Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Who Killed the Starter Home?

In this episode, Steve Goldin joins us with a rare perspective of the housing system from all angles. He's been a developer, a municipal planning director, a real estate head at a public university, and even started a proptech company, so he's sat at every side of the table.

His take is that our fear of change drove the death of the starter home, but from there, we get into some genuinely creative ideas most developers or towns have never tried. For example, to get approvals it may not be enough for a developer to bring data that new residents of a building won't overcrowd the school district, but could it be possible to buy insurance to offer the town a sense of security? If there is a fear of data centers, could there be a market system to pay towns to host them? 

In this episode, Dominic Behrens joins us from Sydney, Australia where he is a senior economist with The Centre for International Economics. He is also the co-founder of Sydney YIMBY. Dominic walks us through a real-world experiment most places never get to see. In 2013, a suburban municipality in Australia allowed property owners to subdivide lots down to just 150 square meters, about 1,600 square feet, small enough for townhouses. Construction went up by two-thirds right away. Then in 2019, the required lost size was increased to 250 square meters, about 2,700 square feet, and construction went back down.  Dominic and his co-authors got access to incredibly detailed data and were able to analyze who built these homes (mostly small local builders) who moved in, (young families looking to upgrade), and what happened to the homes they left behind. That last part is fascinating. Research traced the ripple effect of these new townhomes across the much wider market. As young families moved to these high-end small homes, their old apartments became available to people of somewhat lower income and so on creating better the housing options further and further down the income ladder. We also discussed into why these reforms got reversed, even though less than one percent of residents objected, and why Dominic believes townhouses, unlike big apartment towers, could and should be allowed everywhere.

Read article here:

https://e61.in/what-local-land-use-reform-does-and-doesnt-do/

 

In this episode, Raisa Rubin-Stankiewicz joins us. She is the policy director of the New Jersey Coalition to End Homelessness. And she's here with some hard numbers. Unsheltered homelessness in New Jersey is up 61 percent from last year. For every one person who gets housed, almost three people become homeless. Yet Raisa has good news: in under two years, New Jersey got veterans' homelessness to what's called "functional zero." More veterans are getting housed than are becoming homeless. It took real money and real coordination, but it proves that this crisis isn't inevitable. We talk about what's broken, what's working, and what coalitions we can build and actions we can take to solve this staggering crisis.

In this episode, Tara Paxton joins us at the start of what she calls her "Act Two." She spent nearly thirty years on the municipal side of planning, most recently as planning director in Brick Township here in New Jersey where this past June, she finished working on Brick’s state's fourth round of affordable housing compliance. 

Now Tara is stepping away from municipal government to create something new: an educational and private practice (https://paxtonplanninggroup.com/) built around the gaps she saw up close for three decades. Tara has a term for the real obstacle she kept running into. It’s not “Not in My Back Yard” movement, but something she calls FOOMI, fear of others moving in and changing the familiar quality of life. 

Her solutions are not more regulation. It's education. She walks us through her plan to launch a new organization, modeled on Philadelphia's Citizen Planner Institute. The goal: teach residents the actual civics of planning. What a board can and can't legally do. Why "no" isn't always on the table. How to move residents from reflexively objecting to a project, toward contributing to shaping their town's future, one that meets the needs we all have at different stages of life. 

In this episode, David Kinsey joins us — the planner who, more than almost anyone else in New Jersey, has shaped the math behind the Mount Laurel doctrine and helped determine the numbers of deed-restricted residential units each town is required to build. It was not housing policy, not economics, but a language assignment that set David on his career path when during a study abroad in college he wrote a paper in French about a new town.

Decades later, he was the expert witness in court, spending days on the stand defending the housing formula built from census projections, household formation rates, and land-use factors. David calls the five-decade-old Mount Laurel doctrine, especially after the latest amendments, a smashing success, and multifamily construction with an inclusionary deed-restricted component is visible across the state. But David also acknowledges that New Jersey remains one of the most segregated states in the country, a pattern he traces directly to housing itself.

