Beyond The Sale
Member updates and information for the NoAZ Assoc. of Realtors.
Beyond The Sale
Episode 2: Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
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In this podcast episode, Michelle Linton, President of the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors (NAAR), discusses the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) in real estate with co-chairs of the NAAR EDI committee, Ventrice McMaster and Arin Wheeler. They emphasize the need for fair housing practices and resources, such as down payment assistance and city land trust programs, to make homeownership accessible to all. The committee's initiatives include a Youth Art Exhibition, scholarships to increase diversity in real estate, and sponsorships of events like Pride and the Mountain Film Festival. They stress the importance of continuous education and awareness to overcome biases and promote inclusivity in the community.
Bilingual/Multilingual REALTORS®: https://www.aaronline.com/interpreters-translators/
U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development: https://www.hud.gov/
2025 Flagstaff Mountain Film Festival: https://flagstaffmountainfilms.org/2025-festival/
NAAR’S Equity, Diversity, and inclusion Real Estate Scholarship: https://www.nazrealtor.com/fair-housing
City of Flagstaff Homebuying Assistance: https://www.flagstaff.az.gov/4376/Homebuying-Assistance
Fairhaven 2.0: https://www.nar.realtor/fair-housing/fairhaven
NAAR Education Calendar: https://www.nazrealtor.com/calendar
00 Welcome to our second podcast beyond the sale empowering naar members, I am your host. Michelle Linton, president of the Northern Arizona Association of Realtors. This is our second episode, and I am thrilled to bring you a conversation that speaks to the heart of our mission, not just as real estate professionals, but as community builders. Today, I'll be joined by two phenomenal leaders, Ventrice McMaster and Arin Wheeler, co chairs of NAAR's Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee. Together, we're going to explore why EDI is more than just a committee. It is a commitment, one that connects directly to for housing, how we do business, and to the future of real estate here in Northern Arizona. So let's go beyond a sale and into the values that empower us. Ventrice, Arin welcome. Let's start with your why, what inspired you should be with the step in leadership in the EDI committee. Arin want to go first? Oh sure,
Arin Wheeler 1:09 honestly, the first step was someone inviting me, which is, I think, super important, because I wouldn't have known about the opportunity otherwise. So I was invited, and I immediately thought, this is right up my alley, because I think everyone deserves a fair shot at life in all categories. And being a realtor, this allows me to really promote fairness and homeownership to our community.
Michelle Linton 1:42 Ventrice, how about you? What got you involved?
Ventrice 1:47 I too, like Arin, was asked to serve on the committee, and I've never said yes faster, and just like when you asked me, I sent you that very happy gifof of course I would do it. I also think I kind of embody the D in the EDI committee. I do have lived here my entire adult life, except that one year and moved to Colorado. But I would like to see I'd like to see the diversity in our community, and I would like to see more of it. So,
Michelle Linton 2:21 all right? Well, let's give our listeners a quick overview of the EDI committees mission and how it supports NAAR'S broader goal.
Arin Wheeler 2:32 Since I don't have it memorized, so I'm going to go ahead and read that to me. So our EDI committee strikes to increase equity, diversity and inclusion within the association and its leadership, we try to build and expand relationships with multicultural and real estate organizations and address barrier housing issues and fair housing planning within our community, I think, within our NAAR mission, we're trying to promote professionalism growth within our members and mostly our ethics, is really it just helps us focus in on our ethics, which is our obligation to serve our community fairly and help educate them as well.
Michelle Linton 3:15 I'm so proud of that mission statement. Um, so we often hear the term DEI nationally, but at NAAR, we lead with EDI, equity, diversity and inclusion. Why is that distinction meaningful to you? Think
Ventrice 3:35 having equity in front of diversity and inclusion, you needed to be equitable in order to then be inclusive and then to add diversity. So having that E in front of the D and the I let our members know that we see our communities as equitable. We need to be equitable in all of our dealings, then we need to be inclusive in all of our dealings that. Don't forget that D that's in there. That's the diversity in all of our dealings we live in, in a very diverse community, multicultural, especially Flagstaff itself. We have Latinos, Latinx, African American, Native American, Caucasian. There's just a whole melting pot going on happening at fly staff that we felt that EDI was perfect for our community.
Arin Wheeler 4:34 And I think the equity, again, it's everybody deserves to have a home, and we need to do different things for different populations to make sure they have that fair access and resources.
