Heidi Bach has the best vibe
She says Atwater Village is walkable, diverse and if you’re renting out a duplex (or triplex) you will never be without a tenant
From an Idaho church she claims was right out of “Little House on the Prairie” to the beaches of Maui, to running things in Los Angeles, Heidi’s rise is inspirational.
Part of her self-reliant and spiritual nature began when she was just 13 when she looked at her church’s spreadsheet and feared it was in conflict with the Gospels.
You can’t pull a fast one on her
Heidi Bach: My mom and dad are different.
They raised us under the philosophy of wanting us to be independent human beings. That’s what they thought their job was. I think that was the popular parenting theory at the time.
So I actually traveled without my family, internationally, for the first time at 13. I went on a mission trip to El Salvador.
I was raised in the church and I remember, I found a P&L statement for the church. My dad was an elder.
Tony Pierce: Did you know what it meant at 13?
I have just always understood them for some reason. It was very simple.
Profits and Loss?
Yeah. A profit and loss statement. It’s just a spreadsheet that has names of things and dollar amounts. You see what money is being spent on what and I looked at it and everything was about The Building, which didn’t surprise me because I went to school there and they were always raising money for the carpet or whatever things. And maybe they really needed it. It is what it is, I don’t know.
But I didn’t see anything on there for the poor or the elderly, which is what I remember reading in my Bible what Jesus said we were supposed to do.
And so I asked my daddy, I was like, “How come there’s nothing on this? Like, if this is all the money that’s being spent, how come none is being spent on the poor or the elderly? What do we do for that?”
And he kind of honored my question and probably addressed it in some way that I don’t recall.
But it did not satisfy me, clearly. Because then I was like, “Well, that’s what we’re supposed to be doing. So I want to figure out how I how I do that.”
And I learned about this group called Teen Mania that would take all these teenagers to like Oklahoma, or Florida and teach you a musical play. And then you would go to whichever country and do a mission trip and share the gospel with people and try to convert them to Christianity, essentially.
And so I did my first trip at 13 to El Salvador.
They were like, “if you can raise the money, you can do it.”
I started sending letters to relatives and friends and put on fundraising events and I think raised about $2,000.
After going to college in Idaho you ended up in the 50th State. How did you end up in Hawaii?
My aunt lives out there. She’s a jewelry designer. They live off grid in this gorgeous place that’s powered by the sun and watered by the rain.
She moved there over 30 years ago. She started dating some guy who had a boat and they sailed their boat from the Bahamas to Hawaii.
How did you tell your mom, ‘I’m moving in with Auntie”?
I didn’t move in with them. First of all, they live in Hawaii and know that you have to have very clear boundaries if you have a house in Hawaii. So even family can’t stay longer than two weeks. And I respect that.
Because if you don’t have boundaries, oh my god, everyone’s always coming in.
They live off grid in this tiny little place where all their water is from the rain and their power is from the sun. So they literally don’t have enough resources for all these people to come through all the time.
So would you call these people hippies?
I would. I think they’re the best kind of hippies. Absolutely I would call them hippies. Yeah, they grow bunch of their own food. It’s a gorgeous property.
That seems like a dream.
They definitely have inspired my long-term dreams, like having a sustainable home. It’s a conscious choice to live a simple life instead of pursuing money and wealth and more stuff. They’ve chosen the exact opposite of that. And they’re super intentional about it.
They filter every decision through that lens. And I think it’s amazing and admirable. And if we all lived that way, we’d be in a better world.
Talk about a dream: this is a beautiful house.
It actually a duplex. And it’s a beautiful duplex.
Are you renting out the other side?
I am.
So not only are you beautiful, but you’re so smart.
I’ve made some good decisions. Yes.
That’s a great decision. Was it hard to get your tenant?
It’s never hard to get a tenant and Atwater, people want to live here. Everyone wants to live here. Maybe not everyone, but there’s a lot of people that want to live here. So I’ve never had trouble with that.
What’s the big selling point of Atwater?
When I was looking for places to buy, I wanted something walkable.
