Architecture, And: Rochelle Mills, Shaping Community Stories

A Welcome to Practice Disrupted, a podcast where we find ways to create new solutions to current challenges while elevating the value of architects. I'm your host, Evelyn Li, an architect who spans tech as an angel investor, startup advisor, and founder of Practice of Architecture. Whether you're a seasoned architect or just starting in the field, this podcast Hello, disruptors. Welcome back to this week's episode of Practice Disrupted. Today's guest is someone whose career journey has taken her from high design to housing justice, and every twist along the way tells a story of resilience, creativity, and community transformation. Rochelle Mills is the president and CEO of Innovative Housing Opportunities or IHO, a nonprofit developer focused on high quality, holistic, affordable housing across California. Her work doesn't just put roof over heads. It reimagines what community can look and feel like for people often left out of the design conversation.

A Trained in architecture, Rochelle brings a rare design lens to housing development. Before IHO, she ran her own design practice, co founded a firm with her husband, and launched a wildly successful architecture and cultural tourism company called Arcoteurs, all while raising a family and navigating the industry with relentless grit and humor. In this episode, we'll talk about the power of design to shape lives, what it means to lead with purpose, and why she believes that everyone deserves beauty, dignity and belonging in the places they call home. Rochelle, welcome to the show. Welcome to Practice Disrupted. Thank you for taking time away from your communities to join us here. We're so happy to have you. So lucky to have you.

B Well, thank you for inviting me. I'm always excited to talk to someone, particularly someone in the field of architecture.

A Yeah. Well, I mean, you do have a background in architecture, which is why I brought you onto the podcast. Before we go down that career journey, I just wanted to start with kind of an icebreaker. What was your draw towards architecture in the very beginning?

B Oh my goodness. When I was a wee lass, my parents took me to the LA County Museum of Art, and there was an exhibit there on miniature furniture, and I was so enamored with the detail. And I remember thinking that's what I'm gonna do. I am going to build beautiful miniature furniture. But I didn't like the setting that the furniture was in, so I thought if I do the furniture, then I've I've gotta design the environment around it. And if it's that nice, then it needs to be for full size people and not little people. And so, therefore, I didn't know the word for it, but it ultimately ended up being architecture. And what people would say was, oh, you mean construction, or, oh, you mean I just knew that I wanted to have an impact on how we move through an environment.

B What was the final final for me was I saw a photograph of Frank Lloyd Wright. It was the cape, the cane, the hat that he was so impeccably dressed on a job site where it was inappropriate how well dressed he was. And I thought, that's the attitude I want. If I build this fantastic environment, I need to be that person that everybody says, who is that? So I remember doing that. Now the irony is when I was in architecture school is when I realized that's what my dad had wanted to be. My dad had wanted to be an architect, and he certainly could have told me, but kids don't listen to their dads. What I remember is that my dad, through growing up, would talk about Buckminster Fuller and the geodesic dome. I didn't understand at all what that meant.

B He and my mother would take me to the Hollyhock House. And I remember being in the school of architecture my first year, sleeping through one of the lectures and waking up and seeing a picture of the Barnsdoll House. And my husband to be said to me, that's the house you took classes at. And I said, no. That's not the house. I took houses at the Holly I took classes at the Hollyhock House. And he said, that is the same thing. And when I called my parents to tell them, I just saw the Barnsdall House, My parents said, you gotta be kidding.

B The entire eighteen years we have taken you to see architecture, and you wait till some guy tells you that it's architecture for you to be excited about it. So I remember thinking at that point, maybe there were subliminal messages from my parents, but that is how I remember it. That miniature furniture setting, seeing Frank Lloyd Wright years later, and then just recognizing that the environment, whether it is on the street or in an interior, has the power that it just evokes something in the same way artwork evokes an emotion. I don't think people can be indifferent to architecture. And if they are, to me, that is one of the few failures, is because you either you have to have some reaction to it. If you have none, then it probably is not architecture.

A I appreciate that saying, I feel like that's very quotable. If you have no, if you have no reaction, then it's not architecture. Like, I feel like that can be said of a warehouse. Although I do honestly feel tiny in warehouses, so I do get a reaction. But, yeah.

B Yeah. You do have a I mean, there is even if it is not the way you would want it done, but there are buildings that I think all of us would agree don't really warrant our consideration. And I'm sure people who are listening to this can think of something like that, where you just wonder, you know, it just doesn't warrant my consideration. And it that maybe you may have ones that you really have a reaction negatively to. But the ones that you just pass by and you, you know, you don't even remember that you went by it, that seems like time wasted.

A For me, that's actually the architecture critic that's still within you because I feel like the non architecture people, like, they wouldn't even consider that's time wasted. It just wouldn't even register.

B Yeah. I don't think that they would. I don't think they would. I remember my dad said to me when I graduated from architecture school, he asked me to do a kitchen and for me to redo the kitchen in in my family home. And by that time, Richard Meyer was a fan. I was just a big fan of Richard Meyer. And I remember reading that that is how he got started. And so that was overwhelming in some regards.