Michelle Linton 4:53 Well, let's dive in to fair housing. April is fair housing much but as realtor. Is our duty to uphold Fair Housing lasts all year long. How does EDI intersect with that responsibility?
Arin Wheeler 5:11 Like go first if you want. So within our committee, we're always trying to be present in the community. So we're trying to get in front people at festivals, at different different functions and organizations, just to make sure that we're always promoting fair housing, giving out resources non discrimination, information resources for local housing programs now, payment assistance programs. And so every time we are out in our community, we are trying to make sure that people know that we're here and we can help them find what they need on the homeownership
Ventrice 5:51 in that brings us back to the inclusive when we talk about the city housing programs or down payment assistance, many people Think that to buy a home, you have to come with your old money, and that's $20,000 down, $30,000 down, sometimes in to anybody that's a lot of money. Well, hey, did you know that the city of Flagstaff can help you with down payment assistance? Did you know that they have a city land trust program? And I don't know when we talk about that at P.R.I.D.E when we had any community events, a lot of people had no idea about it. Where can we get more information? Where can we the information is readily available to everybody, but we need to throw it in their faces a little bit to get them in our community, our members in our community centered around being like, there's there's information available for everyone, and it's out there, right?
Michelle Linton 6:52 Absolutely, it's great that the EDI community had that reach to get that information out there and to be in front of our community.
Ventrice 7:00 important and providing the community with HUD and fair housing programs to let you know that, hey, if you don't feel like you were accurately represented, then you can here's information on how to report that discrimination. You're not. You're it's not just something you're going to brush off, but you need to know that it needs to happen in a certain time frame, or there's, unfortunately, nothing that they can do about it. So see,
Michelle Linton 7:28 I remember being at our booth at Pride of all years ago, we had so many members of the public come up to us and act about that. How I do force that this has been a problem, yes, and it seems to mostly happen, and people don't know what to do, and so I think that's awesome.
Arin Wheeler 7:50 Yeah, they think it's just life, and it's not life. It's not life. Think that's our whole goal is to feed on the ground, very in front of our public to get them direction to all the different cool programs we have that, again, make housing attainable and also where to go when stuff is not going right.
Ventrice 8:11 We're doing everything but calling them ourselves.
Michelle Linton 8:15 Absolutely So one example was at Pride of how community members came up. Do you have any other examples of how you've helped the community understand EDI, either members or the public for a more inclusive experience?
Ventrice 8:34 So a couple of years ago, we did decide to get the schools involved with EDI. We thought, how can we get involved in EDI? There are in our community too. So we decided to put together a Youth Art Exhibition downtown in Heritage Square, where we got all the local schools to have their kids, K through 12, send in their art of what diversity looks in their community and from kindergarten to 12th grade, my God, the diversity that they drew in our community was amazing. A lot of people drew what their culture was with their diverse in their communities that they do themselves, or they do their friends, or they drew someone that they knew who is of identity, verse culture. So it was nice to get our community involved and see what they see
Michelle Linton 9:33 Absolutely. How many submissions Did you have? There were a lot!
Ventrice 9:37 We had over 100 it was, it was so hard because then we got to narrow them down to make voting a little bit easier. But it would, it's so hard to say no in this art and no of that art. And it just, it's truly just inspiring to see what our youth sees in us. Well, it was pretty
Arin Wheeler 9:56 cool too, just to see kind of the definition of diverse. To be and how broad that is. You know, I said we often think about it cultural diversity, but you know, even family structures, you know, adoptive families or you know grandparents, you know, and just sometimes people have been brought other pets into the art. You know, it's just like it was just fun to see everything through the lens of the kiddos in our community. Just fun, and that's
Ventrice 10:25 all the prompts we got to give them. Is diversity through your eyes, and to see that they knew enormously what diversity was. You said somebody threw her dog. Picture of a dog in there that's crazy, like that's diverse. Well, that's diverse. Their diverse family. They have a dog, and they include that in their family, but so I'm glad that they understand the prompt.
Michelle Linton 10:47 I was so part of our community and the EDI committee for putting that on. And it was really great to see all the family members, the hardest, show up. And it
Ventrice 10:57 was such a great event. It was
Michelle Linton 10:59 Ladies. What are some common misconceptions you think members might have about fair housing or how it connects to EDI
Ventrice 11:06 I think, with today's current climate, or kind of making it a political stance when They should really think about it as a community stance you would like when, even if you just look at yourself, you would like somebody to treat you like they would treat anybody else. And we had that in real estate. They call that the platinum standard. I do believe that is, I might be wrong with that, but some for EDI, I think that's like the diamond standard. It's literally everybody in your community. There's no reason why EDI should not be important. It's not just another Fair Housing deal. It's It's everybody's life. It's life as they experience. It may not be the same as your and may it be different complete and different on yours, but you need to understand that. And not everybody's the same. And I think that's what makes us unqiue.