In this episode struggle to share his optimism about the rules for realistic opportunity when in some cases, it takes thirty years to deliver homes near a train station. In other cases, monumental efforts of assembling a multi-layered funding scheme and donated municipal land still fail to create homes.

In this episode, Justin Hollander, professor of urban & environmental policy and planning at Tufts University, joins us — and yes, he's also planned a new town on Mars, underground bike tunnels included.

Back on Earth, He shares that planners are usually taught to contain and densify existing places and by any means block expansion. The reality is that economic forces make development ooze out anyway, and it ends up as a sprawling suburbs that delivers somewhat affordable homes while making no real livable places. Justin makes the case that if we acknowledge this reality, we can actually plan new towns that are walkable, transit-friendly, and have community structure that defines a real place people would enjoy and still have starter homes. Maybe we don't need to move to Mars to bike to school after all.

In this episode, research attorney with YIMBY Law Jack Farrell came back to the podcast to walk us through the newly passed Road to Housing Act.

This sprawling, three hundred eighty-one-page bill is made up of small technical fixes. For Jack, that's a good sign: the sheer number of granular changes suggests that the authors understand how housing programs work on the ground.

We cover the highlights: grant programs that now prioritize ADUs, missing middle housing, and single-stair reform; a fix that makes manufactured homes cheaper to build; the unlocking of Community Development Block Grant funds for affordable housing; and a change that cuts duplicate inspections for properties using multiple federal funding sources. We also dig into the bill's attempt to cap how many single-family homes big institutional investors can own — and why the data suggests Wall Street landlords aren't the main cause of high home prices. And, for a complete fun fact — there is a provision inside a housing bill that has nothing to do with housing: a ban on the U.S. ever creating its own central bank digital currency.         

For decades, local zoning rules kept towns like Santa Barbara completely stuck, resulting in virtually zero new housing production. Then, the state of California stepped in.

In this episode, architect and housing advocate Ellen Bildsten joins us to share firsthand insights from the frontlines of California's housing revolution. We walk through how a massive wave of statewide legislation bypassed restrictive local zoning to unlock unprecedented housing opportunities—from the initial accessory dwelling unit (ADU) breakthrough to radical new laws allowing single-family lots to be subdivided into multiple ownership opportunities.

We discuss the critical "push-pull" of designing for density in highly traditional communities, the financial realities of infill vs. large-scale multifamily projects, and Ellen's dream of transforming a tourist-centered downtown into a walkable, vibrant, and authentic transit-oriented neighborhood.

It is a common story of high-demand towns using zoning to keep housing supply from meeting demand with low- and moderate-income families being pushed out.

In this episode, New Jersey's preeminent housing planner Creigh Rahenkamp does a deep dive on our state's half-century attempt to overcome exclusionary zoning. After hearing my recent conversation with Jason Sorens, whose research found no measurable increase in overall housing production, Creigh was furious at what he saw as a mischaracterization of the Mount Laurel doctrine.

As we dig in, however, something interesting emerges: the two of them agree on far more than it first appears. Both agree that Mount Laurel has increased the number of deed-restricted affordable units, but that New Jersey is nowhere near building enough homes compared to real demand. And both point to the same culprit for why: local rules continue to exclude, and complex requirements and approvals run up against economic constraints, making projects impossible.

Where they split is on what the Mount Laurel doctrine is. Sorens evaluates it as a housing production program. Rahenkamp insists it was never that — it's a rezoning doctrine, with deed-restricted units as the mechanism to capture some of the value that zoning had trapped, for the benefit of low- and moderate-income residents.

You have probably heard of the "Yes In My Back Yard" movement, but you may be less familiar with YIMBY Law — a nonprofit organization that helps research policy solutions, offer legal support, and streamline the arbitrary and delaying tactics stalling new home construction.