B Oh my gosh. I'm gonna be Richard Meyer now because I'm redoing my kitchen my mother's kitchen. And my dad said to my mother, you know, let's just go to Home Depot because she's gonna give us architecture, and we just want cabinets. And I thought my dad was going for that mediocre, just vanilla, you know, just utilitarian, and I thought, wow. He sent me to architecture school. He wanted to be an architect, but he recognizes that at this moment he simply wants some off the shelf cabinets. He does not want me to think deeply about what would a bottle of ketchup want to be housed in.

A Needless to say, the problem statements that you're trying to solve and wrap your head around nowadays are, are much bigger and a lot more complex. So moving on from that we less, you went on and you got your architecture degree and you found yourself in where?

B So when I graduated from architecture school, I had the, architecture school, I had the one of the last four year degrees. And so it wasn't a professional degree. I needed to go back to school and get a master's to be able to get that. And so I came back to Los Angeles, and went over to, USC, the University of Southern California, to see about getting a degree. And what they told me is it would be three years to get my first professional degree. I barely got out of the first four. So three to end up with another bachelor's didn't interest me. But in California, if you had twelve years of experience, you could get your license.

B And

A so And we still have

B that path open. Exactly. And so, and there's still hope for me yet. And so I'm thinking at that moment, I'm gonna, you know, find a studio and go into design, do something exciting in California and earn that cape and, you know, cane and hat and do all of that. But I could not find a firm because everybody in Los Angeles was looking for USC graduates. That would be the first thing, are you from USC? Because that is, you know, we have our pipeline is coming from there. Occasionally, I would hear someone say, did you come from UCLA? Because we get our pipeline from UCLA. So the very first job I had was a small one man office from an architect.

B His name was Ed Hunt on Melrose Place in Hollywood. And he went to school in Texas, and he said to me, I don't care about USC or UCLA. If you're interested, then come and work for me. And so I worked for him for a little while. The first year out of architecture school, I worked for seven different companies. Because First year? The first year. Because most of the architects who would hire me were small sole practitioners, and none of them had business sense. So when the project was completed, the office would pretty much close.

B And I remember at the end of that first year when I, my husband had graduated and he decided he would move to California because our parents didn't think an interracial couple would work in South Carolina where he was from. And they both said, quite frankly, nobody in the Southeast is going to hire an architect to design what you guys are designing. They'll do that in California, but they won't do that in other provincial communities. So we both came here, and I remember my parents thinking, well, what is this field that, you know, we have paid for that nobody seems to be able to hold a job? Now most I will say, admittedly, I was looking for small practitioners.

A Right.

B But it it really was the case. None of us, we didn't learn business strategy. And so scaling and growing a business was just not it it just wasn't in the toolkit that architects learned.

A Yeah. If there's arguments there, I feel like, you know, from a design sense, we have a very unique education right within the studio construct. But lawyers didn't don't have business school training unless they go specifically into some type of business law. Veterinarians, doctors, dentists, you know, all these professional service individuals that essentially, if they wanna practice on their own, have to open their own business, don't have that background.

B But what most of them that you are selecting will have to work for a bonafide medical operation. And so they will see that hierarchy in those levels. When you're working for a sole practitioner, they don't have a director of operations or those kinds of things. So you really are and it it really is a renaissance position in the sense that you are designing the buildings, you're doing the technical drawings, you're doing your own payroll, and you're paying the bills. And most of what when I was when I came out of school in '86, most of us were independent contractors. So they we weren't you know, our bosses weren't even paying our taxes and social security.

A Right. That's something that you have to manage on your own.

B Exactly. And so it it really was a field where you could be the renegade. You can be you know, you can go out and put out your shingle and do your own thing and find your client. You you really could scrap and get through it. But when you get to the point where you've got I remember wanting to have my own shingle, and I would ask people, how do you do it? They say, word-of-mouth, word-of-mouth. Well, it takes a little while unless you've got family life, Richard Meyer, that it takes a little while for you to build that. And by the time you build it and people start to come to you, hopefully, you've been in business long enough, but my husband and I had gotten to the point in '92 when the economy was shifting as it does from time to time. And both of us got laid off from the same studio.

B And I went off on my own, and my husband decided he would get a partnership with the architect that we were working for, because why wouldn't he want 50% of nothing? And so I remember thinking, okay, you do that. I will figure out what to do and start doing remodels and doing those kinds of things. Going after small commissions and small projects and doing things like that. And that was when I started to kind of bleed outside of architecture and do some other things to help just make ends meet, but they were all still components of the world of architecture.

A This is around the time so it looks like nineteen ninety five ish, you started the Architeurs. Tell us about how that came into play.

B I remember working, doing some work with my husband before that had happened. And just I remember I I just needed to be inspired. I'm I'm the kind of person I need to be inspired to be able to do the work that I do. I loved going to see architecture. I didn't necessarily want to read about architecture. My husband loves architecture books. I didn't want to read about it, but I can't absorb it if I don't hear it. And so I was really active in the National Organization of Minority Architects.

B And I remember as a group, we would talk about, you know, we should you know, people should, appreciate the work that we do. We should be more valued as practitioners. But what I found is that we we were telling people that we needed to be valued. We weren't showing it and people need to see it. You know, you can't architecture is truly a three-dimensional art. It's a three-dimensional craft. It cannot be spoken and it can't be read. It needs to be seen.

