing what’s happening out there? And I think, you know, the, the rising interest rates has had an interesting effect on buyer behavior in particular, and to a certain extent seller behavior. So, because the rates are going up, it’s in the media, we’re talking about the rates increasing fairly dramatically. A lot of our younger clients do not have the historical perspective that let’s say our parents do, or even we do.
Pauline Donnelly:
I remember my very first mortgage. I think my rate was 6% and we all thought it was phenomenally low. Now we’re talking about interest rates in the 5% range for a lot of the younger clients we work with. That seems very, very high. When 12, 18 months ago, you could get a rate under 3%. So what’s happened a little bit recently is there has been an intense frenzy an urgency. I’ve got to buy something now because the rates are going up. So we did see a little bit of an intense period of time where it became even more competitive. And I’m talking about this outside of the city. Primarily we also both in the city and outta the city have recently had several of our sellers reach out to us and say, you know, I was thinking about putting my home on the market later this year, but I think I should do it now because of the interests of rates are going up, perhaps demand is going to change. So I would say there’s a shift happening and it’s different depending upon are we talking about the city, the suburbs, the island, are we talking about under a million dollars, over a million dollars, over $2 million, the price range, the market, the population, the marketplace, really it, it what’s happening is shifting across all of those variables, but it’s a little bit different depending upon the variable, if that makes sense.
Joe Selvaggi:
No, it does. Again I, I I’m steering away from hardcore data and, and numbers for the benefit of our listeners, but anecdotally again someone who qualified for a mortgage and it was 3% now looking at a 5% mortgage, which I think, you know, we’re looking at 30 year rates that increase their pay that can increase their payments on a 30 year mortgage by 40%. So for some buyers that may not make a big difference, but for those who are reaching for their dream house that make a substantial difference in their, in their monthly payments. I wanna take our listeners to just a, a simple fact that I think often is overlooked. When we think about buying and selling homes in many cases, it’s not that you are looking for just more space but rather life happening to share with our listeners, what is it, why do people buy and sell houses? Each of us has his own story or idea, but as someone who’s done it for a long time in many markets, what makes people buy and sell?
Pauline Donnelly:
That’s an excellent question. And I would say my agents hear me say this all the time. Remember that people buy and sell real estate around a major life event. Usually sometimes it’s a happy life event. We hope so in most of the cases, but sometimes it’s a sad life event. People buy and sell real estate because they’re getting married because they’re getting divorced or having a baby. They’ve got a job changed. Somebody has died. There’s lots of reasons why people buy and sell real estate, but it is huge, usually connected to something that’s going on in their life. They need more room, they need less room, they need to spend more, they can spend more, they need to spend less. So there’s something going on in a person’s life. For example, during the pandemic, they’re working from home, they make a different decision about their housing needs.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now, if, if folks are having these life events and, and need to move, and they, you know, what they want is just out of reach. We haven’t talked at all about the rental market now. I, I know again, anecdotally in Boston, when we had those lockdowns it was a ghost town and we’re our, our business is EDS and meds. We had, we have lots of schools and lots of hospitals, and those two industries virtually shut down except for you know, small, essential workers in hospitals. And it was a ghost town. And I think the rental market followed suit, I think there were, you know, all kinds of empty rentals. But that seems to have sprung back. The city’s teaming were full of students graduating. What has the rental market looked like through COVID? And now, as you see it from where you sit
Pauline Donnelly:
In 2020 during the lockdown the, the rental market was essentially dead. And, and a lot of that was because, you know, most of our rental clients in the city are younger populations. They are graduate students, incoming residents at the hospitals in Boston. They are new graduates starting their first jobs, younger couples, younger singles who have perhaps not yet saved enough money to buy their first home. And so during the lockdown, when they were being sent home to work remotely, many of them simply did not renew their leases, did not look for new apartments. And they went home to live with family. So that population of renters just disappeared. This is very, very different now. And those people are coming back to the city. Their offices are open again. It’s a very exciting time in the rental market at the moment. And the people that are getting frustrated because they can’t buy homes are actually making the decision to rent until things settle down a little bit. So right now we have an unbelievable demand in terms of rentals. We are seeing multiple office situations, and even in some cases, we have seen escalation clauses on rental applications. So the rental market has rebounded and then some, it is very robust in the city at the moment.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re, we don’t have a lot of good news for our listeners where you’re saying the, the housing market, if you wanna buy it’s expensive, where rates are going up, renting is expensive, that’s going up. So I think our listener is looking for some kind of guidance. I think we wanna have some useful, actionable information here. It might be tempting to say, look, if the purchase market is overheated, maybe I’ll rent for a while and, and, and let prices come back down to earth. Maybe there’s some recession in our future, which may reverse trends. How does one know you know, again, if they’re looking for your advice, if they’re renting or buying, how does one know whether to pull the trigger and, and, and, and buy what they can afford, or, you know, how do you help people navigate whether they they buy or, or, or rent a few more years?
Pauline Donnelly:
It’s a great question. And I’m gonna give a, a, a plug here for my industry. But, but, but this is very sincere, the best way to navigate the housing market and, and, and make decisions about what to do, whether it’s to buy, whether it’s to rent is really, and truly is to establish a relationship with a real estate agent, because as real estate agents, certainly, you know, my firm, I coached my agents were, were teachers, we’re counselors, we’re coaches ourselves with our clients. We use an adage in real estate that buyers are liars. Of course we don’t mean that what we mean is our buyers. And let’s say, use a more general term. Our clients don’t really know what they want simply because they don’t know what they don’t know. And we see our role very much as real estate professionals, as guiding and educating.
Pauline Donnelly:
I think the educating is a huge part of this, our clients. So they understand what they’re looking for, what their preferences are, and it’s a series of questioning and guiding them to get to that point, but also what their options are. And I think it’s that relationship that really helps a client understand what exactly am I looking for in my next home and what exactly are my options? So I think a, a relationship with a real estate professional is, is essential. The other parts of this too, is a relationship with a lender. You know, we, as real estate agents are not doing any great financial analysis of our clients assets and income, and so on. That’s the lender’s job. And the lenders can be very, very creative and it’s very customized for each client. So what works for me might not work for you.
Pauline Donnelly:
Every single client’s financial situation is a little bit different, and we do encourage that’s. One of the first things we do with our clients is encourage them that we have the resources to talk to a lender so that they understand are they in a position to purchase and what is their purchasing power? And if they’re not in a position to purchase, why not, and what do they need to, to do to get there? So I would say those two components relationship with a real estate professional and a relationship with a lender are essential for anybody, whether they’re buying or rentings to understand what their options are and what their current situation is.
Joe Selvaggi:
So that’s an interesting story in that lenders, it sounds like you’re not talking about the lending industry in general, but in an actual individual, a person who understands your financial situation and who can twist a few knobs and perhaps get you a mortgage where let’s say a large bank, you know, household names might just look at a a checklist and and be somewhat less flexible. How I’m gonna call those a portfolio lenders or, or boutique lenders much the way you’re perhaps a boutique real estate firm. How do you find these kinds of lenders? Is, is it through an agent or is there, you know, are, are there equivalent of dialing company in the real, in the lending community?
Pauline Donnelly:
That’s a great question. And, you know, we do a lot of connecting our clients to lenders and same with real estate attorneys, home inspectors, contractors, anybody that’s connected to a real estate transaction, we have those resources. And I would say we also have those established relationships. So we know because of our experiences, which lenders, which attorneys can get the job done, we know which ones are directable, who can stand behind their product. And so we can often offer those resources to our clients. And, and if I can, Joe, I’d love to just share a story, just, just as an example of how a lender can make the difference for a buyer. And, and it, and it requires a conversation and an analysis of a buyer situation, a financial situation for, for them to figure this out. But we had a client in our office recently who wanted to upgrade to a larger property and believed that they needed to sell their current home in order to buy their next home.
Pauline Donnelly:
We introduced them to a lender. This client had great income, but didn’t necessarily have the down payment for the more expensive home until they had sold their current home. The lender encouraged them to take out a home equity line of credit on their current home. They had sufficient equity in that home so that they could use that for their down payment on their new home. They could purchase their new home close on their new home and then sell their current home buyer might not understand that those kinds of things are an option. And that’s why we really encourage every single buyer to talk to a lender before they begin their home search. So they understand what their options are before we start to look at property.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yeah. I think you’ve made a strong case for the boutique lender. Let me take a step back. You know, we live in an information age where I think everybody knows everything, right. You’ve made the case to build a relationship with a real estate agent, but frankly, we’ve got all these great search engines, you know, and we, we see properties that come on the market, literally within minutes of of the listing going live. How, what can an agent do that? You know, a good internet surfer can’t do just as well explain to our listeners why, why a relationship with a, with a real estate agent would put them, let’s say ahead of everyone else.
Pauline Donnelly:
I love that question, Joe. And I will say after almost 20 years in the real estate world, I still maintain, it’s an old fashioned business in the respect that it is a people business. We are helping people make major life decisions and we’re helping people make major investments. And I would say there is certainly in our marketplace, such a nuance to the properties that we are selling. So for example, if you are looking at photographs on Zillow and you are doing the virtual tours, and you believe that that’s the property for you, then I would say you’re missing it on a huge amount of information that a real estate professional then can give you. For example, that might not be a great condo association. There might be low owner occupancy in that association that that building might need might have some deferred maintenance. That’s not going to be in the listing on Zillow, but a real estate agent who knows her market, his market well is going to be able to give you that information.
Pauline Donnelly:
But also to go back to what I said about, I encourage my agents to be coaches and educators, understanding from a buyer might think they want the four bedroom colonial in Lexington, but after talking, but they might not be able to afford to that. But after talking to them and understanding what their preferences are and what’s going on in their life, that’s leading to them, making a decision to buy a home in the suburbs. We might find out that in actual factor, three bedroom has in Arlington would suffice and do the trick for them just fine. The other thing I also say to our clients and to my agents is get inside the properties on a private viewing. Don’t go to an open house, set up a private viewing to go and see a property. There is no substitute for getting inside the four walls of a property. There’s a lot that’s missed when you are clicking through the photographs on Zillow. So I think there’s, there’s a lot of context. I think there’s a lot of gray that is translated by the real estate professionals that is simply not possible to find out online.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I, I wanna get even deeper into this sort of conversation about, I mean, I think our listeners are saying, okay, look, I’m, I’m tired of the, the, the cattle calls for these hot properties. I, I I’m, I’m still dying to move and I, I want a strategic advantage. A lot of folks I know in my personal life have, have gone in and, and it started to make compromises on these things called contingencies. And I think for our listeners, I’ll, I’ll just explain so you don’t have to, that contingency is a way for a buyer essentially to back out of a deal either because they find something in a home inspection that, that is unsettling or their lender can’t give them the loan. So they, you know, they, they don’t want to be on the hook and not have a mortgage these seem like very important contingencies. But some people are waving them, explain to our listeners, is it, is it okay ever. Okay. And, and under what conditions would you say you know, go ahead and wave that contingency if, if you really wanna be competitive.
Pauline Donnelly:
So that’s a loaded question, Joe, is it ever okay? Well, I would say it really depends on the individual buyer. It depends on the property and certainly you’re absolutely right. In order to be competitive, many buyers have been waving their contingencies. So the opting not to have a home inspection and not opting not to have a financing contingency. And I would say the most important thing is that a buyer understands what that means and what the risks are in waving those contingencies. And we, we take that very, very seriously here at Donna and co because waving a home inspection for a first time home buyer, who’s buying an older home that clearly visually has plenty of things wrong with. It’s probably not an ideal situation, but if you are, if we’re selling a property to a veteran purchaser who understands and has the resources, no matter what they find wrong with the home, they can fix it.
Pauline Donnelly:
Then it’s a different matter in terms of waving the financing contingency. There’s a great deal at risk. So what that means is the buyer is basically saying, I am going to purchase this property no matter what. So if that buyer does not get approved for their mortgage, they are on the hook to purchase the property no matter what, or they risk losing any deposit money that they have put down. And that, that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending upon the purchase, the sales price of the property, what we usually recommend, because we cannot make that call for a buyer. We usually recommend, first of all, we explain exactly what their risk is in waving a financing contingency, but we usually recommend, and we get involved in this conversation that we talk to their lender and how comfortable is their lender about their waving, their financing contingency. Nobody is more conservative than lenders. And so if that lender says you are all set, you can wave your financing contingency. We usually take that to the bank, no pun intended.
Joe Selvaggi:
That’s, that’s a wonderful story. You brought it back to our original case for having a relationship with your lender. He can tell you, or she can tell you how far you can stretch it. And whether, you know, this is prudent, you also mentioned inspection contingency. Again, you wanna have a, perhaps a relationship with a contractor who can say, okay, is that termites or, or, or something else. Right. so that they can give you an assessment of whether it’s wise to wa wave a contingency. I, I, we’re running out of time and I wanna get to some of the fun stuff. Particularly the vineyard, you know, we’re recording on a holiday weekend, the start of summer the vineyard is, is teaming with people. What are some of the trends you see on the vineyard? Has it you know, been the frenzy that I’ve heard or is it steady as she goes on, on the vineyard?
Pauline Donnelly:
It’s definitely been a frenzy since 2020. And interestingly I opened my office in January of 2020 and signed a lease on an office space there in the summer of 2020. Despite the lockdown I, I forged ahead and actually was probably good timing, not necessarily planned that way. That market is incredibly busy. I think both from a sales perspective and from a rental perspective, our vacation rentals we have a vacation rental business on the island. We are already taking reservations for somewhere of 20, 23. Believe it or not. I think like all markets inventory of available properties for sale has been the issue there. You know, and I would say J just to sort of bring together several of the questions you’ve asked me today, the market there is shifting similarly to it, shifting here in the city and outside of the city of Boston. And when we talk about contingencies, we are starting to notice buyer behavior is changing and buyers are becoming a little more nervous and a little more cautious and are starting to insert contingencies into their purchases. Again, we’re seeing that happen in Boston, in the suburbs and also on the island.
Joe Selvaggi:
I I’ll love a, a softball actually is like, if those of us who, who don’t have generations of family who’ve lived on the, and know their way around, how does someone who just is fascinated by the vineyard Bostonian or, or you know, someone in Massachusetts who wants to be part of that market, who wants to see if it’s right for them, for their holidays how does one go about, you know, what’s square one, how does one learn their way around the rental and even the purchase of the buying market on, on the vineyard?
Pauline Donnelly:
I would say the same answer I gave you about how to navigate the market in Boston and surrounding areas. I think it’s even more so the case on the island to work with a local agent, to work with somebody who knows that island and lives on the island and can really orient you the islands, a small island that have very, very distinct areas and towns with very different vibes and cultures. And I think working with an agent that can explain that to you, help you navigate the island and help you hone your preferences is essential so that you understand how the island is put together and how the island works and how it will work for you. So a local expert is I, I would say essential if you’re thinking about buying or even renting on the island.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. I think I was reading the bios on your website of some of those agents. They they’re born and bred. So they’re true Islanders, not the wash ashores, like the rest of us, so should know, or we’ve run out of time. This has been wonderful before we leave. I wanna have our listeners be able to find you where can if they’re looking for an expert or advice where can they find you and Donnelley and company?
Pauline Donnelly:
You can check out our website, which is simply Donnelly and co.com, or they can call the office (617) 982-0160. We’d be happy to help.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. And I also enjoyed reading the blog that you’ve I think you’ve put out a weekly blog with some useful tips on, on all the things we’ve discussed here today. So thank you very much for your time. Pauline. This has been a great conversation gets all excited for buying a home or perhaps renting someplace on the vineyard. This is a perfect show for, for the holiday. Thank you.
Pauline Donnelly:
Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, it would make it easier for others to find hub won. If you offer a five star rating or offer a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have ideas or suggestions or comments for me about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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In Massachusetts, the Know-Nothing amendments prevent more than 100,000 urban families with children in chronically underperforming school districts from receiving scholarship vouchers that would allow them access to additional educational alternatives. These legal barriers, also known as Blaine amendments, restrict government funding from flowing to religiously affiliated organizations in nearly 40 states and are a violation of the first and fourteenth amendments.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case this year, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, that could end these amendments. In 2018, Pioneer produced a 30-minute documentary on the impact of the Blaine amendments on families in Massachusetts, Georgia, and Michigan.
“She’s a good girl. She helps me a lot. She has big, big dreams. I don’t have the money, but she has big dreams. I hope she’s going to get everything, but she works so hard. She works so hard in school.”
“Our family is needing to make some really big sacrifices because we believe this is important, and so, we’re basically going to do whatever it takes… Sometimes we look at each other and go ‘I don’t know if I can do it again another month…’”
“A lot of the families have to sacrifice and work multiple jobs… And just scraping together enough money to just make tuition, just the basics.”
“It is discriminatory, that parents who want to choose an alternative to public school for their children, would not in any way receive any compensation for that, whether it be tax credit, whether it be a voucher…”
In the 1840s, nativist movement leaders formed official political parties and local chapters of the national Native American Party (later the American Party), although they continued to be commonly known as the Know-Nothing Party. Politicians sought to insert provisions into state constitutions against Catholics who refused to renounce the pope. The Know-Nothing movement brought bigotry and hatred to a new level of violence and organization.