In this episode, research attorney with YIMBY law, Jack Farrell joins us to describe the housing doctrines in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York. He discusses why simply making "local housing plans" is great in theory, but often fails in practice without clear, enforceable rules. From California's Permit Streamlining Act to battles over home rule in Colorado, Jack walks us through how enforcing clear standards and timelines along with smart incentives can bring predictability back to the housing approval process.

Finally, Jack shares a sobering perspective from his early days as a public interest attorney: the direct, devastating link between housing scarcity and domestic violence.

 

Here is the link to our YIMBY Law project support form: https://www.yimbylaw.org/submit-a-project 

Information for anyone interested in YIMBY Action chapters: https://yimbyaction.org/get-involved/what-is-a-chapter/ 

"Design is the easy part. I get to sit in my secret magic studio, come up with a great design, and draw it up. I can do that all day long. But getting that design to work with the budget, the zoning, the neighbors, and the construction—that’s the hard part." According to Christopher Calott, Chair and Program Founder of the Master of Real Estate Development + Design Program at UC Berkeley.

In this episode, we discuss how designers can stop complaining from the sidelines and actually regain control of their vision by claiming their seat at the developer's table. When value engineering ruins a project, it’s because we aren't the ones making the final decisions.

Chris breaks down the myth of the "greedy developer," the reality of managing financial risk, and how "building a return on design" can physically and socially elevate an entire neighborhood. We also tackle the harsh reality of the modern housing market: the burdensome "Drive to Value" that forces entry-level homebuyers to make a bargain with the devil just to secure a starter home.

"If you try to keep anything from changing in the buildings, then what has to change is the people," shared Andrew Burleson, Board Chair of Strong Towns, as he walked me through the way out-of-proportion regulations that lead to our analysis-paralysis.

Are we sure that a simple backyard cottage or a neighborhood triplex need to face a multi-year legal gridlock as if it's an airport or a nuclear power plant? In this episode, we dive deep into Denver’s promising new "Unlocking Housing Choices" initiative to see what a realistic blueprint for the missing middle could look like. With Andrew's unique background spanning architecture, urban planning, and tech, we also explore a wild but practical idea: could an interactive game help towns and residents get more comfortable with local choices and trade-offs?

As someone who advocates for affordable housing, I am having a hard time processing this data—but it is officially in, and it’s a massive reality check.

 

Economist Jason Sorens has done extensive modeling on New Jersey’s housing landscape and found that Mount Laurel and inclusionary zoning mandates have had a 0% net impact on increasing overall housing supply or lowering housing costs. While the policy successfully produces a small number of deed-restricted units, it also creates an overwhelming lottery system and a devastating consequence for the middle of the market. When developers have to cross-subsidize the below-market units, the middle is financially impossible. The only projects that survive the math are either hyper-luxury developments with a small inclusionary component or projects that are in some form publicly funded.

    So, what do we do next?

In this episode, we dive into solutions for moving past ineffective mandates to unlock naturally occurring, truly affordable home development. Reduced minimum lot sizes for starter home subdivisions, legalized "by-right" infill density, pre-approved architectural plans, private inspections, and eliminated parking minimums are all being tested successfully around the country. It’s time to talk about how these diverse typologies can count toward the noble goal of creating realistic opportunities to build homes for the lower and middle-income strata of our communities.

When Erick and Carolina were recent architecture grads navigating a long-distance relationship between Houston and McAllen, Texas, Erick dropped a question that would completely rewrite their futures: "Will You Design a House with Me?"

While standard relationship advice warns against co-managing massive financial and design projects, this single speculative starter home on Orange Avenue became the literal blueprint for their marriage, their family, and their entire business. Today, as the founders of the 10-person firm Orange Made Architecture, Erick and Carolina join the podcast to reflect on how a modest starter home didn't just launch their careers—it ignited a modern design movement and catalyzed a profound community transformation in their Rio Grande Valley town.