B And so for me, you know, my husband would always say things, remember in school when we did x y z? No, because slideshows don't work for me. But if I can get the architect to walk me through it and and talk me through it, then I can get it. And I remember around that time, I was editing the NOMA newsletter. I had joined the Society of Architectural Historians board of directors for Southern California, and we would take people out to see work. And I loved that as you're explaining it, the light bulb, you could see the light bulb coming on to the people who were around us, but it it resonated with me because I understood the stories. And so I remember thinking, if I could go see some of these buildings that people are talking about, the case study houses, the, you know, a lot of the really great contemporary architecture because LA and Southern California really was doing incredible things. You had amazing women architects that I admired and if I could just have them tell me about their work. So I remember thinking, well, let me do it through the Society of Architectural Historians, and we'll do it in Phoenix.

B That way, if the tours bomb, nobody back home will remember that I had anything to do.

A Wait. So you were living in LA, but doing these

B tours in Phoenix? Yes. So there was this moment in time when seven Frank Lloyd Wright buildings were going on the market at the same time, and there was a Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit. And my husband's a big Frank Lloyd Wright fan, and he said, well, why don't we go out to Phoenix and see this work? And I said, well, then let me put a note in the LA Times and tell people, if you are interested, we can put a four day tour of architecture in Phoenix. We had That's

A not a small commitment, four days.

B It wasn't. But it was for me, nobody knew me. So if they said no, it wasn't. They were saying no to Rochelle. They just weren't gonna do it. So with these seven houses being on the market and the let's see. The seven houses were on the market. You know, the brokers wanted them to be seen.

B So the brokers said, well, yeah. If you're gonna bring me 25 Frank Lloyd Wright fans, then, yeah, we'll open up all the homes. And then I remember there was a magazine there and I contacted the magazine and I said, who are the up and coming architects that we should see? And she said, well, here's the architects. Now my husband has this incredible encyclopedic memory of all the architecture journals and he would say, here's an architect you should see, here's an artist you should see, here's the hotel we should stay at and then I would find the restaurants that had architectural merit. So that for that seven days, people were completely encased in architecture and design. And because it was triple digits, we were all able to get little cabanas at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, and that was my very first tour. There were people who literally flew out. I would meet them, and we go through and see some old historic architecture, some contemporary architecture.

B We would see from Cosanti and, you know, just different types of things, straw bale architecture and different construction types and it went over much greater than I thought it would.

A I wanna acknowledge that that takes a lot of grit. I would have definitely taken it personally. I mean, your attitude of, like, no one knows who I am type of, I would have been like, no one wants to come on my tour. But then two, that's no small feat. Like you're not putting them up. Like you're putting them up in a very nice hotel. You're asking them to commit to four days. This was your tour.

A And you're being in charge of a group of people for four days.

B It really was. It was interesting. And here's the thing that I think is very unique to women. I had a two and a half year old, and my sister had a six month old. And, you know, we didn't have staff. So my husband drove a van, and he would ride alongside the bus so that he could get to the re the locations first and make sure everything was set up. I would ride on the van, and the kids the the kids would be in the car, and my two sisters were there as my assistants. So if I needed some assistance, they were all in the back so that it would look so I could look professional and they would be the elves in the back in the workshop.

B And I'll never forget, we were having a great time, but one woman had lost her husband and she complained every day. And one morning I'm getting onto the bus, bringing the snacks and waters, and there was a line of people who were the true architectural historians. And they said, either you get that woman off this tour or we're all revolting. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is day three of this tour and I've already got a mutiny happening. And so my sisters caught a cab to where we were going, which was the library, the central library done by I can't even remember the name of the architect, but it's an amazing building. And she drove the van up and picked up the woman and took her to the mall and took her shopping so that everybody else could enjoy the tour. That tour was the first one. It got written up in the LA Times Magazine.

B They had a article called tourism cruises and this it was highlighted as this is the one you need to take. And it went really well. Now I'm gonna go back to the fact that we weren't It

A was it was Will Bruder. Was that Will Bruder?

B Yeah. It was and his work is magical. Will Bruder even came out. So what was wonderful is that we were catching architects before they were Starkitects. And so they were in a place where they were welcoming the notoriety of very specific

A You're you're capturing them just before they had their capes.

B Just before they blew up. And here's the thing. Based on those tours, my first set of tours, all of the architects whose work I was coming to see happened to be on the come up, and they would end up in magazines. People thought I had done that. So now I didn't even have to ask architects, can we see your work? They would say, can you get me on the next tour? So the next tour we did happened to be a tour of Frank Israel's work. Frank Israel was a set designer. He was not an architect, but he was one of the early notables who was dying of AIDS. And MOCA was doing an exhibit of his work at the museum, and someone called me and said, you gotta do an exhibit of all of Frank Israel's work.

B And I didn't even know who Frank Israel was. My husband certainly did. And he said, you gotta do it. Nobody's doing it. And I remember thinking, well, the museum is doing an exhibit. This is probably stepping on their toes. So I called the curator, and I said, something to the effect of, if you wouldn't mind, if it wouldn't be so bad, would it be okay if I did this tour? And she said, oh my gosh. We needed some educational programming.