The party’s legacy endured in the post-Civil War era, with laws and constitutional amendments it supported, still today severely limiting parents’ educational choices. A federal constitutional amendment was proposed by Speaker of the House James Blaine prohibiting money raised by taxation in any State to be under the control of any religious sect; nor shall any money so raised or lands so devoted be divided between religious sects or denominations. These were then named the Blaine Amendments of 1875.
in recent decades, often in response to challenges to school choice programs, the U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated great interest in examining the issues of educational alternatives and attempts limit parental options. Massachusetts plays a key role in this debate. The Bay State was a key center of the Know-Nothing movement and has the oldest version of Anti-Aid Amendments in the nation, as well as a second such amendment approved in 1917. Two-fifths of Massachusetts residents are Catholic, and its Catholic schools outperform the state’s public schools, which are the best in the nation.
Help families like the Costons in Michigan to end the bigoted Blaine amendments in their state that are blocking tuition scholarships and other types of financial support that would make it possible for families to send their children to high-quality schools that are best suited for their children.
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The Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, or METCO program, has successfully educated thousands of students for 56 years, but several minor changes could make it even better, according to a new study published by Pioneer Institute.
Download METCO Funding: Understanding Massachusetts’ Voluntary School Desegregation Program
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara Candal and guest co-host Derrell Bradford talk with Prof. Paula Giddings, Elizabeth A. Woodson Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College, and author of A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Professor Giddings shares how her experience watching historic events like the Civil Rights Movement and Freedom Rides shaped her career in academia and journalism. She discusses her definitive biography of Ida Wells, a late-19th-century Black female journalist and writer who is an unsung figure in American history. She reviews Wells’ underprivileged background – she was born into slavery in Mississippi during the Civil War – but also how she learned to read, attended a Historically Black College, and developed an appreciation for the liberal arts. She offers thoughts on how educators should use Wells’ many public writings, diaries, and firsthand accounts of the horrific crimes of slavery, segregation, the Klan, Jim Crow, and lynching in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to help students recognize this nation’s history of racial violence. They also explore Wells’ work as a reformer during an era known for overt racism, as well as rapid industrialization, corrupt urban political machines, and suppression of women’s rights. The interview concludes with Professor Giddings reading from her Wells biography.
Story of the Week: Cara and Derrell hold a moment of silence for the victims of the Uvalde school shooting, and discuss what is (and is not) being done to address the hundreds of thousands of disaffected and distant kids across the country who are struggling with mental health issues, especially in the COVID era.
Guest:
Paula Giddings is Elizabeth A. Woodson 1922 Professor Emerita of Africana Studies at Smith College. Previously, Professor Giddings taught at Spelman College, where she was a United Negro Fund Distinguished Scholar; Douglass College/Rutgers University, as the Laurie Chair in Women’s Studies; and Princeton and Duke universities. She is the author of In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement; When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America; and, most recently, the biography of anti-lynching activist Ida B. Wells, Ida: A Sword Among Lions – Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, which won The Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award. She is a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Jeune Afrique (Paris), The Nation, and Sage: A Scholarly Journal on Black Women, among other publications. In 2017, Giddings was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The next episode will air on Weds., June 8th, with Chris Sinacola & David Ferreira, co-editors of Pioneer Institute’s new book, Hands-On Achievement: Massachusetts’s National Model Vocational-Technical Schools.
Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Welcome to the learning curve listeners this week. Gerard is out, but I have the pleasure of being with my friend, friend of the show, Mr. Derrell Bradford, Derrell. How you doing? Thank
[00:00:37] Derrell: you for having me. It’s always, it’s a delightful to stand in for Gerard when he’s on one of his global jaunts.
[00:00:44] Yeah,
[00:00:46] Cara: Jaunting globally. Well, we appreciate you being here. So Derrell, you and I have decided today. I know I personally, wasn’t ready when we recorded last week show, but we’ve decided that instead of our usual format, going to go ahead and talk [00:01:00] about some pretty heavy topics we’ve got a guest, who’s going to talk about some pretty heavy topic and you and I have been, we’ve had people.
[00:01:08] The children, the community of Uvalde, Texas top of mind. and let’s start first by observing a moment of silence for those lost and those affected. And then we can wrap up.
[00:01:35] And that moment, probably feels really long. It felt long to me, Derrell, can only imagine what the moments have felt like For the families who have lost so much in these past couple of weeks. And just want to start off by saying think for a lot of us who are parents, probably the second or third things that comes to mind after something like this happens, which had happened.
[00:01:57] So. Far too often in this country,[00:02:00] is, should I tell my kids and how will my kids handle this and will I make my kids feel more unsafe than they already do? And so I want to share that a couple of days after it happened, I was in the car with my 12 year old daughter and I asked her. we haven’t even been listening to the radio in the car for this reason.
[00:02:20] And I asked her if she knew what had happened, knowing that there, she was going to hear something at school, et cetera. And you know, her response was both so mature and so frightening to me because she just looked right at me and she said, you know, mom, kids of my generation just understand that this is the country we live in.
[00:02:40] And so. I hate it and I am frightened by it and it enrages me, but I also just get that this is what we have to deal with.
[00:02:55] Derrell: Yeah. I can only imagine what it’s like to have to be a [00:03:00] parent. And, I think this through, you know, I was talking to a, colleague of mine who, was getting on a plane. He goes to a place and she was saying, my five-year-old is sort of noticing that all the hubs are a little bit tighter and a little bit longer.
[00:03:15] And my five-year-old no something is wrong. And obviously there’s something incredibly ephemeral, which many parents outside of the horrific events of last week deal with all the time, they send the kids to school and they don’t know whether or not they’re going to come home. And this is perhaps more widespread, a fear and like awfulness that American families deal with, but I really wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
[00:03:43] and it is truly, truly terrible. I know like two things, if I can throw two things out there, and one of them is going to sound cynical. , it’s not meant to be or clinical. It’s not, it’s not meant to be that either. You know, as a person who’s sort of [00:04:00] a creature of advocacy and policy change, you keep looking at these things and wondering why nothing happens.
[00:04:09] I can remember after the mass shooting in Parkland, the level of unrest, outrage, demonstration seemed like overwhelming and ubiquitous and. What like bump stocks got banned? I think books last got, bad, but, in the end it was just like, about all of that? Didn’t translate into more substantial policy change and that’s the kind of thing we sort of analyze all the time.
[00:04:39] It’s really important. and I not, no have a, have an answer for it, but I know somebody needs to have an answer for it. And then the second thing is just like, I forgot. Certainly a behavior that we wouldn’t sort of categorize as normal of all kinds has been on the rise. [00:05:00] And seemingly started to peak in, 2020, when we, as a nation made sort of a policy change that we.
[00:05:08] Weren’t going to be around one another for two years in the interest of everyone else’s safety. And full disclosure, I always say this, like I followed all the rules and spent two years in my house. The moment that people were talking about locking down schools, I was at the front of the line saying we should do it, but all of these policies have trade-offs and I fear that we have unleashed something.
[00:05:31] Atavistic and angry in the American psyche that is presenting itself in ways that nobody really wants to acknowledge fully or act on in a fashion commensurate with the expansive nature of it all. And the adults in, you know, um, in New York, like. What’s going on in the subways. This is pretty, you know, for instance is outrageous.
[00:05:55] , it’s almost like a bad movie. out of control it is. And[00:06:00] what has happened to what must be like thousands, if not more of disaffected high school kids who had their schooling and lives disrupted over the same period. was a policy choice and the trade-off and we got to live with that and an incredibly serious way for them and for us and for everybody.
[00:06:22] And I just want somebody to be an adult about that and acknowledge it and start talking about it in a genuine and meaningful way.
[00:06:28] Cara: thank you for that. I think, to your second point first about the unforeseen impacts of the pandemic. I mean, I remember listening to. Podcast with our now surgeon general actually pre pandemic when he was warning folks that loneliness is an epidemic in this country, right?
[00:06:46] The people are profoundly loneliness country. And I think that that plays a lot into what you’re saying and that, the pandemic. Exacerbated that, and, those of us who were locked down, you know, if you’re locked down alone, [00:07:00] you, might be lonely. but you might also be safe. You might also have the resources to keep yourself healthy and fed.
[00:07:07] and a lot of people in this country, many of them children were locked down in environments that absolutely weren’t safe for them. And weren’t healthy for them or the whomever they were in the home with. But it also, I think, reveals these fractures. Obviously the huge fractures in our society, which go much more to your first point, which I’m still, I think I said earlier, gone from like just sadness to a little bit of depression to just being so pissed off.
[00:07:36] But I feel like it’s, concerning because I go through that cycle every time and then life moves on and it probably shouldn’t. , but to get back to the idea of that, the kids are not all right here. It’s right. Our schools from good schools and many of them of all types are good schools. Provide centers of community, provide resources for [00:08:00] kids, socio-emotional mental health, whatever that is, to some extent, probably not enough.
[00:08:06] but that not only did the pandemic heightened, whatever. Dystopian feelings that kids are experiencing, blame it on whatever you want. Blame it on social media, blame it on set, blame it on 1,000,001 things, right. It probably doesn’t even matter at this point. It’s that too many of the adults. Who work with these kids in the system?
[00:08:25] don’t have I hate to talk about the resource question. I’m not usually wanting to say, oh, resources are gonna fix the problem, but just aren’t I can’t imagine being, for example, a school counselor, or even a teacher and being even emotionally. mean, I can barely deal with the emotional stuff with my own family, half the time, let alone understanding what these kids are going through, have been through and how they’re going to continue to deal with that and take it out on one another.
[00:08:51] And we have in this country for a very long time, we fight right about the language of how to support kids when she would call it SEL [00:09:00] no Canada like that, which we call at the end of the day. If we can’t understand. That people are not okay. And kids can’t learn. If they don’t feel safe, kids can’t learn.
[00:09:10] And that goes to bullying or mass shootings and they can’t, they can’t learn, they can’t be present. So I feel, yeah. And I am wondering though, as you know, I’m, more of a policy creature and less of an advocate security than you are. Is, the larger conversation, the very important conversation around the change that needs to happen, changes that have happened in places like Australia and Scotland after similar things have happened once not 27 times in one year.
[00:09:39] but then there’s also this conversation that I think you’re pushing at around. What do we do to support women? Okay.
[00:09:48] Derrell: Yeah, I was talking to my boss about this and it’s like, we’re education policy, experts for the most part, not, gun policy experts and I’ve been unwilling to step out of that lane because I, [00:10:00] take what I do seriously and I don’t, want to be sort of too.
[00:10:04] flick about what you prescribe from an area in which you don’t have a ton of expertise, but couple of things actually come to the surface and they are not merely sort of the glib take that kids are resilient that you found that, Valerie Strauss put famously in the Washington post.
[00:10:27] When talking about, school closings year ago, the first thing is that I can’t remember who said this, but it’s like very specifically the issue of, school shootings. , there’s a lot that happens to a child before they get to the school that we could intervene on. And I think it’s sort of important to think of.
[00:10:47] Series of opportunities that we have to intervene as something longer and more nuanced than just being there at the school house door or hardening that door. , and that’s the first thing. The second thing is [00:11:00] actually a little bit counterintuitive the move right now. I think this asylum move, which in many might be, you could look at it as practical, but you can also look at it as political to consolidate all of the.
[00:11:15] things needed to intervene for a kid who is stressed, unwell, , whatever you want to call it, like under the mental health umbrella, the push to consolidate all that in school to me is wildly mistaken, , and hugely detrimental. and here are my reasons for asserting it. One is that, you could say, oh, the last, like two years there.
[00:11:40] Like three and a half million teachers in America where there’s like 8 million of them. there’s 8 million of them. If you count all of the churches, retirees, mentors, and mentees coaches, docents, and every other person who stepped in to the lurch to help kids do [00:12:00] something with their learning. When the ritual of K-12 was disrupted, , as it was because of COVID and those people are a part of the.
[00:12:09] And they need, to be, we need to lean on that, right? The idea that we should. Recreate a paradigm that basically excluded all of them, is absolutely the wrong way. And if that means like, fun families, you know, or like give everybody a, mental health voucher or like a cop sports are free for the next two years or whatever it is.
[00:12:29] Like all of those things that help people build connections and help them find who they are and like mediating institutions. So they are less lonely. so more people can see them and support. we absolutely have to invest in that. That’s the one thing, the second thing. And I’m sort of a little tongue in cheek, but not really is it.
[00:12:47] We just have to realize what schools are good at and what they aren’t. And the primary job that we’ve been asking American schools to do. And some of them do it really well over the last, [00:13:00] like, I don’t know. My lifetime has been to turn out literate, numerate kids. Who could go on and be rational participants in our democracy.
[00:13:10] So, you know, so we’re free from tyranny, right? And so people can live out our ideals. And in 20 19 1 in five black fourth graders in this country, tested at, or above proficient on that. And that was before the unrest, the crisis, the friction of the last two years, the idea that now we want schools to also be centers of all of this other expertise is ludicrous.
[00:13:40] When you think about the fact that the core job we need done for many American kids has not been done well. I would just throw those two approaches out there as any approach for. what I think is like right now, I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Like, I think to your point, you said it, the [00:14:00] kids are not all right.
[00:14:01] That is expressing itself in lots of different ways. Like you can look the New York times and high school principals are saying, freshmen showing up back in like sixth graders. I was talking to mark, my boss and he was, reading a thing was counselor.
[00:14:14] So like kids are late or absent, 88 to a hundred times over the last year. Right. And nobody seems, nobody seems to want to do anything about it. It’s just all outrageous. And it’s a serious problem with. imagine our way out of it. It’s going to take serious people who want to get along and bring people together and do what’s right for the.
[00:14:35] Yeah, and
[00:14:36] Cara: I would, agree. And I would add to that, that I think that, the kids are not all right. And they’re being led to slip through the cracks by not showing up to school or always being later because so many the adults aren’t all right. Either. Right. Just people feeling like I can’t, there’s only so much I can do.
[00:14:53] There’s only so much I can give. I know, personally, I just had a conversation with a friend yesterday. I have [00:15:00] stopped. Like I’ve always prided myself on being a person who read the news and listen to the news and I do all the right things. Right. I can’t do it anymore because, you know, I don’t find a moment of joy.
[00:15:08] There’s still good stuff in this world. Right. But it’s a scary, depressing place. If you spend your time listening to that and. I would agree with you too. I think, I remember as far back, as long ago in grad school, having this debate over can schools be everything to everyone, and I agree with you.
[00:15:23] They cannot, agree with you that if we can barely do the core function of making sure that all kids can read, then we’re in a bad place, but we’ve also been so not innovative, right? For the most part. How do you like there’s this great school here in the Boston area called Codman academy. it’s cold located in a health center that is like everything to that community, that health center.
[00:15:49] If you ask anybody in Codman square, like what defines COVID square, I guarantee you that many people are gonna tell you about the health center. And they’re going to say, and every family that walks through that door, they might not want. [00:16:00] They might not think need it. They get assigned somebody who’s there to be a resource to the family.
[00:16:06] Whether it’s, you need somebody to talk to, you need to make sure that your blood pressure’s in check, like all of the things. And therefore they’re there. Not just for the kids. They’re there for the parents. They’re there for the siblings, Thinking through to your point, how you leverage civil society in the ways that we used to at some point, right?
[00:16:27] We weren’t bowling alone, is really important. And I think our kids and our families are absolutely feeling that. And one of the big concerns I have is when you talk about, yeah, I would be for how do you get resources into the hands of people that need them, but, people have mean. there observant might be able to look at their kids in purchase the therapist.
[00:16:48] That’s $500 a session and not covered by insurance and all of these things. So we know who’s getting left out of the equation. We know who doesn’t have the access that they need. And it’s just quite frankly, [00:17:00] it’s not a priority in this country. And I think part of my anger stems from the fact that we can’t seem to, gosh, darn figure out how to make.
[00:17:10] A priority, even though when I think so many of us are feeling the same thing and walking around with a bright smile on our face and doing the good work and doing our jobs in the inside, sometimes we’re falling apart.
[00:17:21] Derrell: Yeah. agree. And I, just want to want to say again, it’s like, while it is always, a joy to do the show with you, I’m glad we had a chance to.
[00:17:33] I acknowledged the tragedy of these 19 young people and their families and to educators that lost their lives because of it.
[00:17:41] Cara: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I agree. And maybe who knows you and I work in very similar circles, maybe this will become more of a priority for the kind of work that we all do together.
[00:17:53] And, new era of, not just education reform, but just supporting families and students. So. [00:18:00] Yeah, I would like that too. Let’s see. New project coming up right after this derail. We’re going to be speaking with professor Paula Giddings and she is the Elizabeth a Woodson professor, emerita of Africana studies at Smith college and the author of Ida, a sword among lions, Ida B Wells in the campaign against lynching.
[00:18:21] So learning curve listeners, please come back to us, right.
[00:18:52] Learning curve listeners, please help me welcome Paula Giddings. She is the Elizabeth a Woodson 1922 professor emerita of [00:19:00] Africana studies at Smith college. Previously, professor Giddings taught at Spelman college where she was a United Negro fund, distinguished scholar Douglas college Rutgers university as the Lori chair in women’s.
