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(upbeat music) - Welcome to another edition of In Another Opinion, a public information program where our discussions are focused on the diversity of the state of Rhode Island.

I'm your host Peter Wells.

My guest today is Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos, the first Afro-Latina Lieutenant Governor in state of Rhode Island and probably New England.

- Yes, thank you, Peter.

Glad to be here with you.

- Thanks for being here.

Yeah, I know you have a crazy schedule.

I see you on TV every day, three or four different places.

So taking the time out to talk with us has been fantastic.

Thank you.

- It's truly a pleasure for me and was looking forward to coming to this show and having this conversation with you.

Thank you for the important service that you provide to our community.

- Well, I appreciate it.

And I'll tell you, PBS has been wonderful.

And of course, Rhode Island Foundation, which has got us our start, what's been great.

And it has made some impact from the feedback that we do get.

But having you on the show is even a better caveat.

But I wanna ask you this.

And a lot of people have asked me this, who knew and that I knew you.

- What motivated you to accept this position of Lieutenant Governor?

- [Matos] So this position I see as a way to give back to Rhode Island.

The state of Rhode Island has been my home since I arrived in this country.

I well, like almost all Dominicans, we first arrived to New York, right?

Washington Heights.

- [Wells] That's true.

- And then I was in Washington Height for a short period of time then moved to Rhode Island.

And Rhode Island has been home to me in Providence and Rhode Island has been so great to me and my family.

I'm so fortunate to have this opportunity to serve the state of Rhode Island in this role.

And to be able to bring the message that I have learned from all these years that I have lived here in the state, the experiences that I have had working with different communities in the state Rhode Island.

- [Wells] Sure.

- To be able to bring that and bring their voices to the state and to advocate for the state of Rhode Island, I feel is a great honor.

I'm so glad to have this opportunity.

- Well, you know, I know that you worked a lot within the community even prior to going to the city council.

And then city council, now you're in the state.

So of course, next of course, we'll see you in Washington, I'm sure at some point in time, but for now.

- [Matos] So I can tell you, it is, I have never had a plan to run for office.

- I know.

- So, things has happened I think is a combination of the involvement that I had had in the community, the work that I have been doing and opportunity that has opened up.

And people that have come, because I always said that in my case, I have been very in line with what is the research about females running for office.

That you gotta ask the females at an average seven time, before we say, "yes I'm gonna do it".

'Cause we always think about the reasons why we cannot do it.

So I think I was, have been very in line.

So, but as of right now, I'm very happy doing the job that I'm doing right now, representing the state of Rhode Island, advocating for the state of Rhode Island, advocating for the different municipalities, the citizen town, bringing the background that I have of working in a municipality.

I'm bringing that message to the state as a whole.

I think it's crucial.

- Talking about that.

Is the job what you thought it would be?

- Yes, it is, it is and more because I had had the opportunity to work with different communities, communities that I had not had the opportunity to - [Wells] Sure.

- Visit before and to advocate for them.

And to advocate for things that I believe the state of Rhode Island, we have been neglecting for a long time.

Things like housing.

We, right now, are in a housing crisis here in the state of Rhode Island.

- [Wells] Yes we are.

- Yeah, we have not been building housing at the level that we should have.

And it's not just affordable housing.

We have a huge lack of affordable housing, but we need to build housing at all income levels.

I have some communities that I've been talking with the leadership.

And Providence also is one of those communities in which we always say, "Well, how come we don't have teachers, more teachers living in community?"

But if you look at what is available for housing stock, they don't have housing available that the teachers could rent.

In many a cases, the houses are just way out of their budget, but they can afford to pay.

We want our firefighters to live here, but we don't have a workforce housing available.

So we have to continue pressing in building more housing.

So in order to grow the population of the state of Rhode Island, but which is gonna translate on growing the economy of the state of Rhode Island.

- Well, you know, I think, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of victims of the lack of housing and especially affordable housing, in the state of Rhode Island is that, New Englanders are big on historic preservation.

And we preserve everything.

I see very little new construction.

- Yes, and I think that's part of what had happened, but we have to preserve the uniqueness of cities and towns.

But there are ways in which we can increase the density of the different communities to make sure that we are building housing for our children, just as the governor said during the state address.

We want our kids to stay local.

But if we don't build housing, they're not gonna have a place that they can rent and have a family close to us.

So we have to understand that.

Yes, we have to preserve the charm and the history of our communities, but there are places that we can build new and we can build with more density.

But building new and with more density doesn't mean that it cannot be charming and it cannot be done in a way that match the tradition styles in our communities.

- Well, this is true, but you know, of course, we've had a lot of Bostonians and people from Connecticut moving into Rhode Island, especially from Boston, because of the difference in the cost, the economic difference.

And I don't blame them for doing that.