Arin Wheeler 12:10 I think our membership, again, I think it's really easy to see it, see it as a political label in this climate, but it's important to know root of the things that we are working on and trying to address. For instance, because I've had a few situations where language barrier makes it really, really difficult to serve my clients in in a fair way. You know, when you're using, not in my situation, but it's there's a tendency to, like, lean towards using kids to help translate, you know, or or Google Translate you know. And it's like, how do you how do you properly serve your clients if you don't have the resources you need to do that, you know, and to to build, to establish the trust and guide them through this process, you know. So that's at the core of what we are trying to do, is constantly make sure that our industry has the resources available to serve everyone the same, you know, because it is really difficult, and luckily, there's been some big movement. Arizona Association of Realtors actually has a read only available list of translators, licensed realtors who can translate, because that's another thing. You know, our language of real estate is impossible for those who even speak it. You know, translating in the same language that we speak is very difficult to make sure that our clients understand what's going understand what's going on. You know, in every degree, a challenge between here and there just makes this process so much harder for everybody to feel like they have fair access. So that is the road. But I exist,
Michelle Linton 13:55 and we will post interviewing where those resources are located for our members, yes, they come across meeting language translators, but we will be posting a link of where our members can find resources. They do be translators,
Arin Wheeler 14:17 and you know, also reach out if you ever have identified a need, and we don't have a resource, because that's kind of always what we're trying to think about and figure out the solution to
Ventrice 14:31 we're actively trying to find things to do to better the community. So if you have your suggestions, please send them directly to us
Michelle Linton 14:40 Ventrice, that was a great call to action for our Realtor members and how they can help advance housing for all. Let's dive into Northern Arizona. How do these conversations around EDI show up in the day to day work of Realtors, especially here. When we were talking earlier about the different culture and some things that are important to those cultures in our area.
Ventrice 15:11 I think EDI plays a huge role, especially in real estate, and especially here in Arizona, because we have a large Native American population, and some tribes can't live in housing where somebody has passed away. And in Arizona, as a realtor, members don't have to disclose that. And I think that is something that should be disclosed, because culturally, you're telling you're letting somebody live in a place or allowing somebody to live in a place where their culture is against that you should be upfront with them. You should be upfront with being able to ask your clients their pronouns. If somebody just looks like a woman doesn't just identify she, her, I would take the step further. Are you okay using she, her pronouns? I use that in my email signature. I identify as a *cis gender* female, and I think people should be okay with using that, because I meet people every day that use they, them, he, her, she, there's just different pronouns up there. It's a different age of real estate. I think that's part of our job is, as realtors, too, is to help our clients kind of focus on the goal. You know, if we are selling our house, we want to sell our house, we want to buy a home, we want to buy a home, and it really should have no difference from that perspective on who we're buying her home from, or who we're selling our home to our goal is to help educate our membership and our clients. You know, like to get this job done and meet your goals. You know, we we're going to consider all people, you know, all people's fair game, and all people deserve to have, you know, equal, equal access. You know, whatever those are, and consideration for that laser are important. You know, consideration make, can I safely access this home? You know, when it's disability, does this whole align with my needs, within my culture, you know, or within my whatever it happens to be, those are all important. Every single human has a different need, and you're okay, just making sure those needs are met. And that's where I'm gonna plug, uh, Fair Haven. If you're not, if you know right now today that you're not comfortable having those conversations in NAR we did Fair Haven 2.0 it's an interactive platform that you're going through as a real estate agent, as a realtor and as a member of the public going through being a realtor, Helping somebody who's disabled wanting to live in the condo. Well, the condo wasn't accessible for them. What even it did for your client are always well, you're gonna fight for them, but what does fighting for your client look like for somebody who's disabled? It's different from fighting for getting your client a washer and dryer when they need a ramp, way to access their home. So Fair Haven is a great example on how to do that, and now that NAR requires you to take a fair housing class that fulfills your requirement. It's an hour and 30 minutes of your time. It's wonderful. I like it. I would play it again.