[00:19:12] And Princeton and duke universities. She is the author of in search of sisterhood, Delta, Sigma, theta, and the challenge of the black sorority movement when and where I enter the impact of black women on race and sex in America. And most recently the biography of anti-lynching activists, AWS. Ida a sword among lions, Ida B Wells and the campaign against lynching, which won the Los Angeles times book prize for biography and was a finalist for the national book critics circle award.
[00:19:41] She’s a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington post, the New York times, the Philadelphia Inquirer Juna freak and Paris and the nation and Sage, a scholarly journal on black women among other publications.
[00:19:59] In [00:20:00] 2017 Giddings was elected to the American academy of arts and sciences. Professor Paula getting thank you so much for being with us today. And I am going to invite my friend Darell to take it from here.
[00:20:12] Paula: Thank you. Yeah.
[00:20:13] Derrell: Thank you for being with us professor Giddings, but because I am the king of understatement, I’ll start with the.
[00:20:20] You have an impressive career in academia and journalism,
[00:20:27] Paula: who was that woman you were talking about
[00:20:34] Derrell: previously? You said that, uh, I think this is very important. Given the moment you said you think America runs on rage and courage, would you, , share with our listeners some of your own story and how like historic events, like the civil rights movement and freedom rides shaped your life and thinking about the country?
[00:20:53] Paula: Indeed. Well, thank you for having me looking forward to this, talking to you and well, I’m [00:21:00] a child of this civil rights movement. I grew up in the period of the civil rights movement and, Incidents and experiences that are so , and so defining may sort of stay with you for most of your life.
[00:21:14] And this was true of the freedom rides that, for me, that took place in 1962. I was 15 years old at the time when I saw this. And when I saw the freedom rides on television, And as those of you who may not remember, or who don’t know very much about the freedom rides these were a ride, this was the idea of, civil rights workers to take buses from the north and go south, to, integrate waiting rooms, et cetera, in the.
[00:21:47] and, the, , ride started off, they were very dramatic and there was some success, but there was some of the rides. And I remember when one of the buses hit Anniston, Alabama. other places [00:22:00] there was such violence. Buses were stopped.
[00:22:03] People were taken off the buses, some of the buses were bombed. People were beaten. it was the first time I saw such rage. That’s the idea of that rage came from. but, instead of being the. Especially the young people who are, involved in the rides said they just would not stop.
[00:22:24] They were going to continue to ride. They were not going to be defeated. And that was the courage that I saw. And then I started thinking about it as a teenager. I mean, what is this thing called race that brings out both that rage and that courage. And I think that’s really been my defining mission, for my writing, my professional life in particular, I’ve always searching for that answer.
[00:22:49] Derrell: that’s wonderfully said and probably pretty good segue to , my next question. your biography. I’ve spent some time learning about Ida B Wells down, but,[00:23:00] you were Ida B Wells, sword among lions, , Ida B Wells in the campaign against lynching, is your definitive volume on the often underappreciated, wildly unsung figure of IDB Wells in American.
[00:23:15] Could you give us brief overview of her life and why she’s so vitally important as just like a person, as a figure for school children and for the general public to just know significantly more about than they do.
[00:23:29] Paula: Yes. It’s very dangerous to ask biographers flush.
[00:23:35] I will do my best to be weld. What drew me to her. as a figure was her current. If you want to talk about courage in the face of rage, because she started the first anti-lynching campaign, in the country in 1892 from the south, from Memphis, Tennessee. And she had such courage, not just physical courage, dural, [00:24:00] but also a kind of social courage in which he had a conviction about stopping lynching and understanding the real reasons for.
[00:24:10] And she followed that conviction, even though, it went against, , so many of the mores and rules of the society that time, you know, we’re talking about Victorian period when no one talked about certain kinds of things when women, didn’t write about politics or, speak out loud about things.
[00:24:29] or certainly he didn’t, as she. Became an investigative journalist traveling alone often in the south investigating lynchings. This is in the 1890s century. I was
[00:24:42] Derrell: stunned by this, not just the, to your point about the ability to sort of bring this career as an, investigative journalist into existence.
[00:24:51] But the fact that she did this sort of alone in this, in the face of sort of all of this. the threat of physical violence, enormous [00:25:00] physical violence, right. And obviously being black woman in the south, trying to report on this, obviously racial violence is right there too. It was really astounding.
[00:25:12] Paula: Yes, indeed. I think it’s wonderful for students to have models of, people who do this guy, who had that kind of courage and that courage of conviction. Which was so important, quick overview, she was born into, I like to say on the cusp of slavery in she grows up in the reconstruction period, which is a great period of course, hope and change to borrow a phrase.
[00:25:44] she, comes of age. Though in the post reconstruction period, which has been characterized by numbers of historians as, the Nader in our history because of the disenfranchisement of African-Americans of the [00:26:00] increase in violence. and certainly is what stands out is the increase of lynching, of black, men.
[00:26:09] The rationale for this lynching, because remember you had to have a rationale because this is extra judicial fraud. This is outside of the law. So there had to be a rationale that justified such an act. And that thing was the, accusation that black men in particular, were raping white, this had sort of broken out, in this period of time.
[00:26:35] And unfortunately it was affirmed by much else that was going on in this society, including the sciences. This is a period of the emergence of the social science. And even those, , scholars in the Ivy league schools, talked about the fact that blacks were regressing, because there were no longer under the tutelage of slavery and that they’d [00:27:00] become vicious and more and more primitive, and therefore lascivious, and criminally prone.
[00:27:06] so this was the justification and lynchings became, they became even not only more numerous in the late 19th century, but also more vicious in 1892. And Wells is 30 years old, a friend of hers in Memphis, Tennessee, by the name of Thomas Moss is. And to shorthand it. The only crime Thomas Moss, ever committed was to, , out-compete a white, , proprietor Thomas Moss was a co-owner of a grocery store, , that competed with that number or the white.
[00:27:41] Incidents that happened. Right. And he is lynched because of that. And well, begins to understand, that lynching doesn’t have anything to do really with rape, but it really an effort to keep blacks down in a period, , where there’s [00:28:00] industrialization, where there’s a great deal of economic competition.
[00:28:02] and were blacks were doing so well, they really were emerging in these communities, and beginning to thrive. And so when she understands that lynching is really at the heart of big, because it is mentioning, is within the context of all these terrible stereotypes around black people that she decides that lynching is the thing that, when she unpacks it, it makes people understand what’s really going on.
[00:28:30] she will helped deliberate sort of ideas around black people in there for, you know, facilitate equality later. But very, very quickly. She is exiled from Memphis for anti-lynching editorials. her office is destroyed. , she goes to New York for awhile and finally settles and marries and continues her reforms, in Chicago.
[00:28:53] And we can, if you want to ask him about that, I can tell you more about that. She said it just the epitome of [00:29:00] a great reformer around women’s suffrage, , around, creating a settlement house. for blacks and they’re in Chicago, she’s a co-founder of the NAACP.
[00:29:10] Derrell: Wow. yeah, my, research, her economic insights on lynching were also incredibly powerful.
[00:29:17] absolutely. last question from me. so Ida B Wells was born the, in the slavery, as you sorta noted earlier, to taught herself, to read, attended a historically black college, and was also widely read like a Shakespeare Dickens, you know, Bronte. would you talk about how this kind of.
[00:29:38] Liberal arts learning help define her life and her writings and her ideals, as well as like what we can draw from who she became from how she, became
[00:29:50] Paula: educated. Yes. she is a great example of the power of reading. , she read everything that she could get her hands on, , and lots of women’s literature [00:30:00] as you’ve just, , , noted.
[00:30:01] And when you think about what she was reading, , many of those carrots there’s, Alcott and Bronte, number of them were young girls. Who just had a lot of challenges in their lives and had some tragedies in their lives they overcame it. A number of them are orphans. Like she either was orphaned at the age of 16 because of the yellow fever epidemic.
[00:30:26] some of these girls, these characters were, offered and as well, but they were impounded. was particularly struck, with a phrase from middle Jo in little women when little Joe is determined to leave the family and go to the city, become a great writer and write things that people will always remember help to change the world.
[00:30:49] That was her aspiration. and in terms of even Shakespeare, either, love the theater and she even, played lady Macbeth once,[00:31:00] and I think from, so when I saw the comments that she should probably, you know, kept her day job. but if you think about lady Macbeth, which asks the gods on sex me so I can do what I have to do.
[00:31:15] you can see where this could be also affirmation and inspiration, for her. So she was also a lonely young woman, and she had great joy in the world that literature.
[00:31:31] And of learning also help you write your great storytellers and she became one as well.
[00:31:37] Cara: Hello professor getting, thank you so much for being with us today. have to say I’m staring. I always have a copy of little women.
[00:31:46] Paula: Love the dead end,
[00:31:48] Cara: always at the coffee table here at my office because it’s one of the things.
[00:31:52] Paula: I could go back to get it, to get it
[00:31:53] Cara: again. Now, compelled to follow up on a question, I think is related to one that [00:32:00] Derrell asked. And I want to preface this by saying that, I guess about three years ago, pre pandemic, I had the great fortune in the organization that I work for, took every single employee on a retreat, that legacy museum and.
[00:32:13] of the many, many ways in which that plays left an impression on me. One of the biggest was that, I’m a child of the 1980s. I thought I went to pretty good schools and oil boy being there, making me realize I learned nothing about the history of this country. it was a rude awakening, , for me in many, many levels about my.
[00:32:30] school education and myself education. and so the question I want to put to you is when we think about folks like Ida B Wells and her works, including not only her public writings, but her diaries and her , experiences witnessing the events That shaped our history in such horrific ways.
[00:32:50] how can reading these things help today’s students understand the history of race in lynching in America?
[00:32:58] Paula: I know Wells [00:33:00] understood. you have to not just write history, but write a narrative, a story about what was really going on. And that was one of the power she had as a, journalist.
[00:33:11] one of the things , she made sure to do because she also consider herself. she was very upset for example, that, a number of victims mentioned, you know, that they were, that their names were never known or that it, they don’t want to sound too gruesome, but often families were afraid to even , retrieve the bodies because they.
[00:33:33] penalized punished. and so she always made sure when she did her investigative reporting to talk about who those people were and to name names, , and. to give them a place, in history and I think that’s a lesson will the humanity of what she was doing, not just an ideological or a political, mission, which of course it was those two, but a [00:34:00] humane mission, as well.
[00:34:02] I’ll tell you a very quick story. I was on a panel, it was a panel on the Ida B Wells with a number of others who had worked on her. And, I was on the day is, and a woman comes up to me before the panel starts and takes my hand and she said, we learned what happened to my great grandfather by reading your book.
[00:34:24] I had quoted Ida Wells writing about, , some men who had been lynched outside of Memphis, Tennessee. And this woman’s great-grandfather who was one of those. She said he had disappeared. No one knew what happened to. So, right. Flabbergasted, right. but very, very moved. And I said, well, that’s why I’m doing this right.
[00:34:48] I mean, that’s very important. her diary is very interesting. and what I got alphabet was, well, first of all, You read the diary? [00:35:00] it is, as far as we know, the only kind of eyewitness to, the community of a place like Memphis, the Memphis, in the 1880s and in this.
[00:35:12] And you, read about all the, daily life than what people were doing, and even what people were wearing, either Wells with the clothes horse who spent too much money for clothes, which I loved. I mean, she’s very, I love this. and in other ways as well, uh, so, you get that sense, but you know, the greatest gifts that diary was for me.
[00:35:34] Was that because of her experiences of being orphaned and sort of being taken advantage of in the community, which is a whole nother story. , she was a very angry person, but she was also self-reflective and you see all this in the diary and she understood that if she didn’t get a hold of her anger, that it would destroy.
[00:35:57] And so you can see in this diary, her [00:36:00] efforts to reform herself first, and it’s excruciating, but she does it. there are psychological profiles, which showed that lots of leaders. Or really people who are because leaders, when you think about by definition, you know, are assertive and aggressive.
[00:36:18] And, and at the root of aggression is anger. but the best leaders are those who are able to transform the energy, that negative energy into positive energy. And in her case into reform, you can actually trace this in the diet. a
[00:36:35] Cara: fascinating observation. I have to say we’ve previously had a guest on this show , who made the point that, some of the most, whether they’re dynamic or popular or greatest, depending on how you find that leaders have been actors.
[00:36:51] but this notion of how do you transform that? I’ll also take with me from what you said, this idea that she had this compulsion to help name victims, [00:37:00] which I personally took away from my trip to the legacy museum, but I think is very relevant to some of the challenges Derrelle and I were discussing at the top of this hour, before we brought you on about, challenges we’re facing in this country, I would love to ask you one last question and you, began to talk about this and we put a little bit of a pin in it and I’d like to come back.
[00:37:18] So can you talk more about Wells’s work as a progressive reformer, a black, progressive reformer in thinker during this era? her gender alone. Right. But an era of overt racism and then you couple with that industrialization and corrupt urban political machines. Right. So tell us a little bit more about that and what, lessons would you have a straw?
[00:37:43] Paula: a great example. Let me explain it through an example. either Wells, Actually founded the first black women’s suffrage organization in Chicago. in 19 12, 19. And the [00:38:00] reasons why she did of course, we know that there was, lots of momentum towards suffrage and towards the 19th amendment at that period.
[00:38:09] But there was also a passage of legislation, in Illinois where women could vote in municipal elections. as a result of the progressive party winning a number of offices in Illinois. So she was preparing, black women to mobilize for this. And once that legislation was passed, and this is exactly what she did was to mobilize black women.
[00:38:33] Why? Yes, for the boat, but not just for the boat sake. There was, the black committee. and particularly the second ward, which is where all blacks coming from, the migration south were shoveled, right. was actually run by, , the, Chicago political machine. That was correct. paid people off so they could maintain their power, but at the same time, [00:39:00] the second ward and that area was deteriorating because no one was really paying attention, to it.
[00:39:05] And the quality of life of blacks was, declining. So her idea was because the men couldn’t be trusted so much. that’s mobilized. And let’s mobilize behind an independent candidate.
[00:39:20] So she challenges , the, she is so, so, and she was very, very, , successful, as a result, oh, also let me not forget that there was no black representation, even with a great, with a majority black population in that, area. So it because of her and solve a long story to unwind. because of her and because of what women are able to do, the machine had to at least give.
[00:39:51] had the, have emerged a black candidate to be a, an alderman, which is like a city Councilman and well, and her [00:40:00] people got behind him, ask her to priest who wins the election and becomes the first black older man, in Chicago. And later he will become the first black, to be in the house of representatives since reconstruct.
[00:40:14] what she did was she developed more than just one person. She developed a constituency, for progressive, reform. And ever since after her mobilization, people always had to come to the women, to make sure to get their support. And they made the difference in a number of elections.
[00:40:33] Derrell: I’m listening to all this, and I’m just saying. What have I done with my life?
[00:40:39] Paula: I’m listening to this
[00:40:40] Cara: and I’m saying, because the pen can’t be trusted, let’s mobilize the
[00:40:44] Derrell: women met. There are many lessons that many lessons,
[00:40:54] Cara: we’ve been talking so much about the writings of Ida B Wells, but we would love to hear some of your own. So,[00:41:00] would you read us a passage from your.
[00:41:02] Paula: will, this is from a chapter called the truth about lynching. What I, the Wells wrote after being exiled from Memphis, she was invited to write for an important black newspaper in New York when New York age, the column was called.
[00:41:17] The truth about lynching, which really becomes the first study of lynching. so I, tried to characterize the impact and the meaning of that work. And as it related to her, And this is also back to particularly social courage as well, physical courage in order for Wells to follow the logic of mentioning and to its ultimate conclusion, she herself had, had to take a deliberate flight from the radical innocence that was at the heart of Victorian thought.
[00:41:53] Is with no pleasure. I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. She told her readers either [00:42:00] replaced the language of gentility with reality and dispense with the quote false delicacy of the quote unspeakable crime, which was lynching. She was one of the few women reformers who actually used the word rape and had learned to do so without a problem.
[00:42:20] Well, it’s understood the radical implications of your message and was prepared to endure the consequences. Even if, as she said, quote, the heavens might fall, but she had made up her mind that her campaign, wherever it took her, was her calling and that she would see it.
[00:42:39] I just crusade to tell the truth about lynching gave her the means to reorder the world and her and the racist place within it. Once the famed yourself. Now she could expose that lies the Sully, the races may. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned [00:43:00] against, than sending wrote Wells who had found the vehicle of her destiny.
[00:43:05] And it seems to have fallen on the, to do so and quote. It’s
[00:43:11] Cara: amazing. Seems to have fallen on me. And if, even if the heavens may fall is quite a mantle to bear
[00:43:17] Paula: and the heavens didn’t fall. Let me tell you, she was like, know what they talk about? I guess it’s sort of sexist, but just talking about the little old lady driving down the middle of the street and everybody’s everything crashes around the.
[00:43:35] Cara: Amazing. Well, professor Paula Giddings. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been truly enlightening.
[00:43:42] Paula: Well, thank you. Thank you for your wonderful questions as well. please
[00:43:46] Cara: take care. I know our listeners will enjoy
[00:43:50] Paula: thank you so much.