Our latest episode was recorded live at the NJ Planning and Redevelopment Conference with Randi Moore, CEO of the Affordable Housing Alliance. We dove into a frustrating paradox: under normal circumstances the standard funding, rigid compliance rules, and hyper-fragmented municipal zoning completely freeze the pipeline for modest starter homes. But when a catastrophe strikes—like Hurricane Sandy—emergency recovery funds with more flexible rules suddenly act as a regulatory bypass cutting through the red tape.

Featuring plenty of audience participation that we tried our best to include in the recording, we brainstormed how to bring forward-thinking, resilient, and community-centered housing to our neighborhoods today—without waiting for disaster funding

If we "just fix zoning" all our housing problems will be solved, right? Not exactly. In this episode, Professional Planner Gabby Hart joins us from Colorado to share her experience working with municipalities on master plans and zoning regulations. She explains the unexpected friction between the public process and private restrictions and how sometimes it’s deed restrictions and private covenants that kill starter homes.

Another surprise could be to planners that steering committees could be helpful resources for local knowledge. And not at all surprising, but important, is the role of fun! Zoning Bingo, games, and kids change how we speak about regulations in creative and accessible ways. Fun helps us bring people together instead of driving us apart.

If you had a choice, what board would you like to be on? The helpful, the unhelpful, or the fun?

We would like to hear what you think about this conversation or if you have any ideas for how to bring the starter homes back from the brink of extinction, send us a note at starterhomepodcast@gmail.com

Potholes need fixing: no argument there! But while the "universal pothole consensus" keeps our eyes glued to the asphalt, it can make us miss the grander, more exciting evolution waiting to happen in our towns.

In this episode, urban journalist and researcher John Surico (https://www.johnsurico.com/) challenges us to look way beyond basic maintenance. He shares his firsthand experiences bringing beautiful, community-grown temporary public spaces to life right in his own neighborhood. These grassroots pop-ups do something amazing: they shift our thinking from treating roads merely as conduits for cars to seeing them as vibrant, human-scale places.

I’m also incredibly inspired by John’s take on the rapid emergence of a whole new generation of personal vehicles—from pedal-assist bikes to what are effectively unregulated motorcycles. He suggests that rather than lazily lumping them in with either traditional bikes or cars, we should embrace a more nuanced approach. By rethinking these vehicles, we can expand our shared mobility and connect our communities in entirely new, accessible ways.

Developers are often terrified of community engagement because they cannot control it. But in a world where projects face years of gridlock, should we admit that it is far riskier financially and socially to skip it?

In this week's podcast, I spoke with architect and urban planner Merilee Meacock, partner at KSS Architects, about her experience working alongside visionary developers, planners, and organizations to create transformational projects that truly work. These developments are deeply connected to their places—not just physically through pathways, transit, and active storefronts, but socially, by meeting local needs and expressing the true character of the neighborhood.

I loved learning how schools, museums, and film studios can serve as financially viable anchor tenants when they align with what is already needed and happening on the ground. Pair those with a grocery store and a savvy use of public subsidies, and you have a recipe for lasting community success.

In this week's podcast, I spoke with urban planner Silvia Del Fava, who shares findings from her extensive research in New York State. They interviewed municipal officials, land use professionals, engineers, and developers to understand what is contributing to our current housing gridlock. Similar stories of technical, unpredictable, and unexplainable regulations that vary wildly across 1,600 different municipalities kept coming up. This fragmentation creates a compounding nightmare of repetitive local boards and 50-year-old environmental laws that stall even the simplest housing projects for years.

The technical complexity and political layers of this broken system have pushed construction costs to a breaking point, effectively killing the starter home. But with mounting frustration from residents whose children can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods, a critical threshold of momentum is finally building.

With the governor's office eyeing administrative reforms, is this widespread frustration enough to finally bring about systemic change?