B Send me your marketing materials. Well, I didn't have any marketing materials. I'm just Rochelle doing, you know, some tours. So I never sent them. And she kept calling and saying, you know, we're getting ready to print the catalog. Can you send us your materials? And I would say, I I don't have anything. So she put a footnote in the bottom of the brochure for this Frank Israel, and it said tour architectural tours organized by archa tours. The next day, I get a call from the Art Institute of Chicago that said, we're coming to Los Angeles, will you organize tours for us?

A There's so much kismet happening

B really. I I kid you not. And because the Art Institute had asked me to do a tour for them, they're in museum circles. So then the next museum that called me was the Cincinnati Art Museum. And they said, well, I hear you're doing tours for the Art Institute of Chicago. We wanna go to Seattle. Will you organize our tours of Seattle? And then I got a call from the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and said, I heard you're doing tours for the Art Institute and for Cincinnati. I want you to do tours for us, and we wanna go to Santa Fe.

B And that's how it went. Then I start getting calls from a university in Stuttgart. I see that you're doing tours for these people. I and so literally, it just took off. And going back to the fact that I didn't have business skills, I had always been told how difficult it was to do to start a business. Nobody told me what to do when you're sitting in your pajamas in your dining room, and your phone is ringing off the hook from international callers.

A So how do you step away from all of this excitement then?

B The challenge for me was scaling. How do you scale something like that? We would do our tours would take off usually during the colder months. The East Coast wanted to come to the West Coast and Southwest. And during the summer was when our architectural practice would, you know, our design studio. We would do the drawings and things while we're doing the tours and the construction would happen during the summer. So both of those were happening simultaneously. But now we're starting to get a lot going on because at that time the Getty Center was opening, The Cathedral Of Our Lady Of The Angels was opening. The concert hall was opening.

B LA was being marketed as a tourism an a cultural tourism destination. And so it was getting to the point where it was just nonstop. And I remember trying to find people who had the technical skills, the storytelling abilities, the interest in doing it, but those who understood not just the architecture, but the cities. You know? What do you know about the cities? Because as you're driving, people are asking you you know, it starts off you're talking and pointing about to the buildings. Then people start to say, well, what neighborhood are we in? What's going over here? The riots had happened. What neighborhood is is the riots taking place? What tree is that? Why is it green? You know? What kind of grass is that, Rochelle?

A What kind of bird is that?

B And so now you're now you have to know the birds, the the truth. Who are the people? What is the you know, it it just got to the point when I would try to find people. There was no one who could do all of it. And so did I have the time to train them? Not necessarily. Now, during that time, though, I would get people who would see the value of what I was doing, and they would say, I can help you scale this. You know, I can help you scale this operation. And at that time, a $45,000 a year salary was enormous. And I think I was making somewhere in the thirties when when I was working for others.

B But people would call me, and it would usually be males, and it would usually be white males and older males. And I'm saying that to say they had a a long history of business and whatnot, and they'd say, you know what? I can help you grow this company. I can help you scale it for 65,000. For me, that's $30,000 more than I made. And I didn't know how do I pay them to do that. How do I trust them that they will do that and it will remain my company and not evolve or drift into theirs. And so I not understanding business and how to scale, I didn't have great trust. In some ways, I think it was smart not to, in other ways, it would have been good had I had, you know, had I had mentors that I could have said, you know, are these good people? How, you know, what should I look for? How can I structure this? I didn't know lawyers.

B I didn't know people who had their own businesses, who I could go to and say, this guy wants to do this. Will you look at the contract? I just didn't even know how to do that. So it got to the point where I either had to scale up or I had to close down. I couldn't do I couldn't do both of them. And unfortunately, we had to close the company. There was a moment when I was considering scaling, when I realized there is a niche here. There were other cultural tourism companies, particularly those focused on the museum groups, the director circle, the curator circle, the founder circle. And I knew that that was my audience.

B That was my competition. And I thought, you know what they're not doing is they're not doing tours because people were going to Europe. They're going to New York. They're going to those things. And I thought, I bet if I could take people to see cultural destinations from an architecture and art lens in Africa and in Latin America, I can create my separate niche. And so we started doing some research for those places. I remember the tourism from Puerto Rico, from Cape Town and other parts of South Africa. Some places in Latin America were saying, you know, we, you know, we'll fly you out here and let us take looks around.

B In about the early 2000s, I can't tell you what was going on, but there was a lot of unrest in the world to the extent that I couldn't get insured. I couldn't get the insurance to take people to Mexico City to do a tour. I remember putting a tour together of Cuba. It was the last tour before it was closed, but I couldn't get it insured. And so that, you know, the scaling and etcetera was a problem, but I couldn't take an international group somewhere and not be insured. I needed to be protected from that. I didn't know that much. And so I remember thinking, well, we'll wait this out.

B I'll go and do some, you know, do some small jobs, some side gigs and etcetera, until the economy gets itself together. And I'll take some classes of economic development and learn how to scale my company. And that was what we thought we would be doing in the early two thousands, was that I would take some time, make some side cash, and then come back into architecture.

A And is that ultimately when you first landed as the project manager at IHO?

B So I have a brother-in-law who is an architect and a sister who's an interior designer, and they had a contract with HUD to inspect affordable housing properties. And they called me and said, you know, if you if you need something to do, we've got a contract to take a look at all of these projects around the country to find out what is you know, these are HUD affordable projects that are going into foreclosure. We need someone to fly out, walk the site, do the drawings, some as builts, and then come up with an estimate of what it's going to cost to put it back in circulation, to put it back on the market. It to me was just a job. And so, yeah, I'll do that. I'll do that. And when, you know, we fit that in between the projects that we had and, we had some projects. We were getting some recognition because our projects were on HGTV and the Fine Living Network.