[00:43:51] Cara: [00:44:00] First of all, thank you to Derrell for being with us today and for the great conversation, sad conversation, frustrating conversation, but I think while worth having. And, we always appreciate you coming on the show and being such a good friend of the show next week, we’re going to be speaking with Chris Sinacola and David Ferreira, and they co-editors of Pioneer’s new book.
[00:44:51] Hands-on achievement. Massachusetts is national model of vocational technical schools. Darell, anything you want to share before we sign off?
[00:44:59] Derrell: [00:45:00] No. I,, can think of lots of places I’d like to be, virtually, but none of them better than being with you and the pioneer Institute and learning curve podcasts to thank you.
[00:45:11]: We
[00:45:11] Cara: love it. I’ve got a big smile on my face right now. I needed that. Thank you. All right. We’ll talk soon. All right.
[00:45:16] Derrell: Cool.
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Hubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with real estate expert and broker/owner Pauline Donnelly about the disruption and trends created by the Covid-19 pandemic and steps buyers and renters can take to become more informed, prudent, and competitive in the frenzied market of Greater Boston and Martha’s Vineyard.
Guest:
Pauline Donnelly is real estate expert and broker/owner of Donnelly + Co, a residential real estate firm with offices in Boston and Martha’s Vineyard. Pauline has more than 20 years of experience that includes sales, leadership and management positions, key responsibilities for sales and business growth, and a record of exemplary client service. Pauline has a Bachelor’s degree in Language and Linguistics from the University of York in England, and a Master’s degree in Education from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. She is a licensed real estate broker in the state of Massachusetts and a member of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. Pauline is also a Certified Professional Coach through the ICF accredited coach certification program iPEC (Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching).
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Please excuse typos.
Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. For more than two years, the COVID pandemic profoundly disrupted every aspect of our lives. Now the least of which was where we wanted to live, asked to stay at home for both work and recreation. Americans naturally became restless and began looking for more space, either in less urban settings or by buying or renting second homes. Unfortunately, this shift in demand for space could not be met with a supply for such homes leading to substantial upward trends in home prices in nearly every market in the country, in Massachusetts, where the cost of homes had already been among the highest in the nation buyers eager to enter or upgrade have seen double digit annual home price appreciation all as the backdrop of rising interest rates, looms in the background. What are those who want to find a home in the base date supposed to do as home prices and rents are slipping beyond their reach?
Joe Selvaggi:
What are the strategies that can offer buyers a better chance at finding a suitable home in a highly competitive market? And what pitfalls should those prospective buyers avoid? When shopping in this frenzied setting? My guest today is Pauline Donnelley real estate expert and broker owner of Donnelley company, a residential real estate firm with offices in Boston and Martha’s vineyard Pauline’s experience of 20 years in Boston. Real estate has seen many market cycles and the 2008 financial crisis, but little prepared her for the shock of the pandemic. Pauline will share with us her experience leading a firm of 30 agents through a pandemic, how the market changed and what she sees as the leading real estate trends. Moving forward, Paul will discuss useful strategies for becoming a more competitive buyer, including the importance of building a team of experts that understands clients’ unique needs to navigate the transaction Hubwonk listeners should also know that Pauline is also my wife, as well as an invaluable supporter of my work as host of Hubwonk. When I return, I’ll be joined by real estate expert and broker owner Pauline Donnelley. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now pleased to be joined by real estate broker owner and market expert, Pauline Donnelley. Welcome to Hubwonk, Pauline.
Pauline Donnelly:
Thank you, Joe. I’m happy to be here.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. Well before we dive into our topic on the state of regional real estate, I’d like to have you share with our listeners, I’ve introduced you as an expert but I’d love to hear how you became an expert, your trajectory from your first time in real estate to where you are today.
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. so I had personally been involved in many real estate real estate transactions of my own, and always was fascinated by the process and enjoyed the process and decided I took a leap of faith and made a career change and became a real estate agent when I was in my early thirties and just immediately talked to it. I, I was very quickly, very successful. I became a full-time real estate agent. I focused on the beacon hill market in the Boston marketplace and very quickly became the top producing agent in that marketplace. And over the years it sold many, many properties throughout the city of Boston, ultimately was given the opportunity to become a sales manager, which was a fantastic experience for me. Really got to see the real estate industry from the other side of the table. So I learned a great deal about how real estate offices and real estate firms operate.
Pauline Donnelly:
And then I it’s a long story, really how I became a real estate coach, but let me just say it was because I noticed there was a real void in the real estate industry with respect to the support that was given to real estate agents. And I became a certified business coach and started working exclusively. I had for three years, I had my own real estate coaching business and worked exclusively with real estate professionals across the gamut, really. First newly licensed real estate agents. Broker owners like myself now, sales managers, experienced agents, came to me, looking for support and guidance about how to grow their businesses or how to manage their businesses. I did that for three years and then really felt that I was missing out on the, a huge component about the real estate process. I would coach my clients and we would work intensely on a, on a listing presentation and a meeting with a client, and then they would disappear from my coaching office.
Pauline Donnelly:
And I wouldn’t hear from them until they came back to tell me the results of their presentation. And I started to feel like I wanted more and ultimately decided to start my own firm, which I did in 2017. So were in our sixth year decided to open my own firm so that I could be more comprehensively assisting real estate professionals in the development of their business. I am I’m a former teacher. I have a master’s in education and I don’t sell real estate myself anymore. I don’t work directly with buyers and sellers anymore. I am purely in a support role for my agents and for our clients and I’m managing the business. I had two offices and I just found the managing my own real estate firm offered me all the things that I loved about real estate. I’m very much involved in our transactions. And I’m also in that role of teaching and guiding and mentoring, coaching my agents. I love it.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. Okay. So now your role as a broker owner so you’re not competing with your agents as a, as a fellow agent, but you’re rather the coach, the mentor, and you, you guide them through, I guess, what are the most challenging aspects of real estate transactions? Which is great because I that’s what I wanna talk about the challenges of real estate, particularly in this market. So let’s start with some recent history very recent early 20, 20 you’re chugging along, you’ve got two offices. I don’t know how many agents you may have had then but you’re doing well. It’s early 20, 20, and suddenly COVID hit, let’s just give our listeners a little sense of what your immediate reactions were because you know, we all lived through it, but you were in the real estate business at that time. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> what, what was your first, your fear of what would happen and then share with us what ultimately did happen when COVID hit?
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. I’ll be completely honest when the lockdown first happened, I would say the number one motion I was feeling was panic. Obviously none of us had lived through a pandemic before, and none of us had any predictions and speculations about what was going to happen in the early days of the lockdown. I would say the first two weeks of the lockdown, I spent eight hours a day on the phone talking to my agents, talking to attorneys, talking to our clients who were looking to meet for the answers. And it was a tough time because I did not have the answers. But let’s just say, I mean, fast forward, it didn’t take very long for us to realize that real estate actually was going to continue to be very healthy and very robust during the pandemic. It was hard to, to explain why when we were being told to stay home, our clients wanted to change their homes.
Pauline Donnelly:
And despite the risks associated with buying and selling properties, our clients wanted to do it. And I think changing their home, changing their living situation was giving our clients some level of control in a situation where there was no control in any other area. So I would say, you know, fortunately mine was one of the industries that fed extremely well. I won’t say it wasn’t without its challenges. There was a lot of ups and downs. We have to, we had to navigate, there were lots of things that changed in the way that we did business, but those of us in real estate are used to dynamic marketplaces. Our, our industry is ever changing. This was obviously one area pandemic that we had not had any previous experience with and didn’t know how that was going to change our industry.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now you’ve got two offices I think nearly 30 agents. And you’ve got your sort of finger on the pulse of both urban Boston, where you, where you started your business, but also you have agents who work in the suburbs. And of course even further out, we’re talking about Martha’s vineyard. Those are primarily second homes. Was there a trend the obvious I’m gonna state when the lockdowns happened is perhaps people wanted more space, particularly urban people wanted more space. Did you see a, a, a, a, a shift from one preference to another in the midst of a, a pandemic?
Pauline Donnelly:
Definitely. so I have the two offices, as you said, I have one in Boston and one on Martha’s vineyard. I have 30 agents between those two offices, and I would say again, difficult to predict, but that what ultimately happened was because businesses and offices were closing down and workers were becoming remote workers, all of a sudden one bedroom apartments in the city. Weren’t doing the job for couples living in the city, because if both of them, husband and wife were working remotely, they just didn’t have the space to be able to function. So we found a lot of our clients needed because they were working remotely, extra rooms and extra space. I would say many of the clients, we ultimately helped leave the city and go through the suburbs. Probably would’ve made the decision to do that a year or two in the future.
Pauline Donnelly:
But I think a lot of those decisions were precipitated and they left the city earlier and went to the suburbs simply because of the pandemic, the Martha’s vineyard office, I think again, a huge surprise there, secondary home market. Primarily we found a lot of our renters. So we do a large portion of vacation rentals in the vineyard office. A lot of the people that rented with us summer after summer, decided to spend longer periods of time on the vineyard. And so were looking for longer term rentals. Many of them turned into buyers. Many of our renters wanted to own on the vineyard. Many of our homeowners, existing homeowners on the vineyard wanted to upgrade on the vineyard. And of course we had low inventory. The same was true in the suburbs, as we were helping our clients move from Boston into the surrounding suburbs, inventory became the big issue because the demand far surpassed the supply.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’re leading me to my next question, which you have a huge increase in demand for more space. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> the people already living in that space, in those larger homes in the suburbs or the exces weren’t about to leave in the midst of a pandemic. So you have a huge demand, no supply an economist would predict that prices would go up substantially in that sort of frenzy. So share with us, have of mm-hmm <affirmative> prices in those markets gone up
Pauline Donnelly:
Yes. A hundred percent. Well, they have not gotten up a hundred percent, but absolutely yes, prices have gone up. And, and I would say, you know, pre COVID, the city of Boston was a very, very strong market. Most of our listings were selling immediately with multiple offers over the asking price, what happened in the island market, but also in the suburbs around Boston, during COVID was not even close to what was happening pre COVID in the city. And we thought that was an insane market. The suburbs, I would say some in some areas and in some price points, the prices had probably gone up between 30 and percent. We, some of my agents who focus in the suburban markets are on a weekly basis, writing six offers for different buyers, and some weeks don’t even convert one of those into a sale. It is such a competitive market. We are seeing 16, 17, 20, even more than that offers on one property. There’s only one buyer that can win that property. So you can imagine how competitive those markets are.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes. I’ve heard sort of anecdotally from of friends of mine that have been in those long lines, open houses and, and this frenzy competition to get those homes, but now, okay. We’re we’re here, we are in mid of 20, 22. Let’s hope we haven’t, I’m not planning any COVID episodes in the future. So things are starting to change now. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> you talk about a boiling hot market. I’ve heard that it’s starting to cool a bit. There’s a lot of components to that. Share with us if it’s, if we’re not in the throes of a, a pandemic or a frenzy to escape the city and, and perhaps returning to some more semblance of normal, what do you attribute the, the change?
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. So, as I said, I have 30 agents and I would say, you know, every Monday morning I call my top agents and I say, okay, what happened this weekend? What did you see? My a I’m not selling at the moment. So my agents are the ones who are in the trenches. They’re there on the front lines, working with buyers and sellers. The weekend is obviously our busiest time at this certainly in this season. So I call my agents and say, what are you seeing what’s happening out there? And I think, you know, the, the rising interest rates has had an interesting effect on buyer behavior in particular, and to a certain extent seller behavior. So, because the rates are going up, it’s in the media, we’re talking about the rates increasing fairly dramatically. A lot of our younger clients do not have the historical perspective that let’s say our parents do, or even we do.
Pauline Donnelly:
I remember my very first mortgage. I think my rate was 6% and we all thought it was phenomenally low. Now we’re talking about interest rates in the 5% range for a lot of the younger clients we work with. That seems very, very high. When 12, 18 months ago, you could get a rate under 3%. So what’s happened a little bit recently is there has been an intense frenzy an urgency. I’ve got to buy something now because the rates are going up. So we did see a little bit of an intense period of time where it became even more competitive. And I’m talking about this outside of the city. Primarily we also both in the city and outta the city have recently had several of our sellers reach out to us and say, you know, I was thinking about putting my home on the market later this year, but I think I should do it now because of the interests of rates are going up, perhaps demand is going to change. So I would say there’s a shift happening and it’s different depending upon are we talking about the city, the suburbs, the island, are we talking about under a million dollars, over a million dollars, over $2 million, the price range, the market, the population, the marketplace, really it, it what’s happening is shifting across all of those variables, but it’s a little bit different depending upon the variable, if that makes sense.
Joe Selvaggi:
No, it does. Again I, I I’m steering away from hardcore data and, and numbers for the benefit of our listeners, but anecdotally again someone who qualified for a mortgage and it was 3% now looking at a 5% mortgage, which I think, you know, we’re looking at 30 year rates that increase their pay that can increase their payments on a 30 year mortgage by 40%. So for some buyers that may not make a big difference, but for those who are reaching for their dream house that make a substantial difference in their, in their monthly payments. I wanna take our listeners to just a, a simple fact that I think often is overlooked. When we think about buying and selling homes in many cases, it’s not that you are looking for just more space but rather life happening to share with our listeners, what is it, why do people buy and sell houses? Each of us has his own story or idea, but as someone who’s done it for a long time in many markets, what makes people buy and sell?
Pauline Donnelly:
That’s an excellent question. And I would say my agents hear me say this all the time. Remember that people buy and sell real estate around a major life event. Usually sometimes it’s a happy life event. We hope so in most of the cases, but sometimes it’s a sad life event. People buy and sell real estate because they’re getting married because they’re getting divorced or having a baby. They’ve got a job changed. Somebody has died. There’s lots of reasons why people buy and sell real estate, but it is huge, usually connected to something that’s going on in their life. They need more room, they need less room, they need to spend more, they can spend more, they need to spend less. So there’s something going on in a person’s life. For example, during the pandemic, they’re working from home, they make a different decision about their housing needs.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now, if, if folks are having these life events and, and need to move, and they, you know, what they want is just out of reach. We haven’t talked at all about the rental market now. I, I know again, anecdotally in Boston, when we had those lockdowns it was a ghost town and we’re our, our business is EDS and meds. We had, we have lots of schools and lots of hospitals, and those two industries virtually shut down except for you know, small, essential workers in hospitals. And it was a ghost town. And I think the rental market followed suit, I think there were, you know, all kinds of empty rentals. But that seems to have sprung back. The city’s teaming were full of students graduating. What has the rental market looked like through COVID? And now, as you see it from where you sit
Pauline Donnelly:
In 2020 during the lockdown the, the rental market was essentially dead. And, and a lot of that was because, you know, most of our rental clients in the city are younger populations. They are graduate students, incoming residents at the hospitals in Boston. They are new graduates starting their first jobs, younger couples, younger singles who have perhaps not yet saved enough money to buy their first home. And so during the lockdown, when they were being sent home to work remotely, many of them simply did not renew their leases, did not look for new apartments. And they went home to live with family. So that population of renters just disappeared. This is very, very different now. And those people are coming back to the city. Their offices are open again. It’s a very exciting time in the rental market at the moment. And the people that are getting frustrated because they can’t buy homes are actually making the decision to rent until things settle down a little bit. So right now we have an unbelievable demand in terms of rentals. We are seeing multiple office situations, and even in some cases, we have seen escalation clauses on rental applications. So the rental market has rebounded and then some, it is very robust in the city at the moment.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re, we don’t have a lot of good news for our listeners where you’re saying the, the housing market, if you wanna buy it’s expensive, where rates are going up, renting is expensive, that’s going up. So I think our listener is looking for some kind of guidance. I think we wanna have some useful, actionable information here. It might be tempting to say, look, if the purchase market is overheated, maybe I’ll rent for a while and, and, and let prices come back down to earth. Maybe there’s some recession in our future, which may reverse trends. How does one know you know, again, if they’re looking for your advice, if they’re renting or buying, how does one know whether to pull the trigger and, and, and, and buy what they can afford, or, you know, how do you help people navigate whether they they buy or, or, or rent a few more years?
Pauline Donnelly:
It’s a great question. And I’m gonna give a, a, a plug here for my industry. But, but, but this is very sincere, the best way to navigate the housing market and, and, and make decisions about what to do, whether it’s to buy, whether it’s to rent is really, and truly is to establish a relationship with a real estate agent, because as real estate agents, certainly, you know, my firm, I coached my agents were, were teachers, we’re counselors, we’re coaches ourselves with our clients. We use an adage in real estate that buyers are liars. Of course we don’t mean that what we mean is our buyers. And let’s say, use a more general term. Our clients don’t really know what they want simply because they don’t know what they don’t know. And we see our role very much as real estate professionals, as guiding and educating.
Pauline Donnelly:
I think the educating is a huge part of this, our clients. So they understand what they’re looking for, what their preferences are, and it’s a series of questioning and guiding them to get to that point, but also what their options are. And I think it’s that relationship that really helps a client understand what exactly am I looking for in my next home and what exactly are my options? So I think a, a relationship with a real estate professional is, is essential. The other parts of this too, is a relationship with a lender. You know, we, as real estate agents are not doing any great financial analysis of our clients assets and income, and so on. That’s the lender’s job. And the lenders can be very, very creative and it’s very customized for each client. So what works for me might not work for you.