I mean, I'm a Massachusetts person myself as after New York city.

But I think Rhode Island, because of its old historic charm, I mean, there's a certain amount of that with the historic, but there's also a need to rebuild and build a new.

I look at our schools within the state, buildings are very, very old.

Most of them can't accommodate the technology of today, but we are still pouring money into these places rather than maybe potentially building new schools.

- Well, yeah, actually right now we're building new schools and we have some good examples that are wonderful modern school for this age, right?

One of the ones that I can think of more recently is the East Providence High School.

- I also went to the Lincoln High School.

And Lincoln did a combination.

They had to renovate part of the old building, but they added also to the new building.

We're gonna be building Central Falls just approved also, they're gonna be building a new high school.

I agree with you.

We have to build new buildings.

We cannot continue to pour resources and money into buildings that are not meeting the need of this age.

- Exactly.

- So I agree with you - And there's only so many people who want studios apartments in the old factory buildings, which is what they tend to being converted to for the most part.

And which is good.

It's a good use of those homes of those buildings.

But I mean, there's only, there's a certain amount of it, which, you know, people are looking for single family homes, especially to raise families.

And especially since COVID.

A lot of people are moving away from, you know, high density living and moving into single families homes because of, you know, health reasons and things of that nature where they can control their environment more.

So, I see that as something that would really help, but affordable housing is a whole another issue, and I understand that after, you know, I did work a few years with HUD, so I do understand the concepts behind affordable housing and how difficult it is, but it seems to me some of that COVID money and some of the other money that comes into our state, we need to be earmarking this for some new construction.

I don't know who would build it.

And that's the problem and I understand, you know.

- But in my experience, I used to be a board member of Olneyville Housing, which is now ONE Neighborhood Builder.

And they had been building some new housing, affordable housing to have a style in a design that is desirable.

And that is, and one of the things that we have to do is to, in what I'm trying to do a lot of work on, is try to change the perception of what affordable housing look like.

'Cause affordable housing is not what it look like it was before.

- [Wells] No.

- I was a big building.

That's not the image of affordable housing.

- [Wells] No.

- And affordable housing also, is needed in every community because as I said, we have the new families that are starting, but we also have a population that is aging.

And in many occasions, what happens is we have individuals that have been living in their communities.

Let's say, Barrington and Warren.

And they would like to continue to live in their community.

But once they retire their income level is not this same.

So they're not able to sustain the same housing style that they were affording before.

- [Wells] Sure.

- So we have to make sure that we have an option for individuals to be able to age in place that they don't have to move out of their community.

But once they decide to downsize, they're able to find housing that is affordable within their community.

And then at the same time, that will open those properties that they used to want, could be the place where new families can go to.

- [Wells] True, true.

- Yes - No, there is no doubt.

I'm minding in the process of thinking about downsizing myself and I've been looking around and quite frankly, to move into a smaller apartment or condominium from the house that I have currently own, I'd be paying more in rent than I pay in my mortgage in taxes.

It's that the cost is just unbelievable and it doesn't appear to be a scale of rental properties.

It's either very low or very high.

- Yes, and this is exactly the challenge that we have right now.

I know of a friend of mine also that they both retired and they were looking for, they sold their house, but they wanted to stay in Providence.

They couldn't find an apartment that they could afford to be able to continue to live in the in the same community where they had been living for years.

And that's why I keep talking about the importance of building more housing, building more affordable housing, and housing at all income levels.

And right now, there is a positive a thing going on in the state of Rhode Island.

We have the Speaker of the House, Shekarchi the President of the Senate, President Ruggerio and also, we have the Governor McKee and my office.

We're all talking about the same thing, the importance of affordable housing.

Right now, in the budget that the governor proposed for the ARPA funding for the first time in the history, there's gonna be revenue dedicated.

He's proposing a quarter of a billion dollars.

That's gonna be just for the development of housing, including affordable workforce, all housings at all income level.

This is historic.

This never happened before.

- You know, since there's been a change of administration in Washington, is there a different focus coming out of HUD, for instance, do you know in terms of providing additional funding for community development or?

- Right, so HUD has a lot of regulations and that comes with their funding.

- The different CDCs, which are the Community Development Organizations.

They're always applying for funding with HUD.

I think the difference right now is with the influx of cash that the communities has, the different state, the states the cities have.

This is a good opportunity to continue to invest on housing and do things that, Sometimes it's challenging to do with the restrictions that the funding from HUD has.

Right now, some of the things that we are proposing with this housing money is more funding for down payment to help more families to be able to afford to buy a house.

We also gonna have more funding for education, for the first time home buyers.

- [Wells] Okay.

- So, funding for the different CDCs and any other developer to be able to acquire sites.