B Through ArchaTours, I was doing some, voice overs whenever the news or programs would have some kind of cultural or architectural thing. So we had a lot of lots of little different things and in between that, when I really needed money, I would fly to different parts of the country and do these inspections for these HUD properties. At some point, my sister came to me and said, we are now inspecting newly constructed properties, And we want you to go take a look at them for senior housing and those special needs properties for those with developmental or physical disabilities. Can you go and oversee the construction of that? And so I had this twelve hour loop. I would start in Los Angeles at 04:30, and I would drive and I would visit sites in Santa Barbara, Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles. And then I would go over to Bakersfield and get back at 04:00 in time to pick up my daughter from school. I had a twelve hour day and, you know, you get out there and you set up your meetings and you just it was like rhythm, you know, you just you needed to make money. And it was interesting because I was involved in tourism and doing some community architecture, the council member in my mother's district was Mark Ridley Thomas.

B Mark Ridley Thomas is the one who said, Rochelle, you need to be a member of the Convention and Visitors Bureau and make your company a legitimate business that others can be attracted to. And then he said, you know, you have a no nonsense sensibility and rootedness to the community. I'd like you to be a member of the area planning commission for South Los Angeles. And then he came back later, and he said, I'd like for you to be a member of the design review board in the Crenshaw District. At that time, that's when the tour started to slow down, and there wasn't enough design clients for me. So when I was inspecting, I had a rogue inspection in Irvine for a company called Irvine Housing Opportunities. Rogue because I didn't I didn't mind the long distance driving, but I didn't like the idea that I could go forty five minutes and it take me two hours to drive there. So I would only do that if somebody else couldn't do it.

B But I hit it off with the folks at Irvine Housing Opportunities. And when the project was completed, they asked, would you mind staying on and working for us? And I remember I was probably at one of my lowest points, and I thought, I don't know anything about this. And to be quite frank, I thought this has to be a god thing. And if this is a god thing, there's nothing I can do to screw it up. So I'm gonna tell them what I'm thinking. And I remember saying to the board chair, well, I've got some confessions. I said, number one, I don't know anything about affordable housing. Number two, I work out of my living room, my dining room, and I hate commuting.

B And I said, number three, I am a woman of leisure trapped in the body of a peasant. And number four, I said, I've been told I have a bad attitude. And so if you wanna hire me, I'll come. And so he hangs up. The next day, he calls me and says, can you come on Tuesday? And I remember telling my husband, I've I've got a job. And he was my husband was not happy because he felt that that meant that I had given up on us, you know, in our Mill Studio drain. And he still runs Mill Studio. If you're interested, it's millstudio.net.

B But he said, you know what? You go ahead and do that. And I said, well, I'll do it for two years. We can pay off some debts. I'll find some new we'll find some new clients, and I will come back. And that was in 02/2006. And in 02/2008, we had gone through a a couple of executive directors, and I said to my board, you know, I think I could I could be the executive director. And they said, oh, no. No.

B I don't think so, honey. And I thought,

A I'm done. I'm out of here.

B And I call my husband, and I said, honey, I am cleaning out my stuff, and I am heading home. And I thought, you know, he was so angry two years ago. And he says, well, did you tell everybody off? And I said, no. He said, okay. Then quietly put your things back in the bed and clean up and just come home. He says, because you have a salary with benefits. You can't leave. And I thought, oh my gosh.

B Well, I guess I better understand what affordable housing is. And that is how I became a houser. It was two years after being there that I realized I can't afford to wander off and be the starving architect that I had worked for all those years. One of us has to stick around, and so that became my new career.

A So tell us because we really haven't gotten any deep in it. I really appreciate just listening to your story in such in the most entertaining way. But just just so the audience knows, can you explain what you do today as the president and CEO? Clearly, you spoke it into existence and good thing you didn't leave because now you have assumed that role.

B So now I am the president and CEO of Innovative Housing Opportunities. We formally changed our name, but we left it as IHO. And what we do is I love to say it this way. We are building strong and high performing cities and people. And how we do that is by developing high quality housing that is affordable to low to moderate income households. And that is somewhat distinct from housing for homeless or transitional housing where people move in and then they move into permanent housing. What we do is permanent rental housing. And so it can be for people who have come out of homelessness, maybe they've come from transitional housing, up to people who are making it would be entry level architects, nurses, teachers, all of those people.

B When you go into a building and the first people that you see, that's who we are building homes for. If you have ever called in sick because you have to wait till payday before you get paid to put gas in your tank, we're building homes for you, including people, like I said, who may have come from homelessness. But affordable housing simply means that it is housing for people who will pay no more than 30% of their net income. And so what I love and the reason why I think I am uniquely positioned for my role at this moment is truly because of the architectural background. I understand the impact of these four walls in the neighborhood that we're putting them in, that what we build can either be a catalyst for something wonderful or a catalyst for something unacceptable. You know, we've all seen buildings that, you know, you, you really do wonder what were they thinking? You know, we've all been in spaces that were awkward and ill advised because someone just didn't care. It's just like going to a restaurant and, you know, the waiter hates his job. And sometimes you look at affordable housing and people are designing for those people.