In this episode, I spoke with Ricardo Flores, Executive Director of the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC San Diego), where he oversees financing affordable housing and investing in underserved neighborhoods in San Diego CA.

Ricardo brings a rare perspective that combines politics, government policy, and finance — and he shares some uncomfortable truths: many of the barriers that make housing expensive and scarce are not accidents or laws of nature. They were designed that way.

LISC commissioned research exploring which policies could bring prices down enough for people to be able to afford homes again— and what the tax implications of those changes would be. This conversation gets into the real mechanics behind housing affordability, why reform feels so politically difficult, and how to have honest conversations about density with people who are afraid of it.

This week, our guest is Mike Anderson. Mike describes himself as a "proud survivor of the working poor". He shares the traumatic journey of growing up in subsidized housing in Plainfield during the "crack era" and the loss of his father, who was killed when Mike was only five.

Thanks to the efforts and support of Mike’s mom—a union leader who showed him the power of organizing —he was able to navigate the path to a Harvard education, leadership, and the world of high finance. Mike is now utilizing his "Culture times Capital" formula to bridge the gap between activism and finance. He discusses his experience litigating civil rights cases against trillion-dollar corporations and his mission to ensure that your zip code doesn't define your destiny.

Can the tools of high finance be used to liberate the marginalized, or is the system designed to keep them out?

Please note that the views expressed by the candidate are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this podcast. Given the nature of these long-form interviews, we cannot independently fact-check every claim made during the conversation. We encourage listeners to research the candidates and issues further as we approach the primary.

 

Sujit Singh hopes to bring his 30-year experience in technology consulting to Congress. He outlines a vision for leveraging robotics, AI, and space-based solar energy to reduce the cost of housing and public transit.

Mr. Singh shared his story of running for mayor in our neighboring town of West Windsor and developing his "Space, Lean, Innovation" model. He proposes that technological solutions can help overcome local regulatory hurdles and lower costs by as much as 50%.

Can innovation bypass traditional gridlock, or are some problems too grounded for a digital-first solution?

Most people talk about the American Dream; Mayor Adrian Mapp lived it.

He arrived from Barbados to join his mother, who had first come to the U.S. as an undocumented immigrant to pave the way for her children. In this episode, we discuss his journey from those roots to leading Plainfield through four terms of "transformational change."

We dive into what it actually takes to manage a city and why he believes the 12th District needs an executive who has already done the work on the ground. From housing and economic growth in NJ to immigration and restoring the U.S. reputation on the world stage, Mayor Mapp shares a vision for Washington rooted in his own lived experience.

In this episode, I spoke with Raymond Heck, who brings a blunt, municipal-focused energy to the race for Congress. He believes that Washington is disconnected from the "nuts and bolts" of local government—paving roads and fixing sewers—and that this gap is the source of our affordability crisis and infrastructure failures.

As a law enforcement officer and a small-town mayor, he brings a mix of humanity and compassion, along with a deep pride in representing the U.S. in all parts of life, whether he is in uniform or not. His leadership style prioritizes direct action and a no-nonsense approach and serves him well as a mayor of a small historic town. It even got him head the NJ League of Municipalities. Could this brand of straightforward, practical grit be exactly what is needed to break the gridlock in DC?

https://raymondheckforcongress.com/

Washington is a shark tank, says Dr. Brad Cohen, a physician and the sitting Mayor of East Brunswick.

In this episode, we discuss how taking care of patients and delivering babies as a gynecologist, protecting education as a school board member, and negotiating economic development and housing as a mayor makes him qualified to make a difference in Congress.