Pauline Donnelly:
Every single client’s financial situation is a little bit different, and we do encourage that’s. One of the first things we do with our clients is encourage them that we have the resources to talk to a lender so that they understand are they in a position to purchase and what is their purchasing power? And if they’re not in a position to purchase, why not, and what do they need to, to do to get there? So I would say those two components relationship with a real estate professional and a relationship with a lender are essential for anybody, whether they’re buying or rentings to understand what their options are and what their current situation is.
Joe Selvaggi:
So that’s an interesting story in that lenders, it sounds like you’re not talking about the lending industry in general, but in an actual individual, a person who understands your financial situation and who can twist a few knobs and perhaps get you a mortgage where let’s say a large bank, you know, household names might just look at a a checklist and and be somewhat less flexible. How I’m gonna call those a portfolio lenders or, or boutique lenders much the way you’re perhaps a boutique real estate firm. How do you find these kinds of lenders? Is, is it through an agent or is there, you know, are, are there equivalent of dialing company in the real, in the lending community?
Pauline Donnelly:
That’s a great question. And, you know, we do a lot of connecting our clients to lenders and same with real estate attorneys, home inspectors, contractors, anybody that’s connected to a real estate transaction, we have those resources. And I would say we also have those established relationships. So we know because of our experiences, which lenders, which attorneys can get the job done, we know which ones are directable, who can stand behind their product. And so we can often offer those resources to our clients. And, and if I can, Joe, I’d love to just share a story, just, just as an example of how a lender can make the difference for a buyer. And, and it, and it requires a conversation and an analysis of a buyer situation, a financial situation for, for them to figure this out. But we had a client in our office recently who wanted to upgrade to a larger property and believed that they needed to sell their current home in order to buy their next home.
Pauline Donnelly:
We introduced them to a lender. This client had great income, but didn’t necessarily have the down payment for the more expensive home until they had sold their current home. The lender encouraged them to take out a home equity line of credit on their current home. They had sufficient equity in that home so that they could use that for their down payment on their new home. They could purchase their new home close on their new home and then sell their current home buyer might not understand that those kinds of things are an option. And that’s why we really encourage every single buyer to talk to a lender before they begin their home search. So they understand what their options are before we start to look at property.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yeah. I think you’ve made a strong case for the boutique lender. Let me take a step back. You know, we live in an information age where I think everybody knows everything, right. You’ve made the case to build a relationship with a real estate agent, but frankly, we’ve got all these great search engines, you know, and we, we see properties that come on the market, literally within minutes of of the listing going live. How, what can an agent do that? You know, a good internet surfer can’t do just as well explain to our listeners why, why a relationship with a, with a real estate agent would put them, let’s say ahead of everyone else.
Pauline Donnelly:
I love that question, Joe. And I will say after almost 20 years in the real estate world, I still maintain, it’s an old fashioned business in the respect that it is a people business. We are helping people make major life decisions and we’re helping people make major investments. And I would say there is certainly in our marketplace, such a nuance to the properties that we are selling. So for example, if you are looking at photographs on Zillow and you are doing the virtual tours, and you believe that that’s the property for you, then I would say you’re missing it on a huge amount of information that a real estate professional then can give you. For example, that might not be a great condo association. There might be low owner occupancy in that association that that building might need might have some deferred maintenance. That’s not going to be in the listing on Zillow, but a real estate agent who knows her market, his market well is going to be able to give you that information.
Pauline Donnelly:
But also to go back to what I said about, I encourage my agents to be coaches and educators, understanding from a buyer might think they want the four bedroom colonial in Lexington, but after talking, but they might not be able to afford to that. But after talking to them and understanding what their preferences are and what’s going on in their life, that’s leading to them, making a decision to buy a home in the suburbs. We might find out that in actual factor, three bedroom has in Arlington would suffice and do the trick for them just fine. The other thing I also say to our clients and to my agents is get inside the properties on a private viewing. Don’t go to an open house, set up a private viewing to go and see a property. There is no substitute for getting inside the four walls of a property. There’s a lot that’s missed when you are clicking through the photographs on Zillow. So I think there’s, there’s a lot of context. I think there’s a lot of gray that is translated by the real estate professionals that is simply not possible to find out online.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I, I wanna get even deeper into this sort of conversation about, I mean, I think our listeners are saying, okay, look, I’m, I’m tired of the, the, the cattle calls for these hot properties. I, I I’m, I’m still dying to move and I, I want a strategic advantage. A lot of folks I know in my personal life have, have gone in and, and it started to make compromises on these things called contingencies. And I think for our listeners, I’ll, I’ll just explain so you don’t have to, that contingency is a way for a buyer essentially to back out of a deal either because they find something in a home inspection that, that is unsettling or their lender can’t give them the loan. So they, you know, they, they don’t want to be on the hook and not have a mortgage these seem like very important contingencies. But some people are waving them, explain to our listeners, is it, is it okay ever. Okay. And, and under what conditions would you say you know, go ahead and wave that contingency if, if you really wanna be competitive.
Pauline Donnelly:
So that’s a loaded question, Joe, is it ever okay? Well, I would say it really depends on the individual buyer. It depends on the property and certainly you’re absolutely right. In order to be competitive, many buyers have been waving their contingencies. So the opting not to have a home inspection and not opting not to have a financing contingency. And I would say the most important thing is that a buyer understands what that means and what the risks are in waving those contingencies. And we, we take that very, very seriously here at Donna and co because waving a home inspection for a first time home buyer, who’s buying an older home that clearly visually has plenty of things wrong with. It’s probably not an ideal situation, but if you are, if we’re selling a property to a veteran purchaser who understands and has the resources, no matter what they find wrong with the home, they can fix it.
Pauline Donnelly:
Then it’s a different matter in terms of waving the financing contingency. There’s a great deal at risk. So what that means is the buyer is basically saying, I am going to purchase this property no matter what. So if that buyer does not get approved for their mortgage, they are on the hook to purchase the property no matter what, or they risk losing any deposit money that they have put down. And that, that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending upon the purchase, the sales price of the property, what we usually recommend, because we cannot make that call for a buyer. We usually recommend, first of all, we explain exactly what their risk is in waving a financing contingency, but we usually recommend, and we get involved in this conversation that we talk to their lender and how comfortable is their lender about their waving, their financing contingency. Nobody is more conservative than lenders. And so if that lender says you are all set, you can wave your financing contingency. We usually take that to the bank, no pun intended.
Joe Selvaggi:
That’s, that’s a wonderful story. You brought it back to our original case for having a relationship with your lender. He can tell you, or she can tell you how far you can stretch it. And whether, you know, this is prudent, you also mentioned inspection contingency. Again, you wanna have a, perhaps a relationship with a contractor who can say, okay, is that termites or, or, or something else. Right. so that they can give you an assessment of whether it’s wise to wa wave a contingency. I, I, we’re running out of time and I wanna get to some of the fun stuff. Particularly the vineyard, you know, we’re recording on a holiday weekend, the start of summer the vineyard is, is teaming with people. What are some of the trends you see on the vineyard? Has it you know, been the frenzy that I’ve heard or is it steady as she goes on, on the vineyard?
Pauline Donnelly:
It’s definitely been a frenzy since 2020. And interestingly I opened my office in January of 2020 and signed a lease on an office space there in the summer of 2020. Despite the lockdown I, I forged ahead and actually was probably good timing, not necessarily planned that way. That market is incredibly busy. I think both from a sales perspective and from a rental perspective, our vacation rentals we have a vacation rental business on the island. We are already taking reservations for somewhere of 20, 23. Believe it or not. I think like all markets inventory of available properties for sale has been the issue there. You know, and I would say J just to sort of bring together several of the questions you’ve asked me today, the market there is shifting similarly to it, shifting here in the city and outside of the city of Boston. And when we talk about contingencies, we are starting to notice buyer behavior is changing and buyers are becoming a little more nervous and a little more cautious and are starting to insert contingencies into their purchases. Again, we’re seeing that happen in Boston, in the suburbs and also on the island.
Joe Selvaggi:
I I’ll love a, a softball actually is like, if those of us who, who don’t have generations of family who’ve lived on the, and know their way around, how does someone who just is fascinated by the vineyard Bostonian or, or you know, someone in Massachusetts who wants to be part of that market, who wants to see if it’s right for them, for their holidays how does one go about, you know, what’s square one, how does one learn their way around the rental and even the purchase of the buying market on, on the vineyard?
Pauline Donnelly:
I would say the same answer I gave you about how to navigate the market in Boston and surrounding areas. I think it’s even more so the case on the island to work with a local agent, to work with somebody who knows that island and lives on the island and can really orient you the islands, a small island that have very, very distinct areas and towns with very different vibes and cultures. And I think working with an agent that can explain that to you, help you navigate the island and help you hone your preferences is essential so that you understand how the island is put together and how the island works and how it will work for you. So a local expert is I, I would say essential if you’re thinking about buying or even renting on the island.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. I think I was reading the bios on your website of some of those agents. They they’re born and bred. So they’re true Islanders, not the wash ashores, like the rest of us, so should know, or we’ve run out of time. This has been wonderful before we leave. I wanna have our listeners be able to find you where can if they’re looking for an expert or advice where can they find you and Donnelley and company?
Pauline Donnelly:
You can check out our website, which is simply Donnelly and co.com, or they can call the office (617) 982-0160. We’d be happy to help.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. And I also enjoyed reading the blog that you’ve I think you’ve put out a weekly blog with some useful tips on, on all the things we’ve discussed here today. So thank you very much for your time. Pauline. This has been a great conversation gets all excited for buying a home or perhaps renting someplace on the vineyard. This is a perfect show for, for the holiday. Thank you.
Pauline Donnelly:
Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Joe Selvaggi:
This has been another episode of Hubwonk. If you enjoy today’s episode, there are several ways to support Hubwonk and Pioneer Institute. It would be easier for you and better for us. If you subscribe to Hubwonk on your iTunes podcast, catcher, it would make it easier for others to find hub won. If you offer a five star rating or offer a favorable review, we’re always grateful. If you share Hubwonk with friends, if you have ideas or suggestions or comments for me about future episode topics, you’re welcome to email me at hubwonk@pioneerinstitute.org. Please join me next week for a new episode of Hubwonk.
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Read a Transcript of This Episode
Please excuse typos.
[00:00:00] Cara: Welcome to the learning curve listeners this week. Gerard is out, but I have the pleasure of being with my friend, friend of the show, Mr. Derrell Bradford, Derrell. How you doing? Thank
[00:00:37] Derrell: you for having me. It’s always, it’s a delightful to stand in for Gerard when he’s on one of his global jaunts.
[00:00:44] Yeah,
[00:00:46] Cara: Jaunting globally. Well, we appreciate you being here. So Derrell, you and I have decided today. I know I personally, wasn’t ready when we recorded last week show, but we’ve decided that instead of our usual format, going to go ahead and talk [00:01:00] about some pretty heavy topics we’ve got a guest, who’s going to talk about some pretty heavy topic and you and I have been, we’ve had people.
[00:01:08] The children, the community of Uvalde, Texas top of mind. and let’s start first by observing a moment of silence for those lost and those affected. And then we can wrap up.
[00:01:35] And that moment, probably feels really long. It felt long to me, Derrell, can only imagine what the moments have felt like For the families who have lost so much in these past couple of weeks. And just want to start off by saying think for a lot of us who are parents, probably the second or third things that comes to mind after something like this happens, which had happened.
[00:01:57] So. Far too often in this country,[00:02:00] is, should I tell my kids and how will my kids handle this and will I make my kids feel more unsafe than they already do? And so I want to share that a couple of days after it happened, I was in the car with my 12 year old daughter and I asked her. we haven’t even been listening to the radio in the car for this reason.
[00:02:20] And I asked her if she knew what had happened, knowing that there, she was going to hear something at school, et cetera. And you know, her response was both so mature and so frightening to me because she just looked right at me and she said, you know, mom, kids of my generation just understand that this is the country we live in.
[00:02:40] And so. I hate it and I am frightened by it and it enrages me, but I also just get that this is what we have to deal with.
[00:02:55] Derrell: Yeah. I can only imagine what it’s like to have to be a [00:03:00] parent. And, I think this through, you know, I was talking to a, colleague of mine who, was getting on a plane. He goes to a place and she was saying, my five-year-old is sort of noticing that all the hubs are a little bit tighter and a little bit longer.
[00:03:15] And my five-year-old no something is wrong. And obviously there’s something incredibly ephemeral, which many parents outside of the horrific events of last week deal with all the time, they send the kids to school and they don’t know whether or not they’re going to come home. And this is perhaps more widespread, a fear and like awfulness that American families deal with, but I really wouldn’t wish it on anybody.
[00:03:43] and it is truly, truly terrible. I know like two things, if I can throw two things out there, and one of them is going to sound cynical. , it’s not meant to be or clinical. It’s not, it’s not meant to be that either. You know, as a person who’s sort of [00:04:00] a creature of advocacy and policy change, you keep looking at these things and wondering why nothing happens.
[00:04:09] I can remember after the mass shooting in Parkland, the level of unrest, outrage, demonstration seemed like overwhelming and ubiquitous and. What like bump stocks got banned? I think books last got, bad, but, in the end it was just like, about all of that? Didn’t translate into more substantial policy change and that’s the kind of thing we sort of analyze all the time.
[00:04:39] It’s really important. and I not, no have a, have an answer for it, but I know somebody needs to have an answer for it. And then the second thing is just like, I forgot. Certainly a behavior that we wouldn’t sort of categorize as normal of all kinds has been on the rise. [00:05:00] And seemingly started to peak in, 2020, when we, as a nation made sort of a policy change that we.
[00:05:08] Weren’t going to be around one another for two years in the interest of everyone else’s safety. And full disclosure, I always say this, like I followed all the rules and spent two years in my house. The moment that people were talking about locking down schools, I was at the front of the line saying we should do it, but all of these policies have trade-offs and I fear that we have unleashed something.
[00:05:31] Atavistic and angry in the American psyche that is presenting itself in ways that nobody really wants to acknowledge fully or act on in a fashion commensurate with the expansive nature of it all. And the adults in, you know, um, in New York, like. What’s going on in the subways. This is pretty, you know, for instance is outrageous.
[00:05:55] , it’s almost like a bad movie. out of control it is. And[00:06:00] what has happened to what must be like thousands, if not more of disaffected high school kids who had their schooling and lives disrupted over the same period. was a policy choice and the trade-off and we got to live with that and an incredibly serious way for them and for us and for everybody.
[00:06:22] And I just want somebody to be an adult about that and acknowledge it and start talking about it in a genuine and meaningful way.
[00:06:28] Cara: thank you for that. I think, to your second point first about the unforeseen impacts of the pandemic. I mean, I remember listening to. Podcast with our now surgeon general actually pre pandemic when he was warning folks that loneliness is an epidemic in this country, right?
[00:06:46] The people are profoundly loneliness country. And I think that that plays a lot into what you’re saying and that, the pandemic. Exacerbated that, and, those of us who were locked down, you know, if you’re locked down alone, [00:07:00] you, might be lonely. but you might also be safe. You might also have the resources to keep yourself healthy and fed.
[00:07:07] and a lot of people in this country, many of them children were locked down in environments that absolutely weren’t safe for them. And weren’t healthy for them or the whomever they were in the home with. But it also, I think, reveals these fractures. Obviously the huge fractures in our society, which go much more to your first point, which I’m still, I think I said earlier, gone from like just sadness to a little bit of depression to just being so pissed off.
[00:07:36] But I feel like it’s, concerning because I go through that cycle every time and then life moves on and it probably shouldn’t. , but to get back to the idea of that, the kids are not all right here. It’s right. Our schools from good schools and many of them of all types are good schools. Provide centers of community, provide resources for [00:08:00] kids, socio-emotional mental health, whatever that is, to some extent, probably not enough.
[00:08:06] but that not only did the pandemic heightened, whatever. Dystopian feelings that kids are experiencing, blame it on whatever you want. Blame it on social media, blame it on set, blame it on 1,000,001 things, right. It probably doesn’t even matter at this point. It’s that too many of the adults. Who work with these kids in the system?
[00:08:25] don’t have I hate to talk about the resource question. I’m not usually wanting to say, oh, resources are gonna fix the problem, but just aren’t I can’t imagine being, for example, a school counselor, or even a teacher and being even emotionally. mean, I can barely deal with the emotional stuff with my own family, half the time, let alone understanding what these kids are going through, have been through and how they’re going to continue to deal with that and take it out on one another.
[00:08:51] And we have in this country for a very long time, we fight right about the language of how to support kids when she would call it SEL [00:09:00] no Canada like that, which we call at the end of the day. If we can’t understand. That people are not okay. And kids can’t learn. If they don’t feel safe, kids can’t learn.
[00:09:10] And that goes to bullying or mass shootings and they can’t, they can’t learn, they can’t be present. So I feel, yeah. And I am wondering though, as you know, I’m, more of a policy creature and less of an advocate security than you are. Is, the larger conversation, the very important conversation around the change that needs to happen, changes that have happened in places like Australia and Scotland after similar things have happened once not 27 times in one year.