B You can see it. Those are the Pruitt Igoes. Those are the stacked projects that you may see on the East Coast that were really designed as residential warehouses. What I love is that I get to be able to hire architects and design professionals and landscape architects who understand that we are creating an environment that can serve as a launchpad for not only the person who is signing the lease, but the families that they have and the friends that they are connected to. We can change the course of a life in an entire community and therefore a city by how we honor them with this built environment. And that to me is powerful.

A I think it's because it's not transitional. You really need to think about the community you're creating within the complex, let alone the construct of the community that it is adjacent to.

B Absolutely. It really is the, you know, how are you how is light coming into the building? How are people experiencing the indoors and outdoors? How are we creating spaces for connection? With seniors in particular, isolation is a killer. So how do we create spaces where they can connect? But if you create one large, beautiful community room, that's too much exposure for people. So what you need to do is create spaces where people can accidentally run into each other. It may be a niche in a hallway where it's just enough space for two to four people to be able to have a conversation and build the kind of relationship. I mean, that's something an architect, someone who is trained as an architect, would understand the value of that. Someone who is not, who is developing buildings will say, well, that little four by eight niche means that our vacuums have to go sideways and then back. And, you know, that's unnecessary.

B And and and I'm telling you that because someone has said that to me. Well, Rochelle, I don't want to. I want our people to just zip down the hallway. Well, you're zipping down the hallway for effect.

A For for cleaning efficiency.

B Yeah. For efficiency. But we are looking at, are these places where people move in or are they places where people reestablish and move on? And that's a different mindset. And so when you are designing, you're looking at I they used to call it when I was in architecture school, put a texture. And I was just at a building this morning that we completed, and some of the young people are moving in. And this place is for 18 to 24 year olds who have either young people who were experiencing homelessness or came out of the foster care system. When our designers started designing the community rooms, they had foosball tables and pool tables and and that we're not trying to design for arrested development. This is not thirteenth grade in perpetuity.

B We're trying to train people into adulthood. We're not trying to create a frat house. We're trying to give them a semblance of life as adults. You know, we really have that level of influence. And this is why we do it. One of the young men came in, and we're showing him to his apartment. And if it is for formerly homeless or special needs, a lot of times they're coming with no furniture, so you furnish it. And, you know, I would love it to be just gorgeous, bright furniture, but we are committed with some of our funding sources.

B We've gotta keep these buildings for fifty five years, so you can't put in the throwaway furniture. It's got to be it's got to last a few years. And so it what it lacks in charisma, it makes up for in utility. And we may say, well, I don't like it, and I think it should be x y z. But you have to remember, some of these folks are coming from difficult circumstances, and they are looking for their forever home. And this young man goes in, and when he gets the key and opens the door, he fell on his knees and just started crying. That's what you're talking about. Things that we are doing are that important to folks.

B They need to be that important to us. I remember being a judge on a project and looking at the photos of a community room, and it was painted red, red walls, red ceiling, red floors. And in addition to red, it was high gloss red. It was a visual assault. That is what my architecture school would call one a texture. You wanna make it fun and so you just put it all up there. But who wants to live inside a Rubik's cube? No one. And when you're dealing with people who may be dealing with issues, that kind of agitation is going to find its way in the behavior of the residents, which is going to inhibit the property manager's ability to do their work.

B Architects have to think about that. And so being able to deliver this morning and have them come in, and I have been told by some of our residents that they don't enter the building because they look at it and they say, this this is too beautiful for me, so I must be in the wrong place. And so they're just standing outside with their belongings because they don't know what to do. They're clearly in the wrong place. And when I remember wanting going back to those little miniature furniture boxes that I saw, it was the fact that it was so inviting. You want people to be to be invited, and you want your residents to know that they deserve to feel like that is their home. Now I'm sure if it was if it had the foosball tables, they would have felt that that was a great place to have the homies come over and, you know, you're just gonna have a good time. But when you have a home, you don't let your crazy friends come because it's a different mindset, and that's what we want.

B That's, I think, the power of architecture, the power of design is that respite, that sense of calm and peace and sanctuary that all of us want our homes to be. And it gives them now the canvas to put their personality into it. To me, that's just that I get to do that. It's awesome.

A That's really awesome. I wanna take this in a little bit of a different route, but I wanna acknowledge the build of emotion that you created. Because I'm like, I want to be part of my show, I want to do I want to do the work. So when people generally think of developers, at least on the for profit space, right, it's like how many units can we get in? How do we make the pro form a work, We need to get in with the least amount of money and get out with the most amount of money. So how does a nonprofit developer like IHO define success?

B You know what? I'm glad you said that because I have to remind people, we are nonprofits. We're not nonprofitable. This is a business. The difference is this is a mission driven business. What we're looking I mean, we still have to pay our staff, and our still staff still has children and parents and, you know, this is the sandwich generation. They still have to make a living. But in the money that we are spending, we have a mission mandate to make it do more than simply house people. I'm looking at the legacy, and so we have to balance the legacy with the economics.