This is a big challenge in order to develop housing, because once a site is identified as a possible location that can be developed for housing, the developers have to be competing with the regular market in order to obtain that property.

And sometimes they're not able to secure the property because they don't have the funding available right away.

So that's why we have been, we are allocating funding for site acquisition, which was the latest announcement that was done last week.

- [Wells] Sure.

- So this is a good timing for someone that has been involved with housing for quite some time and affordable housing.

I'm very excited about this time in the state of Rhode Island and how we all are thinking about the importance of developing housing.

- Let's just switch gears for a minute.

- Sure.

- And one of the things that I know that when I came here, Bernie Jackvony I believe was Lieutenant Governor when I first arrived in Rhode Island.

And I got to know Bernie.

- And I remember that I was having a conversation with him.

The legislature, the general assembly here decides what the work that the lieutenant governor's office does.

And at that time it was only pretty much two things.

It was small business development or SBA and veterans organizations activities.

Has that been expanded now?

Have the activities been expanded for the lieutenant governor's office?

And if not, what would you like to see come under the lieutenant governor's office?

- Yes, you know, thank you for that question.

And I have to say Lieutenant Governor Jackvony, and the rest of the former lieutenant governor has been wonderful to me.

They have welcomed me in, they had made sure to keep in contact and I can reach out to them.

So the office have the areas that are mandated by state law.

- [Wells] Right.

- Working with the aging population with the long term care.

- [Wells] Oh, the elderly, okay.

- The small business, work has still continued to be a strong part of the work that we do.

But something that the office of the lieutenant governor allows the lieutenant governor to do is to champion an area that they feel is struggling and needs a strong voice.

If we look at former Lieutenant Governor, Elizabeth Roberts.

- [Wells] Yes.

- She championed healthcare.

That was her priority.

So this is one of the plus that we have in this role is that we're able to dedicate out a lot of time to things that we believe are important to the state of Rhode Island.

In my case as you know, housing has been - [Wells] Yes.

- my stronger area.

I continued to do a lot of work with the small business community.

I have since I was in local office in the city council, I was always looking for ways to support the small business community, to allocate fundings for capacity building.

- [Wells] Yes.

- Because the small business, they don't have those resources that they can dedicate to capacity building.

So I always work with organizations like the Center for Women & Enterprise.

At that time, when I was in the city council, Carmen Diaz-Jusino was the director.

And I remember her and I going, actually door knocking to the small businesses in the Olneyville community and offering to them, "what can we do to help you be successful?"

So I continued to work in supporting the small business community.

That's a big area of my office at the office of lieutenant governor.

- Yes.

I've had Kelly Nevins on this show in the past, and we've talked and interesting enough that I've had a show not to before yours that the Innovation Studios was the name of the organization.

And they have also just partnered with the ONE Neighborhood Builders in Olneyville to create some more entrepreneurship in that area.

- Oh, that is important.

And we have some wonderful story and this is why we should support the small business and the micro businesses that are taking place - in our community - [Wells] Definitely.

- One of good example is in, I don't know if I have you visited The Family Cake.

- I have not.

- Oh, wow!

This is such a wonderful story of the micro businesses that are happening our community that just need the support from us in government.

And they can flourish.

And that's a good example of a business that flourish.

A business that started in their own apartment.

And then now they have a location on Manton Avenue.

And they have overgrown the space right now.

- [Wells] Yes.

- They're expanding, they need, so, and just like that story, there's so many other stories in the community and bringing those resources to them, right.

They and the neighborhood is great.

So we have to make sure we do that in every community, in the state of Rhode Island.

- [Wells] Oh yes.

- That the all 39 cities and towns have access to the resources to create new businesses and to develop and take their businesses to scale.

- Well, this is true because if you don't have new businesses developing, we're gonna go back to that.

And we still have it as the old issue with brain drain when youngsters here graduate from schools here and they leave.

because lack of opportunities, lack of jobs and lack of housing.

- [Matos] Yeah.

- They all work together.

- [Matos] Yes!

And those are the areas that we have been working really hard to address.

As I said, we need to, first of all, have the housing available, but we have to continue to provide resources to the small business community.

The governor and I, in combination with commerce, with the Secretary of Commerce Pryors, we did this listening session.

We did 13 conversations of first of all, we did it via Zoom in social media, Facebook.

And this was the 2030 plan.

And we have our website, which is RhodeIsland2030 in which we've been asking for feedback from every Rhode Islanders to let us know what they think, what we have to prioritize in order to make sure that the Rhode Island that they envisioned would be in 2030 is a reality.

And we have great feedback.

We were able to bring experts, national experts, but also a lot of local experts.

'Cause a lot of the knowledge is right here.

- [Wells] Sure.

- In the state of Rhode Island.

And we got wonderful feedback.

We developed a plan from there.