[00:09:39] but then there’s also this conversation that I think you’re pushing at around. What do we do to support women? Okay.
[00:09:48] Derrell: Yeah, I was talking to my boss about this and it’s like, we’re education policy, experts for the most part, not, gun policy experts and I’ve been unwilling to step out of that lane because I, [00:10:00] take what I do seriously and I don’t, want to be sort of too.
[00:10:04] flick about what you prescribe from an area in which you don’t have a ton of expertise, but couple of things actually come to the surface and they are not merely sort of the glib take that kids are resilient that you found that, Valerie Strauss put famously in the Washington post.
[00:10:27] When talking about, school closings year ago, the first thing is that I can’t remember who said this, but it’s like very specifically the issue of, school shootings. , there’s a lot that happens to a child before they get to the school that we could intervene on. And I think it’s sort of important to think of.
[00:10:47] Series of opportunities that we have to intervene as something longer and more nuanced than just being there at the school house door or hardening that door. , and that’s the first thing. The second thing is [00:11:00] actually a little bit counterintuitive the move right now. I think this asylum move, which in many might be, you could look at it as practical, but you can also look at it as political to consolidate all of the.
[00:11:15] things needed to intervene for a kid who is stressed, unwell, , whatever you want to call it, like under the mental health umbrella, the push to consolidate all that in school to me is wildly mistaken, , and hugely detrimental. and here are my reasons for asserting it. One is that, you could say, oh, the last, like two years there.
[00:11:40] Like three and a half million teachers in America where there’s like 8 million of them. there’s 8 million of them. If you count all of the churches, retirees, mentors, and mentees coaches, docents, and every other person who stepped in to the lurch to help kids do [00:12:00] something with their learning. When the ritual of K-12 was disrupted, , as it was because of COVID and those people are a part of the.
[00:12:09] And they need, to be, we need to lean on that, right? The idea that we should. Recreate a paradigm that basically excluded all of them, is absolutely the wrong way. And if that means like, fun families, you know, or like give everybody a, mental health voucher or like a cop sports are free for the next two years or whatever it is.
[00:12:29] Like all of those things that help people build connections and help them find who they are and like mediating institutions. So they are less lonely. so more people can see them and support. we absolutely have to invest in that. That’s the one thing, the second thing. And I’m sort of a little tongue in cheek, but not really is it.
[00:12:47] We just have to realize what schools are good at and what they aren’t. And the primary job that we’ve been asking American schools to do. And some of them do it really well over the last, [00:13:00] like, I don’t know. My lifetime has been to turn out literate, numerate kids. Who could go on and be rational participants in our democracy.
[00:13:10] So, you know, so we’re free from tyranny, right? And so people can live out our ideals. And in 20 19 1 in five black fourth graders in this country, tested at, or above proficient on that. And that was before the unrest, the crisis, the friction of the last two years, the idea that now we want schools to also be centers of all of this other expertise is ludicrous.
[00:13:40] When you think about the fact that the core job we need done for many American kids has not been done well. I would just throw those two approaches out there as any approach for. what I think is like right now, I think we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Like, I think to your point, you said it, the [00:14:00] kids are not all right.
[00:14:01] That is expressing itself in lots of different ways. Like you can look the New York times and high school principals are saying, freshmen showing up back in like sixth graders. I was talking to mark, my boss and he was, reading a thing was counselor.
[00:14:14] So like kids are late or absent, 88 to a hundred times over the last year. Right. And nobody seems, nobody seems to want to do anything about it. It’s just all outrageous. And it’s a serious problem with. imagine our way out of it. It’s going to take serious people who want to get along and bring people together and do what’s right for the.
[00:14:35] Yeah, and
[00:14:36] Cara: I would, agree. And I would add to that, that I think that, the kids are not all right. And they’re being led to slip through the cracks by not showing up to school or always being later because so many the adults aren’t all right. Either. Right. Just people feeling like I can’t, there’s only so much I can do.
[00:14:53] There’s only so much I can give. I know, personally, I just had a conversation with a friend yesterday. I have [00:15:00] stopped. Like I’ve always prided myself on being a person who read the news and listen to the news and I do all the right things. Right. I can’t do it anymore because, you know, I don’t find a moment of joy.
[00:15:08] There’s still good stuff in this world. Right. But it’s a scary, depressing place. If you spend your time listening to that and. I would agree with you too. I think, I remember as far back, as long ago in grad school, having this debate over can schools be everything to everyone, and I agree with you.
[00:15:23] They cannot, agree with you that if we can barely do the core function of making sure that all kids can read, then we’re in a bad place, but we’ve also been so not innovative, right? For the most part. How do you like there’s this great school here in the Boston area called Codman academy. it’s cold located in a health center that is like everything to that community, that health center.
[00:15:49] If you ask anybody in Codman square, like what defines COVID square, I guarantee you that many people are gonna tell you about the health center. And they’re going to say, and every family that walks through that door, they might not want. [00:16:00] They might not think need it. They get assigned somebody who’s there to be a resource to the family.
[00:16:06] Whether it’s, you need somebody to talk to, you need to make sure that your blood pressure’s in check, like all of the things. And therefore they’re there. Not just for the kids. They’re there for the parents. They’re there for the siblings, Thinking through to your point, how you leverage civil society in the ways that we used to at some point, right?
[00:16:27] We weren’t bowling alone, is really important. And I think our kids and our families are absolutely feeling that. And one of the big concerns I have is when you talk about, yeah, I would be for how do you get resources into the hands of people that need them, but, people have mean. there observant might be able to look at their kids in purchase the therapist.
[00:16:48] That’s $500 a session and not covered by insurance and all of these things. So we know who’s getting left out of the equation. We know who doesn’t have the access that they need. And it’s just quite frankly, [00:17:00] it’s not a priority in this country. And I think part of my anger stems from the fact that we can’t seem to, gosh, darn figure out how to make.
[00:17:10] A priority, even though when I think so many of us are feeling the same thing and walking around with a bright smile on our face and doing the good work and doing our jobs in the inside, sometimes we’re falling apart.
[00:17:21] Derrell: Yeah. agree. And I, just want to want to say again, it’s like, while it is always, a joy to do the show with you, I’m glad we had a chance to.
[00:17:33] I acknowledged the tragedy of these 19 young people and their families and to educators that lost their lives because of it.
[00:17:41] Cara: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for that. I agree. And maybe who knows you and I work in very similar circles, maybe this will become more of a priority for the kind of work that we all do together.
[00:17:53] And, new era of, not just education reform, but just supporting families and students. So. [00:18:00] Yeah, I would like that too. Let’s see. New project coming up right after this derail. We’re going to be speaking with professor Paula Giddings and she is the Elizabeth a Woodson professor, emerita of Africana studies at Smith college and the author of Ida, a sword among lions, Ida B Wells in the campaign against lynching.
[00:18:21] So learning curve listeners, please come back to us, right.
[00:18:52] Learning curve listeners, please help me welcome Paula Giddings. She is the Elizabeth a Woodson 1922 professor emerita of [00:19:00] Africana studies at Smith college. Previously, professor Giddings taught at Spelman college where she was a United Negro fund, distinguished scholar Douglas college Rutgers university as the Lori chair in women’s.
[00:19:12] And Princeton and duke universities. She is the author of in search of sisterhood, Delta, Sigma, theta, and the challenge of the black sorority movement when and where I enter the impact of black women on race and sex in America. And most recently the biography of anti-lynching activists, AWS. Ida a sword among lions, Ida B Wells and the campaign against lynching, which won the Los Angeles times book prize for biography and was a finalist for the national book critics circle award.
[00:19:41] She’s a former book editor and journalist who has written extensively on international and national issues and has been published by the Washington post, the New York times, the Philadelphia Inquirer Juna freak and Paris and the nation and Sage, a scholarly journal on black women among other publications.
[00:19:59] In [00:20:00] 2017 Giddings was elected to the American academy of arts and sciences. Professor Paula getting thank you so much for being with us today. And I am going to invite my friend Darell to take it from here.
[00:20:12] Paula: Thank you. Yeah.
[00:20:13] Derrell: Thank you for being with us professor Giddings, but because I am the king of understatement, I’ll start with the.
[00:20:20] You have an impressive career in academia and journalism,
[00:20:27] Paula: who was that woman you were talking about
[00:20:34] Derrell: previously? You said that, uh, I think this is very important. Given the moment you said you think America runs on rage and courage, would you, , share with our listeners some of your own story and how like historic events, like the civil rights movement and freedom rides shaped your life and thinking about the country?
[00:20:53] Paula: Indeed. Well, thank you for having me looking forward to this, talking to you and well, I’m [00:21:00] a child of this civil rights movement. I grew up in the period of the civil rights movement and, Incidents and experiences that are so , and so defining may sort of stay with you for most of your life.
[00:21:14] And this was true of the freedom rides that, for me, that took place in 1962. I was 15 years old at the time when I saw this. And when I saw the freedom rides on television, And as those of you who may not remember, or who don’t know very much about the freedom rides these were a ride, this was the idea of, civil rights workers to take buses from the north and go south, to, integrate waiting rooms, et cetera, in the.
[00:21:47] and, the, , ride started off, they were very dramatic and there was some success, but there was some of the rides. And I remember when one of the buses hit Anniston, Alabama. other places [00:22:00] there was such violence. Buses were stopped.
[00:22:03] People were taken off the buses, some of the buses were bombed. People were beaten. it was the first time I saw such rage. That’s the idea of that rage came from. but, instead of being the. Especially the young people who are, involved in the rides said they just would not stop.
[00:22:24] They were going to continue to ride. They were not going to be defeated. And that was the courage that I saw. And then I started thinking about it as a teenager. I mean, what is this thing called race that brings out both that rage and that courage. And I think that’s really been my defining mission, for my writing, my professional life in particular, I’ve always searching for that answer.
[00:22:49] Derrell: that’s wonderfully said and probably pretty good segue to , my next question. your biography. I’ve spent some time learning about Ida B Wells down, but,[00:23:00] you were Ida B Wells, sword among lions, , Ida B Wells in the campaign against lynching, is your definitive volume on the often underappreciated, wildly unsung figure of IDB Wells in American.
[00:23:15] Could you give us brief overview of her life and why she’s so vitally important as just like a person, as a figure for school children and for the general public to just know significantly more about than they do.
[00:23:29] Paula: Yes. It’s very dangerous to ask biographers flush.
[00:23:35] I will do my best to be weld. What drew me to her. as a figure was her current. If you want to talk about courage in the face of rage, because she started the first anti-lynching campaign, in the country in 1892 from the south, from Memphis, Tennessee. And she had such courage, not just physical courage, dural, [00:24:00] but also a kind of social courage in which he had a conviction about stopping lynching and understanding the real reasons for.
[00:24:10] And she followed that conviction, even though, it went against, , so many of the mores and rules of the society that time, you know, we’re talking about Victorian period when no one talked about certain kinds of things when women, didn’t write about politics or, speak out loud about things.
[00:24:29] or certainly he didn’t, as she. Became an investigative journalist traveling alone often in the south investigating lynchings. This is in the 1890s century. I was
[00:24:42] Derrell: stunned by this, not just the, to your point about the ability to sort of bring this career as an, investigative journalist into existence.
[00:24:51] But the fact that she did this sort of alone in this, in the face of sort of all of this. the threat of physical violence, enormous [00:25:00] physical violence, right. And obviously being black woman in the south, trying to report on this, obviously racial violence is right there too. It was really astounding.
[00:25:12] Paula: Yes, indeed. I think it’s wonderful for students to have models of, people who do this guy, who had that kind of courage and that courage of conviction. Which was so important, quick overview, she was born into, I like to say on the cusp of slavery in she grows up in the reconstruction period, which is a great period of course, hope and change to borrow a phrase.
[00:25:44] she, comes of age. Though in the post reconstruction period, which has been characterized by numbers of historians as, the Nader in our history because of the disenfranchisement of African-Americans of the [00:26:00] increase in violence. and certainly is what stands out is the increase of lynching, of black, men.
[00:26:09] The rationale for this lynching, because remember you had to have a rationale because this is extra judicial fraud. This is outside of the law. So there had to be a rationale that justified such an act. And that thing was the, accusation that black men in particular, were raping white, this had sort of broken out, in this period of time.
[00:26:35] And unfortunately it was affirmed by much else that was going on in this society, including the sciences. This is a period of the emergence of the social science. And even those, , scholars in the Ivy league schools, talked about the fact that blacks were regressing, because there were no longer under the tutelage of slavery and that they’d [00:27:00] become vicious and more and more primitive, and therefore lascivious, and criminally prone.
[00:27:06] so this was the justification and lynchings became, they became even not only more numerous in the late 19th century, but also more vicious in 1892. And Wells is 30 years old, a friend of hers in Memphis, Tennessee, by the name of Thomas Moss is. And to shorthand it. The only crime Thomas Moss, ever committed was to, , out-compete a white, , proprietor Thomas Moss was a co-owner of a grocery store, , that competed with that number or the white.
[00:27:41] Incidents that happened. Right. And he is lynched because of that. And well, begins to understand, that lynching doesn’t have anything to do really with rape, but it really an effort to keep blacks down in a period, , where there’s [00:28:00] industrialization, where there’s a great deal of economic competition.
[00:28:02] and were blacks were doing so well, they really were emerging in these communities, and beginning to thrive. And so when she understands that lynching is really at the heart of big, because it is mentioning, is within the context of all these terrible stereotypes around black people that she decides that lynching is the thing that, when she unpacks it, it makes people understand what’s really going on.
[00:28:30] she will helped deliberate sort of ideas around black people in there for, you know, facilitate equality later. But very, very quickly. She is exiled from Memphis for anti-lynching editorials. her office is destroyed. , she goes to New York for awhile and finally settles and marries and continues her reforms, in Chicago.
[00:28:53] And we can, if you want to ask him about that, I can tell you more about that. She said it just the epitome of [00:29:00] a great reformer around women’s suffrage, , around, creating a settlement house. for blacks and they’re in Chicago, she’s a co-founder of the NAACP.
[00:29:10] Derrell: Wow. yeah, my, research, her economic insights on lynching were also incredibly powerful.
[00:29:17] absolutely. last question from me. so Ida B Wells was born the, in the slavery, as you sorta noted earlier, to taught herself, to read, attended a historically black college, and was also widely read like a Shakespeare Dickens, you know, Bronte. would you talk about how this kind of.
[00:29:38] Liberal arts learning help define her life and her writings and her ideals, as well as like what we can draw from who she became from how she, became
[00:29:50] Paula: educated. Yes. she is a great example of the power of reading. , she read everything that she could get her hands on, , and lots of women’s literature [00:30:00] as you’ve just, , , noted.
[00:30:01] And when you think about what she was reading, , many of those carrots there’s, Alcott and Bronte, number of them were young girls. Who just had a lot of challenges in their lives and had some tragedies in their lives they overcame it. A number of them are orphans. Like she either was orphaned at the age of 16 because of the yellow fever epidemic.
[00:30:26] some of these girls, these characters were, offered and as well, but they were impounded. was particularly struck, with a phrase from middle Jo in little women when little Joe is determined to leave the family and go to the city, become a great writer and write things that people will always remember help to change the world.
[00:30:49] That was her aspiration. and in terms of even Shakespeare, either, love the theater and she even, played lady Macbeth once,[00:31:00] and I think from, so when I saw the comments that she should probably, you know, kept her day job. but if you think about lady Macbeth, which asks the gods on sex me so I can do what I have to do.
[00:31:15] you can see where this could be also affirmation and inspiration, for her. So she was also a lonely young woman, and she had great joy in the world that literature.
[00:31:31] And of learning also help you write your great storytellers and she became one as well.
[00:31:37] Cara: Hello professor getting, thank you so much for being with us today. have to say I’m staring. I always have a copy of little women.
[00:31:46] Paula: Love the dead end,
[00:31:48] Cara: always at the coffee table here at my office because it’s one of the things.
[00:31:52] Paula: I could go back to get it, to get it
[00:31:53] Cara: again. Now, compelled to follow up on a question, I think is related to one that [00:32:00] Derrell asked. And I want to preface this by saying that, I guess about three years ago, pre pandemic, I had the great fortune in the organization that I work for, took every single employee on a retreat, that legacy museum and.
[00:32:13] of the many, many ways in which that plays left an impression on me. One of the biggest was that, I’m a child of the 1980s. I thought I went to pretty good schools and oil boy being there, making me realize I learned nothing about the history of this country. it was a rude awakening, , for me in many, many levels about my.
[00:32:30] school education and myself education. and so the question I want to put to you is when we think about folks like Ida B Wells and her works, including not only her public writings, but her diaries and her , experiences witnessing the events That shaped our history in such horrific ways.
[00:32:50] how can reading these things help today’s students understand the history of race in lynching in America?
[00:32:58] Paula: I know Wells [00:33:00] understood. you have to not just write history, but write a narrative, a story about what was really going on. And that was one of the power she had as a, journalist.
[00:33:11] one of the things , she made sure to do because she also consider herself. she was very upset for example, that, a number of victims mentioned, you know, that they were, that their names were never known or that it, they don’t want to sound too gruesome, but often families were afraid to even , retrieve the bodies because they.