In all his pursuits, he’s been willing to study, learn, and work to fix problems. Can this executive mindset be useful in Washington?

https://bradcohenforcongress.com/

In this episode, I spoke with Squire Servance, an attorney and healthcare leader who plans to bring an entrepreneurial mindset to Congress. Our conversation centers on how his experience as a practicing lawyer and business owner informs his vision for the 12th District. Squire shares his perspective on healthcare and childcare reform, rethinking the path to career success for future generations, and understanding of AI and gig economy. We also discuss the need to balance government oversight with the room for innovation to grow. Ultimately, he argues for a leadership style rooted in negotiation across the aisle to get meaningful work done for the people.

 

Please note that the views expressed by the candidate are her own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this podcast. Given the nature of these long-form interviews, we cannot independently fact-check every claim made during the conversation. We encourage listeners to research the candidates and issues further as we approach the primary.

Recently, we have seen politicians attacking science, but what if scientist decide to flight back? In this episode, I spoke with a researcher who is stepping out of the lab and into the race for Congress. Sam Wang sees Washington not just as a political battlefield, but as a system with broken rules that need to be fixed with data and logic. He has spent his career studying the brain and the "science of political representation," and now he is ready to apply those findings in real life.

Our conversation dives into the vital mechanics of our democracy—how maps are drawn and how systems can be rigged. Sam argues that our current crisis is an opportunity to ensure our government processes are protected and actually work for us. The silver lining could be that it is now easy to see the cause and effect of what happens when complex systems break down, how actions far far away have direct and almost immediate impact on people’s everyday lives. Sam thinks that new leaders will emerge from this crisis and possibly our diverse district is ready to elect a scientist again.

In this episode, I spoke with Shanel Robinson, whose journey from maintaining fighter jets in the military to leading Somerset County as Commissioner Director is rooted in a deep-seated desire to serve. Our conversation focused on her emotional and moral commitment to "do right by the people." We explore her transition to county leadership and her dedication to bringing compassion and heart to help her neighbors and those in need.

 

In this episode Sue Altman discusses the fundamental question: in a moment of deep uncertainty, can the Democratic Party move from reactive defense to a proactive vision that genuinely changes lives?

We touched on reimagining transit as a catalyst of economic independence and how cleaning up underutilized industrial sites could help our housing crisis. I learned about Sue's skepticism of Big Tech and especially its role in the classroom. We covered the collision between democracy and the economic interests of the political donor class. Sue is proposing that to lead, the party must have the courage to challenge inaction and provide the people with a tangible reason to believe in the future.

Kyle Little isn't just seeking a seat; he’s calling out a party he says has grown "reactive" and passive in the face of crisis. As the first candidate to jump into the NJ-12 race, challenging the status quo long before the seat was "open," Kyle is demanding a new era of forceful messaging to shut down divisive rhetoric and own the Democratic narrative.

A small business owner, personal trainer and adjunct professor, his vision ranges from securing federal funding to transform Trenton into a world-class capital we can be proud of, to his unique use of entertainment and the arts, like spoken word poetry slams, as a tool for activism and community unity.

Please note that the views expressed by the candidate are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this podcast. Given the nature of these long-form interviews, we cannot independently fact-check every claim made during the conversation. We encourage listeners to research the candidates and issues further as we approach the primary.

On this podcast we usually focus on housing policy, but we are taking some time to host  special conversations with the candidates running for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. While our listeners outside of New Jersey may not care about this specific election, they may be fascinated to hear that we have 17 courageous people putting themselves in the spotlight and offering their vision and ideas for the future of their country. Housing issues are inevitably coming up, so we aren’t straying too far off-topic.

Our guest today is Elijah Dixon.

A lot of people get disappointed in politics. Elijah Dixon did too. But having lived the consequences of failed policies, he shifted from frustration to action — working to inspire and build better outcomes on the ground in Trenton.

He’s not just someone who talks — he’s someone who does. That approach has earned him real respect and influence in his community.

This conversation is about building economic power, being bold enough to move past safe talking points, and focusing on the how — how projects actually get done, how communities grow stronger, and how real progress happens on the ground in New Jersey and beyond

Please note that the views expressed by the candidate are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this podcast. Given the nature of these long-form interviews, we cannot independently fact-check every claim made during the conversation. We encourage listeners to research the candidates and issues further as we approach the primary.