Michelle Linton 18:35 And for our members out there who have not heard of Fair Haven is an interactive training platform developedby the National Association of REALTORS to help real estate professionals identify, prevent and address discriminating practices in real estate. You do a fictional town called Fair Haven. The training uses simulation scenarios and real like in situations to merge agents and brokers and experiences where they make ethical for housing plate decisions, and you can find that this course at the National Association of REALTORS website,
Ventrice 19:10 yes, and we'll put the link up as well.
Michelle Linton 19:13 All right ladies. As you look through the future, what are your hopes for the impact of EDI within NAAR in our broader community?
Arin Wheeler 19:29 I hope that people continue to try to merge like it's it's part of our human nature to feel comfortable with things that are similar, and there's a lot of deeply ingrained just biases. It cuts, you know that's and it takes continual awareness in education to try to overcome those things. It's not just taking a class one time. It's not just doing something culturally sensitive one time. You know it is, it is definitely a continual process. And that's another thing where, with our committee, where you're trying to continually bring new classes to kind of continue to fight against those natural biases, and it's okay to have those that's, that's, it's inside. It's not aboutcultures, about anything it's we do tend to feel more comfortable when things are similar, so opening our eyes,opening our awareness, so that we can better serve people who are not exactly like us, for whatever reason that happens to be and so yeah,
Ventrice 20:38 I agree. Take not every Fair Housing class is the same. So I would encourage you to look for in depth teaching. We have a bias override training class happening May 13th, one to four at the association, so you can kind of be comfortable with understanding. Okay, this is my bias. How do I learn to fix it? So it's not just something that you're continuously overlooking and saying, Yeah, I know have this issue. I'm working on it. Work on it. Take a take a fair housing class that really shows in depth on how to over override those biases. Be comfortable with clients at at home, with diversity is a great certification that you can get, and we do reimbursements if you get the certificate done during a certain time.
Arin Wheeler 21:33 Be comfortable asking questions and how, how your clients, how your community, needs to be served as that's the only way that we will learn and continue to improve our service.
Michelle Linton 21:45 Ladies fill our members in on what is taking place in the EDI committee right now.
Arin Wheeler 21:50 So last year, we started a scholarship program. We have a number of scholarships give out each year, and the goal is to one help people get into real estate who they have never thought about before, but would do a wonderful job in serving our community. We are looking to hopefully increase the diversity within our association so that we can also internally, better understand the different needs of our very diverse community. So that is one really cool thing. Please share that with anyone you know who you think could do a wonderful job in helping bridge, bridge some of the gaps we have to fair housing, you know, kind of reaching other parts of our community who didn't ever consider owning them, you know. So
Ventrice 22:44 that puts a bit. And then, like we mentioned, we do sponsor pride in June, but for the first time this year, we will be sponsoring with the Mountain Film Festival.
Michelle Linton 22:57 That is a very exciting partnership. It's exciting that's coming up soon.
Ventrice 23:01 Yeah, April, April, yes. First week of April, will be downtown with our little group passing out more information for the community on for the community, about how to protect themselves and be aware just spread to the cheer of real estate and all that we're doing here for the association.
Michelle Linton 23:21 I look forward to see you at the events coming up. Yes, is there anything else you want to share a farm upper
Ventrice 23:29 join the committee? We could always use another body, another person who, who feels like they embody EDI. And we might be missing something. We're not fully missing. Yeah, we're not perfect whatsoever. So if you think you can come in and sprinkle a little more pizzazz on the committee, please do email Arin or I, and we're here for you. We want your support.
Michelle Linton 23:57 Thank you so much for being here today. Lee, thank you. I would like to give a special thank you to Ventrice and Arin for their incredible work that they are doing through NAAR Equity, Diversity and Inclusion committee. Today's conversation is a powerful reminder that housing isn't just about contracts and closings, it's about people, dignity and access to opportunity at NAAR, we believe that everyone deserves a fair shot at finding that safe, stable place to call home. Fair Housing and EDI aren't optional. They are essential, and it's our responsibility as realtors to be advocates, educators and allies in this mission. To our members, we are here for you to empower you with tools knowledge and support you to uphold these values in your daily work. To the public, we are here for you. We're committing to helping build a Northern Arizona where housing is inclusive, accessible and equitable No matter your background, your income. Or your story, because housing is more than a transaction, it is a human right, and together, we can make that right a reality for everyone. Thanks for joining us on Beyond the sale empowering Northern Arizona association members, let's keep opening doors.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