[00:33:33] penalized punished. and so she always made sure when she did her investigative reporting to talk about who those people were and to name names, , and. to give them a place, in history and I think that’s a lesson will the humanity of what she was doing, not just an ideological or a political, mission, which of course it was those two, but a [00:34:00] humane mission, as well.
[00:34:02] I’ll tell you a very quick story. I was on a panel, it was a panel on the Ida B Wells with a number of others who had worked on her. And, I was on the day is, and a woman comes up to me before the panel starts and takes my hand and she said, we learned what happened to my great grandfather by reading your book.
[00:34:24] I had quoted Ida Wells writing about, , some men who had been lynched outside of Memphis, Tennessee. And this woman’s great-grandfather who was one of those. She said he had disappeared. No one knew what happened to. So, right. Flabbergasted, right. but very, very moved. And I said, well, that’s why I’m doing this right.
[00:34:48] I mean, that’s very important. her diary is very interesting. and what I got alphabet was, well, first of all, You read the diary? [00:35:00] it is, as far as we know, the only kind of eyewitness to, the community of a place like Memphis, the Memphis, in the 1880s and in this.
[00:35:12] And you, read about all the, daily life than what people were doing, and even what people were wearing, either Wells with the clothes horse who spent too much money for clothes, which I loved. I mean, she’s very, I love this. and in other ways as well, uh, so, you get that sense, but you know, the greatest gifts that diary was for me.
[00:35:34] Was that because of her experiences of being orphaned and sort of being taken advantage of in the community, which is a whole nother story. , she was a very angry person, but she was also self-reflective and you see all this in the diary and she understood that if she didn’t get a hold of her anger, that it would destroy.
[00:35:57] And so you can see in this diary, her [00:36:00] efforts to reform herself first, and it’s excruciating, but she does it. there are psychological profiles, which showed that lots of leaders. Or really people who are because leaders, when you think about by definition, you know, are assertive and aggressive.
[00:36:18] And, and at the root of aggression is anger. but the best leaders are those who are able to transform the energy, that negative energy into positive energy. And in her case into reform, you can actually trace this in the diet. a
[00:36:35] Cara: fascinating observation. I have to say we’ve previously had a guest on this show , who made the point that, some of the most, whether they’re dynamic or popular or greatest, depending on how you find that leaders have been actors.
[00:36:51] but this notion of how do you transform that? I’ll also take with me from what you said, this idea that she had this compulsion to help name victims, [00:37:00] which I personally took away from my trip to the legacy museum, but I think is very relevant to some of the challenges Derrelle and I were discussing at the top of this hour, before we brought you on about, challenges we’re facing in this country, I would love to ask you one last question and you, began to talk about this and we put a little bit of a pin in it and I’d like to come back.
[00:37:18] So can you talk more about Wells’s work as a progressive reformer, a black, progressive reformer in thinker during this era? her gender alone. Right. But an era of overt racism and then you couple with that industrialization and corrupt urban political machines. Right. So tell us a little bit more about that and what, lessons would you have a straw?
[00:37:43] Paula: a great example. Let me explain it through an example. either Wells, Actually founded the first black women’s suffrage organization in Chicago. in 19 12, 19. And the [00:38:00] reasons why she did of course, we know that there was, lots of momentum towards suffrage and towards the 19th amendment at that period.
[00:38:09] But there was also a passage of legislation, in Illinois where women could vote in municipal elections. as a result of the progressive party winning a number of offices in Illinois. So she was preparing, black women to mobilize for this. And once that legislation was passed, and this is exactly what she did was to mobilize black women.
[00:38:33] Why? Yes, for the boat, but not just for the boat sake. There was, the black committee. and particularly the second ward, which is where all blacks coming from, the migration south were shoveled, right. was actually run by, , the, Chicago political machine. That was correct. paid people off so they could maintain their power, but at the same time, [00:39:00] the second ward and that area was deteriorating because no one was really paying attention, to it.
[00:39:05] And the quality of life of blacks was, declining. So her idea was because the men couldn’t be trusted so much. that’s mobilized. And let’s mobilize behind an independent candidate.
[00:39:20] So she challenges , the, she is so, so, and she was very, very, , successful, as a result, oh, also let me not forget that there was no black representation, even with a great, with a majority black population in that, area. So it because of her and solve a long story to unwind. because of her and because of what women are able to do, the machine had to at least give.
[00:39:51] had the, have emerged a black candidate to be a, an alderman, which is like a city Councilman and well, and her [00:40:00] people got behind him, ask her to priest who wins the election and becomes the first black older man, in Chicago. And later he will become the first black, to be in the house of representatives since reconstruct.
[00:40:14] what she did was she developed more than just one person. She developed a constituency, for progressive, reform. And ever since after her mobilization, people always had to come to the women, to make sure to get their support. And they made the difference in a number of elections.
[00:40:33] Derrell: I’m listening to all this, and I’m just saying. What have I done with my life?
[00:40:39] Paula: I’m listening to this
[00:40:40] Cara: and I’m saying, because the pen can’t be trusted, let’s mobilize the
[00:40:44] Derrell: women met. There are many lessons that many lessons,
[00:40:54] Cara: we’ve been talking so much about the writings of Ida B Wells, but we would love to hear some of your own. So,[00:41:00] would you read us a passage from your.
[00:41:02] Paula: will, this is from a chapter called the truth about lynching. What I, the Wells wrote after being exiled from Memphis, she was invited to write for an important black newspaper in New York when New York age, the column was called.
[00:41:17] The truth about lynching, which really becomes the first study of lynching. so I, tried to characterize the impact and the meaning of that work. And as it related to her, And this is also back to particularly social courage as well, physical courage in order for Wells to follow the logic of mentioning and to its ultimate conclusion, she herself had, had to take a deliberate flight from the radical innocence that was at the heart of Victorian thought.
[00:41:53] Is with no pleasure. I have dipped my hands in the corruption here exposed. She told her readers either [00:42:00] replaced the language of gentility with reality and dispense with the quote false delicacy of the quote unspeakable crime, which was lynching. She was one of the few women reformers who actually used the word rape and had learned to do so without a problem.
[00:42:20] Well, it’s understood the radical implications of your message and was prepared to endure the consequences. Even if, as she said, quote, the heavens might fall, but she had made up her mind that her campaign, wherever it took her, was her calling and that she would see it.
[00:42:39] I just crusade to tell the truth about lynching gave her the means to reorder the world and her and the racist place within it. Once the famed yourself. Now she could expose that lies the Sully, the races may. Somebody must show that the Afro-American race is more sinned [00:43:00] against, than sending wrote Wells who had found the vehicle of her destiny.
[00:43:05] And it seems to have fallen on the, to do so and quote. It’s
[00:43:11] Cara: amazing. Seems to have fallen on me. And if, even if the heavens may fall is quite a mantle to bear
[00:43:17] Paula: and the heavens didn’t fall. Let me tell you, she was like, know what they talk about? I guess it’s sort of sexist, but just talking about the little old lady driving down the middle of the street and everybody’s everything crashes around the.
[00:43:35] Cara: Amazing. Well, professor Paula Giddings. Thank you so much for your time today. This has been truly enlightening.
[00:43:42] Paula: Well, thank you. Thank you for your wonderful questions as well. please
[00:43:46] Cara: take care. I know our listeners will enjoy
[00:43:50] Paula: thank you so much.
[00:43:51] Cara: [00:44:00] First of all, thank you to Derrell for being with us today and for the great conversation, sad conversation, frustrating conversation, but I think while worth having. And, we always appreciate you coming on the show and being such a good friend of the show next week, we’re going to be speaking with Chris Sinacola and David Ferreira, and they co-editors of Pioneer’s new book.
[00:44:51] Hands-on achievement. Massachusetts is national model of vocational technical schools. Darell, anything you want to share before we sign off?
[00:44:59] Derrell: [00:45:00] No. I,, can think of lots of places I’d like to be, virtually, but none of them better than being with you and the pioneer Institute and learning curve podcasts to thank you.
[00:45:11]: We
[00:45:11] Cara: love it. I’ve got a big smile on my face right now. I needed that. Thank you. All right. We’ll talk soon. All right.
[00:45:16] Derrell: Cool.
Recent Episodes
Searching For Space: Massachusetts Real Estate in a Time of Covid
/in Economic Opportunity, Featured, Housing, Podcast Hubwonk /by Editorial StaffHubwonk host Joe Selvaggi talks with real estate expert and broker/owner Pauline Donnelly about the disruption and trends created by the Covid-19 pandemic and steps buyers and renters can take to become more informed, prudent, and competitive in the frenzied market of Greater Boston and Martha’s Vineyard.
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Joe Selvaggi:
This is Hubwonk. I’m Joe Selvaggi
Joe Selvaggi:
Welcome to Hubwonk, a podcast of Pioneer Institute, a think tank in Boston. For more than two years, the COVID pandemic profoundly disrupted every aspect of our lives. Now the least of which was where we wanted to live, asked to stay at home for both work and recreation. Americans naturally became restless and began looking for more space, either in less urban settings or by buying or renting second homes. Unfortunately, this shift in demand for space could not be met with a supply for such homes leading to substantial upward trends in home prices in nearly every market in the country, in Massachusetts, where the cost of homes had already been among the highest in the nation buyers eager to enter or upgrade have seen double digit annual home price appreciation all as the backdrop of rising interest rates, looms in the background. What are those who want to find a home in the base date supposed to do as home prices and rents are slipping beyond their reach?
Joe Selvaggi:
What are the strategies that can offer buyers a better chance at finding a suitable home in a highly competitive market? And what pitfalls should those prospective buyers avoid? When shopping in this frenzied setting? My guest today is Pauline Donnelley real estate expert and broker owner of Donnelley company, a residential real estate firm with offices in Boston and Martha’s vineyard Pauline’s experience of 20 years in Boston. Real estate has seen many market cycles and the 2008 financial crisis, but little prepared her for the shock of the pandemic. Pauline will share with us her experience leading a firm of 30 agents through a pandemic, how the market changed and what she sees as the leading real estate trends. Moving forward, Paul will discuss useful strategies for becoming a more competitive buyer, including the importance of building a team of experts that understands clients’ unique needs to navigate the transaction Hubwonk listeners should also know that Pauline is also my wife, as well as an invaluable supporter of my work as host of Hubwonk. When I return, I’ll be joined by real estate expert and broker owner Pauline Donnelley. Okay. We’re back. This is Hubwonk, I’m Joe Selvaggi, and I’m now pleased to be joined by real estate broker owner and market expert, Pauline Donnelley. Welcome to Hubwonk, Pauline.
Pauline Donnelly:
Thank you, Joe. I’m happy to be here.
Joe Selvaggi:
Okay. Well before we dive into our topic on the state of regional real estate, I’d like to have you share with our listeners, I’ve introduced you as an expert but I’d love to hear how you became an expert, your trajectory from your first time in real estate to where you are today.
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. so I had personally been involved in many real estate real estate transactions of my own, and always was fascinated by the process and enjoyed the process and decided I took a leap of faith and made a career change and became a real estate agent when I was in my early thirties and just immediately talked to it. I, I was very quickly, very successful. I became a full-time real estate agent. I focused on the beacon hill market in the Boston marketplace and very quickly became the top producing agent in that marketplace. And over the years it sold many, many properties throughout the city of Boston, ultimately was given the opportunity to become a sales manager, which was a fantastic experience for me. Really got to see the real estate industry from the other side of the table. So I learned a great deal about how real estate offices and real estate firms operate.
Pauline Donnelly:
And then I it’s a long story, really how I became a real estate coach, but let me just say it was because I noticed there was a real void in the real estate industry with respect to the support that was given to real estate agents. And I became a certified business coach and started working exclusively. I had for three years, I had my own real estate coaching business and worked exclusively with real estate professionals across the gamut, really. First newly licensed real estate agents. Broker owners like myself now, sales managers, experienced agents, came to me, looking for support and guidance about how to grow their businesses or how to manage their businesses. I did that for three years and then really felt that I was missing out on the, a huge component about the real estate process. I would coach my clients and we would work intensely on a, on a listing presentation and a meeting with a client, and then they would disappear from my coaching office.
Pauline Donnelly:
And I wouldn’t hear from them until they came back to tell me the results of their presentation. And I started to feel like I wanted more and ultimately decided to start my own firm, which I did in 2017. So were in our sixth year decided to open my own firm so that I could be more comprehensively assisting real estate professionals in the development of their business. I am I’m a former teacher. I have a master’s in education and I don’t sell real estate myself anymore. I don’t work directly with buyers and sellers anymore. I am purely in a support role for my agents and for our clients and I’m managing the business. I had two offices and I just found the managing my own real estate firm offered me all the things that I loved about real estate. I’m very much involved in our transactions. And I’m also in that role of teaching and guiding and mentoring, coaching my agents. I love it.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. Okay. So now your role as a broker owner so you’re not competing with your agents as a, as a fellow agent, but you’re rather the coach, the mentor, and you, you guide them through, I guess, what are the most challenging aspects of real estate transactions? Which is great because I that’s what I wanna talk about the challenges of real estate, particularly in this market. So let’s start with some recent history very recent early 20, 20 you’re chugging along, you’ve got two offices. I don’t know how many agents you may have had then but you’re doing well. It’s early 20, 20, and suddenly COVID hit, let’s just give our listeners a little sense of what your immediate reactions were because you know, we all lived through it, but you were in the real estate business at that time. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> what, what was your first, your fear of what would happen and then share with us what ultimately did happen when COVID hit?
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. I’ll be completely honest when the lockdown first happened, I would say the number one motion I was feeling was panic. Obviously none of us had lived through a pandemic before, and none of us had any predictions and speculations about what was going to happen in the early days of the lockdown. I would say the first two weeks of the lockdown, I spent eight hours a day on the phone talking to my agents, talking to attorneys, talking to our clients who were looking to meet for the answers. And it was a tough time because I did not have the answers. But let’s just say, I mean, fast forward, it didn’t take very long for us to realize that real estate actually was going to continue to be very healthy and very robust during the pandemic. It was hard to, to explain why when we were being told to stay home, our clients wanted to change their homes.
Pauline Donnelly:
And despite the risks associated with buying and selling properties, our clients wanted to do it. And I think changing their home, changing their living situation was giving our clients some level of control in a situation where there was no control in any other area. So I would say, you know, fortunately mine was one of the industries that fed extremely well. I won’t say it wasn’t without its challenges. There was a lot of ups and downs. We have to, we had to navigate, there were lots of things that changed in the way that we did business, but those of us in real estate are used to dynamic marketplaces. Our, our industry is ever changing. This was obviously one area pandemic that we had not had any previous experience with and didn’t know how that was going to change our industry.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now you’ve got two offices I think nearly 30 agents. And you’ve got your sort of finger on the pulse of both urban Boston, where you, where you started your business, but also you have agents who work in the suburbs. And of course even further out, we’re talking about Martha’s vineyard. Those are primarily second homes. Was there a trend the obvious I’m gonna state when the lockdowns happened is perhaps people wanted more space, particularly urban people wanted more space. Did you see a, a, a, a, a shift from one preference to another in the midst of a, a pandemic?
Pauline Donnelly:
Definitely. so I have the two offices, as you said, I have one in Boston and one on Martha’s vineyard. I have 30 agents between those two offices, and I would say again, difficult to predict, but that what ultimately happened was because businesses and offices were closing down and workers were becoming remote workers, all of a sudden one bedroom apartments in the city. Weren’t doing the job for couples living in the city, because if both of them, husband and wife were working remotely, they just didn’t have the space to be able to function. So we found a lot of our clients needed because they were working remotely, extra rooms and extra space. I would say many of the clients, we ultimately helped leave the city and go through the suburbs. Probably would’ve made the decision to do that a year or two in the future.
Pauline Donnelly:
But I think a lot of those decisions were precipitated and they left the city earlier and went to the suburbs simply because of the pandemic, the Martha’s vineyard office, I think again, a huge surprise there, secondary home market. Primarily we found a lot of our renters. So we do a large portion of vacation rentals in the vineyard office. A lot of the people that rented with us summer after summer, decided to spend longer periods of time on the vineyard. And so were looking for longer term rentals. Many of them turned into buyers. Many of our renters wanted to own on the vineyard. Many of our homeowners, existing homeowners on the vineyard wanted to upgrade on the vineyard. And of course we had low inventory. The same was true in the suburbs, as we were helping our clients move from Boston into the surrounding suburbs, inventory became the big issue because the demand far surpassed the supply.