I wanted the kind of place where, on a weekend, I wouldn’t have to get in my car at all if I didn’t want to. And this neighborhood offers that. Plus, I think I have like all these big old trees lining my street. Who doesn’t love that?
The accessibility of this neighborhood is amazing. In terms of like, you can get to the 5, the 110, the 2, the 130… this is so LA that I’m just listing a bunch of numbers, but anyone from here knows what I’m saying. It’s just like, if it’s a down traffic time, I can literally get anywhere in 20 minutes.
If it’s heavy traffic, I’ve got 20 different options of how I can get to wherever I want to go. So Waze is your friend.
Then we’re right by Griffith Park and Silver Lake. So I like the outdoors experience in LA and, aside from the beach, I think this is the next-best thing where I can get more space for my money and easy access to more parts of the city. So it works for me — and beautiful views of the mountains.
Are your tenants protected by rent control?
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
So they may never leave?
They may never leave. I don’t know. They probably will leave because I’m going to build an ADU (an Additional Dwelling Unit) in the back.
The city recently changed a lot of their rules in an effort to solve our housing crisis. I think they rightfully realized there are middle-class people in the city who own duplexes and triplexes and even sometimes fourplexes where they could realistically build more housing on that lot, but it’s not zoned for it.
So I think they just passed some things to make it easier to get approvals to do that. Previously to that, I had looked into converting my garage into like a studio or something, but I wasn’t allowed because this is a duplex and therefore multifamily already, so I would have had to re-zone it as a triplex.
It was too many hurdles for me, so I abandoned the idea. But the reality is this area’s in-demand. People want apartments and studios. They don’t always want to be living in some big freakin luxury high rise apartment building. They want a space with a little bit of a yard and some of the things that just make people feel at home.
I think people like myself with duplexes and triplexes can offer that so I’m taking advantage of the the window of opportunity in the city.
You’re going to turn a profit on where you live.
I already have a healthy one.
You have a relationship with a nearby jewelry store?
Yes. I’m a business partner and investor in a jewelry store that’s right here on Glendale Boulevard. It’s the cutest — it’s MaeMae Jewelry.
Has any of your aunt’s jewelry end up at MaeMae?
No her stuff’s super fancy. It’s like art gallery / Four Seasons.
Our stuff is more… I think of our store as kind of like a New Age Hallmark. But instead of greeting cards, although we do sell those, it’s affirmation jewelry and like jewelry that has all these messages.
For example, one of these bracelets I’m wearing is called Float. It’s an aquamarine stone.
And I think the message on the card is something like:
you don’t have to try so hard, you are supported by the universe
…or something like that.
The messaging behind it was really related to how… so often in life, you feel like you have to really put in all this effort and push and try for things.
And it kind of reminds me of how we are sometimes in the water, when in reality, especially in saltwater, you could just float.
If you just breathe and relax, you actually can just float and you are supported.
You don’t need to be, you know, flailing about.
Who writes these affirmations?
My business partner and I do most of them together. It’s been a collaborative process. Now we’ve expanded our team, we’ve brought some really awesome, wonderful, amazing women into our team. And so we have people who help with that as well.
And in the past, we’ve had other employees that help with design and messaging, but I think the ones that kind of come from my business partner and I tend to resonate because we’re usually tapping into what we feel a lot of us are dealing with at the time and we are trying to address an emotional or spiritual need that we’re hearing from a lot of our friends.
Get your special person some special jewelry at MaeMae in Atwater
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Hear in LA is produced by Tony Pierce and a guy who knows a few things about the hula, Jordan Katz.
Editing, music supervision & mixing by Jordan Katz.
Songs by Orgōne and Jordan Katz.
This blog post was produced and edited by magical elves who trimmed down the transcript of the podcast to this representational sample and merged words and basically screwed everything to all hell so you should just listen to the interview for exactly what was said, ok.
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Shout out to:
Cindy for the graphic.
Jen Adams for the encouragement to do this years ago!
And all the lawmakers who passed the bill to allow people to live in other people’s backyards.