B We still have investors. Our investors still need to make sure that they are going to make money, And we need to make sure that we're delivering it in a way that keeps the organization afloat. We've had some spectacular implosions in our field in recent years, and we're not free from having to merge for business purposes. But what we can do is see what we can do to build the building and then balance our list of, you know, social impact goals with our financial goals. And the key is trying to find that happy medium where all parties are well served. And that does take a little more that does take a little more skill than maybe a market rate developer can because they're going to throw off double digit high high teens returns on the investment. We may be on high single digits. And that's a different you know, so we're looking at different funding sources.

B Or if we're going after the same investors, we've got to get the ones that have that social impact mindset, but they still wanna know that you're performing. They still wanna know that those who are physically and mentally capable are not taking advantage of the system. So in addition to our having to show that the numbers work, we have to show the social impacts to you know, we have to give our impact reports. We are constantly tracking how are our residents doing. We're providing services and programs so that they can do better because we've got to pull money from instead of it just being one debt source, one equity source, we may be putting together a, you know, seven or eight different funding sources. It can be exasperating, And those funding sources sometimes don't play well with each other. Or they will tell you, you know, they will have requirements that may be counter to the things we want to do. And that is the unhappy part of the work that we do.

B But I would contend even for market rate developers, they have that. The dollars that we're talking about are the difference.

A So that seems like a far cry from the individual who was trying to figure out how to scale a tourism company back in the early two thousands. So where where did you develop those business chops? Or or do you rely on the other smart people in the room?

B I do. I do rely on, the other people in the room. One of the benefits of of being in this company is that we have other staff. And I believe that you can't be the smartest person in the room. That just that just can't work. And the periods of time that I have been the smartest person in the room, I have kept the vision going, but we haven't grown to the length that, you know, to where we we would want. Because businesses are always evolving, and, you know, my staff are just amazing. There is no one, not even the ones that I don't like,

A and they know who they are.

B We have learned

A They're so honest.

B We've learned from everyone. Everyone has brought a talent that has really helped us grow. And I you know what? I feel so much honor for having had the folks that we have had for even short periods of time because they have all brought a gift. And to be secure enough to let them tell me, here's, you know, here's a here's a better way, Rochelle. You know, you end up just like in architecture, you end up these these buildings are like your children. Used to be you'd have a wallet full of photos of your kids, and now they're all in your phone. And all of my photos are my projects. You know,

A look at this one when it started off. You're still a mom, so Yes.

B And your children are now buildings with HVAC systems and self cleaning trash chutes. But everybody who has come through has shared something from the importance of social media to the importance of storytelling, to the importance of looking at the budget and drilling down, to the importance of finding the architects who respect your vision. It's funny because you you want people to stay around. And I remember being at a NOMA executives meeting, and I was saying, you know, I just want people to stay more than three years. And one of the architects said to me, three years. If you get staff that sticks around for two years, consider it a blessing. Nobody sticks around that long. And that really was a mindset change for me because I've been at IHO now for eighteen years, and our newest employee has been there two weeks.

B And so you start to think, oh my gosh, something's wrong because everybody's moving. On the other hand, I love to think about it this way, as bosses, as business leaders, and business owners, our job is to outfit our team with wings, and then to watch them soar. And they soar with us as long as they can, and when they go, if we've done right by them, they will the connections that they make simply extend the family. And so we've got such great alumni from IHO and just an awesome team of people here now. And I know that every single person that has come through our properties has such immense pride for the buildings, but also the lives that we have been entrusted with, that we can serve through a building. You know? It just is a it's it's an honor to take all those components of my past and bring them together and then watch people live in them.

A I want to go full circle to something that you said back at the very beginning to something that you said about architecture and licensure, and your roots. And one of the reasons why you reached out to me, I think was a post that I made on LinkedIn about portfolio careers and having many careers. And you mentioned that you've had seven different careers. And I think we've kind of explored a little bit of all of that during this conversation. But you also are very kind of candid about the guilt you feel or have felt about not pursuing licensure. Can you talk a little bit about that?

B Yeah. So the seven careers was something that I remember hearing is that everybody has seven careers in their life. I was just doing a a talk to some high school kids, and I was telling them, don't get locked into the degree that you go to school for. Because, you know, you're 18 years old, you're 19 years old, and you're making a decision, and you haven't even lived 20% of your lifespan, and so you're going to evolve and and just let it take you. But I will say going into architecture, I find is a little bit different because it is a very specialized field. And I truly intended to be a licensed architect. You know, we my husband and I watch these shows, and sometimes it's hard for me to watch them because I think I should be doing that. I should have done how come I don't have the commission that Maya Lin has? You know, how come I didn't get, you know, that? And it's silly.

B However, I can't help but feel that. When I took the licensing exam the first time, I it was a twelve hour or thirteen hour exam. I wanna say I was in my ninth month of pregnancy. I brought my wagon out with, my twelve hours of snacks, and two and a half hours later, I was done eating everything, and I was starving and delirious. I could not I can't even tell you I spelled my name correctly. And that was humiliating because I had always been pretty good in school. A couple years later, I got my confidence back, and that's when the exam, I think, was in six parts. And I remember sitting there taking the exam and hearing the words of Norma Sklarick, who was one of the first black women architects and just a force in California.