Joe Selvaggi:
So you’re leading me to my next question, which you have a huge increase in demand for more space. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> the people already living in that space, in those larger homes in the suburbs or the exces weren’t about to leave in the midst of a pandemic. So you have a huge demand, no supply an economist would predict that prices would go up substantially in that sort of frenzy. So share with us, have of mm-hmm <affirmative> prices in those markets gone up
Pauline Donnelly:
Yes. A hundred percent. Well, they have not gotten up a hundred percent, but absolutely yes, prices have gone up. And, and I would say, you know, pre COVID, the city of Boston was a very, very strong market. Most of our listings were selling immediately with multiple offers over the asking price, what happened in the island market, but also in the suburbs around Boston, during COVID was not even close to what was happening pre COVID in the city. And we thought that was an insane market. The suburbs, I would say some in some areas and in some price points, the prices had probably gone up between 30 and percent. We, some of my agents who focus in the suburban markets are on a weekly basis, writing six offers for different buyers, and some weeks don’t even convert one of those into a sale. It is such a competitive market. We are seeing 16, 17, 20, even more than that offers on one property. There’s only one buyer that can win that property. So you can imagine how competitive those markets are.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yes. I’ve heard sort of anecdotally from of friends of mine that have been in those long lines, open houses and, and this frenzy competition to get those homes, but now, okay. We’re we’re here, we are in mid of 20, 22. Let’s hope we haven’t, I’m not planning any COVID episodes in the future. So things are starting to change now. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> you talk about a boiling hot market. I’ve heard that it’s starting to cool a bit. There’s a lot of components to that. Share with us if it’s, if we’re not in the throes of a, a pandemic or a frenzy to escape the city and, and perhaps returning to some more semblance of normal, what do you attribute the, the change?
Pauline Donnelly:
Sure. So, as I said, I have 30 agents and I would say, you know, every Monday morning I call my top agents and I say, okay, what happened this weekend? What did you see? My a I’m not selling at the moment. So my agents are the ones who are in the trenches. They’re there on the front lines, working with buyers and sellers. The weekend is obviously our busiest time at this certainly in this season. So I call my agents and say, what are you seeing what’s happening out there? And I think, you know, the, the rising interest rates has had an interesting effect on buyer behavior in particular, and to a certain extent seller behavior. So, because the rates are going up, it’s in the media, we’re talking about the rates increasing fairly dramatically. A lot of our younger clients do not have the historical perspective that let’s say our parents do, or even we do.
Pauline Donnelly:
I remember my very first mortgage. I think my rate was 6% and we all thought it was phenomenally low. Now we’re talking about interest rates in the 5% range for a lot of the younger clients we work with. That seems very, very high. When 12, 18 months ago, you could get a rate under 3%. So what’s happened a little bit recently is there has been an intense frenzy an urgency. I’ve got to buy something now because the rates are going up. So we did see a little bit of an intense period of time where it became even more competitive. And I’m talking about this outside of the city. Primarily we also both in the city and outta the city have recently had several of our sellers reach out to us and say, you know, I was thinking about putting my home on the market later this year, but I think I should do it now because of the interests of rates are going up, perhaps demand is going to change. So I would say there’s a shift happening and it’s different depending upon are we talking about the city, the suburbs, the island, are we talking about under a million dollars, over a million dollars, over $2 million, the price range, the market, the population, the marketplace, really it, it what’s happening is shifting across all of those variables, but it’s a little bit different depending upon the variable, if that makes sense.
Joe Selvaggi:
No, it does. Again I, I I’m steering away from hardcore data and, and numbers for the benefit of our listeners, but anecdotally again someone who qualified for a mortgage and it was 3% now looking at a 5% mortgage, which I think, you know, we’re looking at 30 year rates that increase their pay that can increase their payments on a 30 year mortgage by 40%. So for some buyers that may not make a big difference, but for those who are reaching for their dream house that make a substantial difference in their, in their monthly payments. I wanna take our listeners to just a, a simple fact that I think often is overlooked. When we think about buying and selling homes in many cases, it’s not that you are looking for just more space but rather life happening to share with our listeners, what is it, why do people buy and sell houses? Each of us has his own story or idea, but as someone who’s done it for a long time in many markets, what makes people buy and sell?
Pauline Donnelly:
That’s an excellent question. And I would say my agents hear me say this all the time. Remember that people buy and sell real estate around a major life event. Usually sometimes it’s a happy life event. We hope so in most of the cases, but sometimes it’s a sad life event. People buy and sell real estate because they’re getting married because they’re getting divorced or having a baby. They’ve got a job changed. Somebody has died. There’s lots of reasons why people buy and sell real estate, but it is huge, usually connected to something that’s going on in their life. They need more room, they need less room, they need to spend more, they can spend more, they need to spend less. So there’s something going on in a person’s life. For example, during the pandemic, they’re working from home, they make a different decision about their housing needs.
Joe Selvaggi:
Now, if, if folks are having these life events and, and need to move, and they, you know, what they want is just out of reach. We haven’t talked at all about the rental market now. I, I know again, anecdotally in Boston, when we had those lockdowns it was a ghost town and we’re our, our business is EDS and meds. We had, we have lots of schools and lots of hospitals, and those two industries virtually shut down except for you know, small, essential workers in hospitals. And it was a ghost town. And I think the rental market followed suit, I think there were, you know, all kinds of empty rentals. But that seems to have sprung back. The city’s teaming were full of students graduating. What has the rental market looked like through COVID? And now, as you see it from where you sit
Pauline Donnelly:
In 2020 during the lockdown the, the rental market was essentially dead. And, and a lot of that was because, you know, most of our rental clients in the city are younger populations. They are graduate students, incoming residents at the hospitals in Boston. They are new graduates starting their first jobs, younger couples, younger singles who have perhaps not yet saved enough money to buy their first home. And so during the lockdown, when they were being sent home to work remotely, many of them simply did not renew their leases, did not look for new apartments. And they went home to live with family. So that population of renters just disappeared. This is very, very different now. And those people are coming back to the city. Their offices are open again. It’s a very exciting time in the rental market at the moment. And the people that are getting frustrated because they can’t buy homes are actually making the decision to rent until things settle down a little bit. So right now we have an unbelievable demand in terms of rentals. We are seeing multiple office situations, and even in some cases, we have seen escalation clauses on rental applications. So the rental market has rebounded and then some, it is very robust in the city at the moment.
Joe Selvaggi:
So we’re, we don’t have a lot of good news for our listeners where you’re saying the, the housing market, if you wanna buy it’s expensive, where rates are going up, renting is expensive, that’s going up. So I think our listener is looking for some kind of guidance. I think we wanna have some useful, actionable information here. It might be tempting to say, look, if the purchase market is overheated, maybe I’ll rent for a while and, and, and let prices come back down to earth. Maybe there’s some recession in our future, which may reverse trends. How does one know you know, again, if they’re looking for your advice, if they’re renting or buying, how does one know whether to pull the trigger and, and, and, and buy what they can afford, or, you know, how do you help people navigate whether they they buy or, or, or rent a few more years?
Pauline Donnelly:
It’s a great question. And I’m gonna give a, a, a plug here for my industry. But, but, but this is very sincere, the best way to navigate the housing market and, and, and make decisions about what to do, whether it’s to buy, whether it’s to rent is really, and truly is to establish a relationship with a real estate agent, because as real estate agents, certainly, you know, my firm, I coached my agents were, were teachers, we’re counselors, we’re coaches ourselves with our clients. We use an adage in real estate that buyers are liars. Of course we don’t mean that what we mean is our buyers. And let’s say, use a more general term. Our clients don’t really know what they want simply because they don’t know what they don’t know. And we see our role very much as real estate professionals, as guiding and educating.
Pauline Donnelly:
I think the educating is a huge part of this, our clients. So they understand what they’re looking for, what their preferences are, and it’s a series of questioning and guiding them to get to that point, but also what their options are. And I think it’s that relationship that really helps a client understand what exactly am I looking for in my next home and what exactly are my options? So I think a, a relationship with a real estate professional is, is essential. The other parts of this too, is a relationship with a lender. You know, we, as real estate agents are not doing any great financial analysis of our clients assets and income, and so on. That’s the lender’s job. And the lenders can be very, very creative and it’s very customized for each client. So what works for me might not work for you.
Pauline Donnelly:
Every single client’s financial situation is a little bit different, and we do encourage that’s. One of the first things we do with our clients is encourage them that we have the resources to talk to a lender so that they understand are they in a position to purchase and what is their purchasing power? And if they’re not in a position to purchase, why not, and what do they need to, to do to get there? So I would say those two components relationship with a real estate professional and a relationship with a lender are essential for anybody, whether they’re buying or rentings to understand what their options are and what their current situation is.
Joe Selvaggi:
So that’s an interesting story in that lenders, it sounds like you’re not talking about the lending industry in general, but in an actual individual, a person who understands your financial situation and who can twist a few knobs and perhaps get you a mortgage where let’s say a large bank, you know, household names might just look at a a checklist and and be somewhat less flexible. How I’m gonna call those a portfolio lenders or, or boutique lenders much the way you’re perhaps a boutique real estate firm. How do you find these kinds of lenders? Is, is it through an agent or is there, you know, are, are there equivalent of dialing company in the real, in the lending community?
Pauline Donnelly:
That’s a great question. And, you know, we do a lot of connecting our clients to lenders and same with real estate attorneys, home inspectors, contractors, anybody that’s connected to a real estate transaction, we have those resources. And I would say we also have those established relationships. So we know because of our experiences, which lenders, which attorneys can get the job done, we know which ones are directable, who can stand behind their product. And so we can often offer those resources to our clients. And, and if I can, Joe, I’d love to just share a story, just, just as an example of how a lender can make the difference for a buyer. And, and it, and it requires a conversation and an analysis of a buyer situation, a financial situation for, for them to figure this out. But we had a client in our office recently who wanted to upgrade to a larger property and believed that they needed to sell their current home in order to buy their next home.
Pauline Donnelly:
We introduced them to a lender. This client had great income, but didn’t necessarily have the down payment for the more expensive home until they had sold their current home. The lender encouraged them to take out a home equity line of credit on their current home. They had sufficient equity in that home so that they could use that for their down payment on their new home. They could purchase their new home close on their new home and then sell their current home buyer might not understand that those kinds of things are an option. And that’s why we really encourage every single buyer to talk to a lender before they begin their home search. So they understand what their options are before we start to look at property.
Joe Selvaggi:
Yeah. I think you’ve made a strong case for the boutique lender. Let me take a step back. You know, we live in an information age where I think everybody knows everything, right. You’ve made the case to build a relationship with a real estate agent, but frankly, we’ve got all these great search engines, you know, and we, we see properties that come on the market, literally within minutes of of the listing going live. How, what can an agent do that? You know, a good internet surfer can’t do just as well explain to our listeners why, why a relationship with a, with a real estate agent would put them, let’s say ahead of everyone else.
Pauline Donnelly:
I love that question, Joe. And I will say after almost 20 years in the real estate world, I still maintain, it’s an old fashioned business in the respect that it is a people business. We are helping people make major life decisions and we’re helping people make major investments. And I would say there is certainly in our marketplace, such a nuance to the properties that we are selling. So for example, if you are looking at photographs on Zillow and you are doing the virtual tours, and you believe that that’s the property for you, then I would say you’re missing it on a huge amount of information that a real estate professional then can give you. For example, that might not be a great condo association. There might be low owner occupancy in that association that that building might need might have some deferred maintenance. That’s not going to be in the listing on Zillow, but a real estate agent who knows her market, his market well is going to be able to give you that information.
Pauline Donnelly:
But also to go back to what I said about, I encourage my agents to be coaches and educators, understanding from a buyer might think they want the four bedroom colonial in Lexington, but after talking, but they might not be able to afford to that. But after talking to them and understanding what their preferences are and what’s going on in their life, that’s leading to them, making a decision to buy a home in the suburbs. We might find out that in actual factor, three bedroom has in Arlington would suffice and do the trick for them just fine. The other thing I also say to our clients and to my agents is get inside the properties on a private viewing. Don’t go to an open house, set up a private viewing to go and see a property. There is no substitute for getting inside the four walls of a property. There’s a lot that’s missed when you are clicking through the photographs on Zillow. So I think there’s, there’s a lot of context. I think there’s a lot of gray that is translated by the real estate professionals that is simply not possible to find out online.
Joe Selvaggi:
So I, I wanna get even deeper into this sort of conversation about, I mean, I think our listeners are saying, okay, look, I’m, I’m tired of the, the, the cattle calls for these hot properties. I, I I’m, I’m still dying to move and I, I want a strategic advantage. A lot of folks I know in my personal life have, have gone in and, and it started to make compromises on these things called contingencies. And I think for our listeners, I’ll, I’ll just explain so you don’t have to, that contingency is a way for a buyer essentially to back out of a deal either because they find something in a home inspection that, that is unsettling or their lender can’t give them the loan. So they, you know, they, they don’t want to be on the hook and not have a mortgage these seem like very important contingencies. But some people are waving them, explain to our listeners, is it, is it okay ever. Okay. And, and under what conditions would you say you know, go ahead and wave that contingency if, if you really wanna be competitive.
Pauline Donnelly:
So that’s a loaded question, Joe, is it ever okay? Well, I would say it really depends on the individual buyer. It depends on the property and certainly you’re absolutely right. In order to be competitive, many buyers have been waving their contingencies. So the opting not to have a home inspection and not opting not to have a financing contingency. And I would say the most important thing is that a buyer understands what that means and what the risks are in waving those contingencies. And we, we take that very, very seriously here at Donna and co because waving a home inspection for a first time home buyer, who’s buying an older home that clearly visually has plenty of things wrong with. It’s probably not an ideal situation, but if you are, if we’re selling a property to a veteran purchaser who understands and has the resources, no matter what they find wrong with the home, they can fix it.
Pauline Donnelly:
Then it’s a different matter in terms of waving the financing contingency. There’s a great deal at risk. So what that means is the buyer is basically saying, I am going to purchase this property no matter what. So if that buyer does not get approved for their mortgage, they are on the hook to purchase the property no matter what, or they risk losing any deposit money that they have put down. And that, that could be hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending upon the purchase, the sales price of the property, what we usually recommend, because we cannot make that call for a buyer. We usually recommend, first of all, we explain exactly what their risk is in waving a financing contingency, but we usually recommend, and we get involved in this conversation that we talk to their lender and how comfortable is their lender about their waving, their financing contingency. Nobody is more conservative than lenders. And so if that lender says you are all set, you can wave your financing contingency. We usually take that to the bank, no pun intended.
Joe Selvaggi:
That’s, that’s a wonderful story. You brought it back to our original case for having a relationship with your lender. He can tell you, or she can tell you how far you can stretch it. And whether, you know, this is prudent, you also mentioned inspection contingency. Again, you wanna have a, perhaps a relationship with a contractor who can say, okay, is that termites or, or, or something else. Right. so that they can give you an assessment of whether it’s wise to wa wave a contingency. I, I, we’re running out of time and I wanna get to some of the fun stuff. Particularly the vineyard, you know, we’re recording on a holiday weekend, the start of summer the vineyard is, is teaming with people. What are some of the trends you see on the vineyard? Has it you know, been the frenzy that I’ve heard or is it steady as she goes on, on the vineyard?
Pauline Donnelly:
It’s definitely been a frenzy since 2020. And interestingly I opened my office in January of 2020 and signed a lease on an office space there in the summer of 2020. Despite the lockdown I, I forged ahead and actually was probably good timing, not necessarily planned that way. That market is incredibly busy. I think both from a sales perspective and from a rental perspective, our vacation rentals we have a vacation rental business on the island. We are already taking reservations for somewhere of 20, 23. Believe it or not. I think like all markets inventory of available properties for sale has been the issue there. You know, and I would say J just to sort of bring together several of the questions you’ve asked me today, the market there is shifting similarly to it, shifting here in the city and outside of the city of Boston. And when we talk about contingencies, we are starting to notice buyer behavior is changing and buyers are becoming a little more nervous and a little more cautious and are starting to insert contingencies into their purchases. Again, we’re seeing that happen in Boston, in the suburbs and also on the island.
Joe Selvaggi:
I I’ll love a, a softball actually is like, if those of us who, who don’t have generations of family who’ve lived on the, and know their way around, how does someone who just is fascinated by the vineyard Bostonian or, or you know, someone in Massachusetts who wants to be part of that market, who wants to see if it’s right for them, for their holidays how does one go about, you know, what’s square one, how does one learn their way around the rental and even the purchase of the buying market on, on the vineyard?
Pauline Donnelly:
I would say the same answer I gave you about how to navigate the market in Boston and surrounding areas. I think it’s even more so the case on the island to work with a local agent, to work with somebody who knows that island and lives on the island and can really orient you the islands, a small island that have very, very distinct areas and towns with very different vibes and cultures. And I think working with an agent that can explain that to you, help you navigate the island and help you hone your preferences is essential so that you understand how the island is put together and how the island works and how it will work for you. So a local expert is I, I would say essential if you’re thinking about buying or even renting on the island.
Joe Selvaggi:
Indeed. I think I was reading the bios on your website of some of those agents. They they’re born and bred. So they’re true Islanders, not the wash ashores, like the rest of us, so should know, or we’ve run out of time. This has been wonderful before we leave. I wanna have our listeners be able to find you where can if they’re looking for an expert or advice where can they find you and Donnelley and company?
Pauline Donnelly:
You can check out our website, which is simply Donnelly and co.com, or they can call the office (617) 982-0160. We’d be happy to help.
Joe Selvaggi:
Wonderful. And I also enjoyed reading the blog that you’ve I think you’ve put out a weekly blog with some useful tips on, on all the things we’ve discussed here today. So thank you very much for your time. Pauline. This has been a great conversation gets all excited for buying a home or perhaps renting someplace on the vineyard. This is a perfect show for, for the holiday. Thank you.
Pauline Donnelly:
Thank you, Joe. Thanks for having me.
Joe Selvaggi:
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