On this podcast we usually focus on housing policy, but today we are starting a special series of conversations with the candidates running for New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. While our listeners outside of New Jersey may not care about this specific election, they may be fascinated to hear that we have 17 courageous people putting themselves in the spotlight and offering their vision and ideas for the future of their country. Housing issues are inevitably coming up, so we aren’t straying too far off-topic.

Our first guest is Jay Vaingankar, the youngest of the candidates, bringing his Gen-Z perspective to the race. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Jay worked in the Biden administration on COVID-19 operations and at the Department of Energy. He shares how his perspective on policies has been influenced by growing up in a family of immigrants and a very diverse community here in Mercer County.

If elected to Congress, Jay plans to 'major' in energy and climate—leveraging his experience implementing the Inflation Reduction Act—while 'minoring' in immigration reform. In our conversation, he shares his thoughts on why the Democratic party and the Biden Administration had a difficult time getting credit for the work they were doing and why he believes a new generation of leaders is needed to address modern challenges like AI, housing scarcity, and climate change.

Please note that the views expressed by the candidate are his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this podcast. Given the nature of these long-form interviews, we cannot independently fact-check every claim made during the conversation. We encourage listeners to research the candidates and issues further as we approach the primary.

What do you do when the equivalent of a plane full of people moves to your city every single day — not tourists, but people coming to stay? Calgary experienced exactly that. A successful marketing campaign attracted new residents, and suddenly growth wasn’t theoretical — it was reality.

In this episode, I spoke with Dr. Teresa Goldstein, Chief Planner and Director of Community Planning for the City of Calgary. We discuss why flexibility is the foundation of vibrancy, how making the language of zoning understandable helps cities grow gracefully, and what it looks like when government sees its role as a service provider rather than a gatekeeper.

Do you feel like something in our country is seriously broken right now? Like we’re losing a piece of what once made America optimistic and upwardly mobile — the belief that our future could be better than our past?

Yoni Appelbaum has done the research, and the story he tells is unsettling but also hopeful. For most of American history, uniquely in the world, America’s secret sauce was the freedom to move toward opportunity. That mobility gave people the agency to shape their future and even their identity. But over the past 50 years, we’ve become stuck.

Stuck in part because of the purposeful and openly discriminatory use of land. Some of the earliest zoning rules, beginning in 1885 in Modesto, California, were designed to push out Chinese laundry owners by banning the very businesses they operated to serve their customers. Over time, we became very good at building these legal walls. They came to seem normal, appropriate, even “scientific.” The result has been growing separation, rising resentment among those left out, and real strain on the foundations of our democracy.

But here’s the hopeful part: these land-use walls are words on paper, written by people. That means they can be rewritten. We can choose to get unstuck.

In this episode, I talk with Gregg Colburn about why homelessness is not just a personal tragedy, but a policy failure. Professor Colburn has done the research. If we want fewer people on the street, we must create more homes. It’s not rocket science. We’ve tried it, and it works.

In this episode, I talk with Andrew Mikula, who is leading an effort to bring a ballot measure to voters in Massachusetts that would make it possible to create starter homes.

Their proposal doesn’t seem too radical: if you have a plot of land the size of an NBA basketball court, or can create a lot of that size in an area with existing infrastructure, you should be allowed to build a home on it.

Andrew walks through how his team is approaching this process and what it says about the state of our government that it may be easier to win majority support from voters than to pass state legislation to do the same.

In this episode, I speak with Luca Gattoni-Celli about why we can’t subsidize our way out of the housing crisis and how vacancy chains really work.

We also unpack two issues that feel permanent but are actually new: today’s homelessness crisis and the growing immobility of people who are being pushed away from opportunity because they can’t afford to live anywhere near it.