B She was with the Journey Partnership when she was teaching us to do it, and I could not get out of my head. Oh, you do single family residential work. You shouldn't even take the exam. You're not prepared to. I couldn't get it out of my head. So I'm there taking the structural engineering thing, and every time they would ask a question that had nothing to do with single family residential, I would hear that voice. Now she didn't intend to do that to me, but it just it just zapped me. And I I have been outrunning that, you know, the shame of not passing that.

B Barb, Bester is a really well known architect. She was taking the exam at the same time, and I think, oh my gosh, look at her. She's got her practice. And, again, I don't even know if I spelled my name right, but I could tell you how many people were wearing hats that day. I mean, it was just silliness. And every I will think about, you know, I'm in my sixth career iteration, and I'll think, okay, my seventh career, what will I be? What will I be? Tourism is different now than it was then. People don't go to five star hotels, they go to Airbnb, so they probably would not the way I did it then won't work. I'm gonna be an architect.

B I'm gonna go and take the exam. And I think, okay, how do I show that I've had twelve years of experience now when everybody that I've worked for has gone out of business? And so, but I do, Evelyn, I do. I cannot outrun the idea that I need to be licensed. My brother-in-law is a licensed architect, and I think, what if he retires and moves to Texas or something? How am I going to go back and do the kinds of work that I would like to do? I'd like to do the buildings that we move people into. I need a license to to be able to do that. So I it it really does, you know, it it outruns me like the story of the red shoes, the dancing shoes that won't stop chasing the ballerina. The license is just always running behind me.

A Obviously you need a license to practice architecture over 2,500 square feet in California, especially if you're doing multifamily affordable housing. But first of all, please take some grace on yourself and everything that you've accomplished today and all of the communities that you're affecting that are going above and beyond any community outreach that I, as a licensed architect with my fellowship in the AIA, have ever been able to do. Be proud of that, please. Yes,

B I am. Thank you.

A But secondly, there's a place. I believe there's a place for individuals like yourself amongst the architects, even if you're not doing the actual architecture. And I know NCARB is looking for ways, easier ways, right, to for that licensure path, if that's absolutely something that you wanna pursue.

B No. I just think there is just so much great opportunity. And now where I am in the work that I'm doing, thinking that there are ways I'd like to do it, there are times when I'm talking to architects, and they will say, you know, I'll I'll look where we're getting ready to install something, and I'll say, wait a minute. That's not where what I remember. Oh, yeah. Well, we you know, that's not how we do it, so we just went ahead and changed. I'd love to not have that happen again. I'd love to make sure that what we say, you know, happens.

A But that's not an effect of you. I think, honestly, that's an effect of architects that aren't willing to listen to their clients.

B Yeah. No. And we we definitely need to figure that out. But I would we do talk about, you know, what if we could do it all, you know, do the whole thing? Now I now I know the business, we've got the, you know, my husband still is running Mule Studio. What if we took that now and put it together? The only developer I know that has an in house architect is Abode Communities, and that was because it was started by an architect in response to the riots in the sixties. And so I do think that there you know, when you have you know, if all you know is development, you you do it a particular way. If all you know is design, you think a different way. There are precious few of us, but there are but there are several who are coming out of the design field and are in housing, either in finance or in, is the developer or running the, membership organizations.

B And we are a powerful group of people because architects are born to be problem solvers, and they do it in a creative and beautiful way. And I think that that is just an incredibly noble and important thing to do. And so, yeah, I do go back and forth with, should I do that? Should I go back? I know the Association of Women in Architecture, AWA plus d. I know that they are constantly doing training, and I admire them for that because we've gotta create the next bench. You know, you've gotta create the bench of talent behind it. And I just really admire folks like you who are out there making sure people know the value of the work that is being done and the role that we each play in it.

A What do you have to say to the young architects who see what you are doing and want to follow in your footsteps?

B There's room. There is room here. There there really is. That sensibility that we have should not be minimized. It really does. To be able to see it in three dimensions is not a gift that everybody has. And so much of what we do is storytelling. And I say this story all the time, if anyone has seen the movie Amadeus, when Salieri would describe music, it would start off, you'd hear the strings, and then you'd hear the horns, and then you it would just it would just grow till you have to dig the complete picture.

B I honestly think that is the realm of those who have been trained in design. Because we understand how does the sun impact how people, you know, whether it comes in in the morning or it comes in in the evening, how is the relationship of the inside to the outside? What do the colors mean? The quality of light and the privacy if the windows are up high and you still get the light, but you have that privacy and that sense of security. The way people walk in and around and through a neighborhood and how the building that we put there, whether it's single family or if it's commercial building, how it sets the tone for its neighbors, no one thinks of that. I'll hear people say, you know, my staff will say, Rochelle, that's you. Nobody. No, there are a whole class of people who think like me. And once they do, it's so funny because they will will go and visit some of our colleagues' work, and they'll say, wow, I see what you mean now. They put the most breathtaking space on the side of the building that has no sunlight.

B Or they've put, you know, they've put the units next to the playground and not the community room because somebody was, you know, checking boxes and doing their put a texture and, you know, we need to put it all in here, and so here's how it lays out. You need to we it it it is our job to train people how to honor people with the built environment. And so I would tell people if you are in this field and you're starting to think, well, I wanna veer off, but am I selling out or whatever. No. You're going where you're supposed to be, and you're supposed to take that knowledge with you where you go.