Then after that, we went in person, the governor had about five different conversations in person, making sure that we hear directly from Rhode Islanders what they thinks are the things that we should be prioritizing.

And the business community, the support for a small business was a strong part of what we heard in every single conversation that we had.

- Very good.

Listen, are there any new initiatives that are coming down the pipe?

There's something that you can talk about that maybe the governor hasn't announced yet, but some areas that.

- You want me to break his news?

- [Wells] No, no, no.

I don't want you.

I don't want you to get ahead of the governor, but anything new that we should be looking for?

- So I think that the state of Rhode Island is gonna be doing a lot.

Actually I know we're gonna be doing a lot with the blue and green economy.

- [Wells] Okay.

- [Matos] I think this is important.

And we have to make sure that all the young people watching this or the parents watching this, make sure that you get your, your kids, in learning more and interested this new economy.

We are gonna be bringing more resources to train workforce in everything from solar, wind, you name it.

- [Wells] Sure.

- This is the future.

- Yeah.

- And we wanna make sure that we are at ahead of the game.

And we're training the workforce of the future.

- Lieutenant Governor what's the blue economy?

What is that?

- So this is the blue economy.

So we are talking about the new, everything that have to do within the ocean, the marine.

- [Wells] Ah!

Okay.

- [Matos] The wind industry.

- The.

- [Wells] Aqua farms.

- [Matos] Yes.

- [Wells] Things of that nature, okay.

- [Matos] This is the future.

This is the future that we're gonna be, that we need to prepare our workforce for.

Ah, I was actually just recently doing a virtual reality of what it's like to be on the top of one of the windmills in the ocean.

- [Wells] Oh!

- [Matos] And I'm - [Wells] Scary.

(Wells chuckling) - Well, I have to say it helps understand that I don't have what it takes to do that job.

- [Wells] Right.

- But, but it's a great research that we can bring to our.

- [Wells] For sure.

- School districts and to make sure that our kids can explore the future and see themself in doing those type of job on that role.

- It's amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

That windmills were around a long, long time ago.

- [Matos] Right.

- Moved away from them, went to nuclear, electric and nuclear.

Now we're going back to wind and solar.

It's interesting.

- I always think what would the El Quixote say?

(Matos laughing) - Yeah, that's true.

- If they see this happening now, right?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- We're going back to the, to the beginning.

- Which might be wise in that, we know that sometimes technology and progress may be good for one thing, but it may cause some damages and problems in another area.

- [Matos] Yes.

- So going back to natural, natural products and in this case natural energy.

- [Matos] Yes.

- It makes sense that it's there and it's not something that's man-made.

- It does, and you know, again, I wanna talk about the workforce and the important of training the work for this important careers.

We always talk about the importance of going to college and going to college is important, but we have had so many people that end up with a high bill paying back the student loans.

- [Wells] Sure.

- In this new green and blue economy, we have the opportunity to get our young people to start making good money.

- [Wells] Yes.

- Almost right after they graduate from.

- [Wells] A trade school.

- A trade school, - Sure.

- Two years degree.

This is a career.

This is a career and this is gonna help them to be able support their families.

And the most important is, have a career with good income without having a big bill to pay back a student loan.

- No, absolutely.

I think we've learned a lesson that trades are still needed, common sense is still needed.

A master's degree is not always what's necessary to change a light bulb.

You don't necessarily need that kind of degree.

You know, Lieutenant Governor, we're going have to end this and come back again and have another session 'cause this half hour's almost gone.

- [Matos] Really?

- It is.

It goes by so fast.

But I do wanna thank you for taking the time outta your busy schedule to come in and chat with us a bit.

But when we come back, next time we have you on, well we can go a little bit more in depth about the blue and green economy and where we are here in Rhode Island.

- Oh, I would love to do that.

- [Wells] Very good.

- And that I have some great partners also that are doing a wonderful work that I would love to talk more about it.

- Yeah, we might even have you bring in one of your partners in with you.

- I will.

- Very good, thank you, Lieutenant Governor.

- Thank you, Peter.

- Sabina Matos, our first Afro-Latino governor.

I know I say lieutenant governor, but governor.

We have run out of time.

- Lieutenant governor.

Please don't start any problems nor rumors.

- No rumors.

It's okay lieutenant governor.

- Thank you, Peter.

- We have run outta time but I want to thank today's guest, Lieutenant Governor Matos and you, the viewers for tuning in to another edition of In Another Opinion.

A special thanks to PBS for making this program possible.

I'm your host, Peter Wells.

Give us your opinion on Facebook @InAnotherOpinion.

And have a great day.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Someone gave.

Someone donated.

Someone left a legacy.

Generations of generous someones have helped shape Rhode Island into this amazing place we call home.

How do you thank them?

By leaving your own legacy.

We can help.