In this episode I spoke with Casey Anderson who for 8 years chaired the Montgomery County Maryland Planning Board. I came across his recent article "What are planning hearings for?" where he talks about problems he saw that make our public engagement process so dysfunctional.

Casey offers suggestions, but we by no means came up with complete solutions. We hope that this is a start of the conversation. 

In this episode, I spoke with Taizo Yamamoto, principal of Yamamoto Architects. They creating beautiful, sustainable housing in Vancouver. He shares how the flexibility of Vancouver’s zoning allows for innovative and green projects. I loved learning about mass timber structures and other ideas that could help create more sustainable buildings and vibrant neighborhoods.

 

In this episode, I spoke with Alain Bertaud, urban economist and author of Order Without Design, whose career spans more than half a century planning cities across the globe, from communist systems to market economies. The incredible stories he shares illustrate why we are forced to consume more land and space, where the real hidden costs lie, and why common sense so often disappears in housing policy.

Note: About 20 minutes into the recording, we experienced a technical issue that caused some audio inconsistencies. Our apologies, and thank you for sticking with us.

In this episode, I speak with Mike Hathorne, author of the new book The Great Housing Reversal and the New American Dream. We talk about how market signals are clear about the kinds of homes people actually want to live in, yet outdated zoning and rigid development models continue to deliver the opposite. If we want affordable, walkable, human-scale neighborhoods again, we have to start listening to the market instead of silencing it.

This episode is a special one — our first recorded in front of a live audience on November 12th at the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority conference in Madison. I sat down with Elmer Moore, WHEDA’s executive director, to talk about re-imagining starter homes, the power of combining audacity with innovation, and how WHEDA is putting those words into action to make housing happen.    

In this episode, I talk with journalist Benjamin Schneider, author of The Unfinished Metropolis: Igniting the City-Building Revolution. We explore why cities need room to evolve and innovate, and how that mindset can help bring back starter homes and neighborhood-level creativity. We even dig into the question of where and why one would build an entirely new city and what is an "eco-district."

Every week, 75 to 100 churches close their doors. Some dilapidated buildings will slowly decay; others will become luxury condos with stained-glass windows. Our guest, pastor and property developer Mark Elsdon, isn’t waiting around. He’s building tools to help communities start early and grow something truly unique in God’s backyard — with patience, trust, and purpose.

I had so much fun speaking with Anthony Mattacchione and Raphael Kay.   They apply what they learned from slime mold to architecture and planning. This fascinating single-cell organism sends pulses through its body and can build efficient networks that resemble cities and transportation systems, only more resilient!  

I learned that we need a bit of “individual stupidity” for bottom-up community design to work. And that digital twin-making for cities already exists! What are we going to learn from it?

This episode is a little different. I switch roles and speak with Alex Margulis, a Princeton student and inspiring thinker who is researching and writing about climate, housing, and the power of agency.

We talk about why sustainability shouldn’t be driven by fear, how housing can be one of the most impactful climate solutions, and explore practical ways students can turn their advocacy into real impact.

In this episode, I talk with Ned Resnikoff, former policy director at California YIMBY (a pro-housing nonprofit that stands for Yes in My Backyard). My favorite part of our conversation is Ned’s story of how a casual happy hour grew into a statewide movement that rewrote the rules on housing, zoning, and grassroots organizing.

Ned is now a housing policy fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and a fiscal resilience fellow at California Forward, while also working on a new book with Island Press.

When architect and entrepreneur Carrie Shores Diller heard her clients tell their aging parents, “Oh, we’ll just put these temporary things up, and when you’re gone, we’ll take them back down,” she knew something had to change... That’s no way to face one’s mortality!

In this episode, Carrie shares how her company, Inspired ADUs, has brought hundreds of new homes to life, and how California’s bold housing laws made it possible for these small, beautifully designed Accessory Dwelling Units to deliver flexibility, affordability, and connection.

Economist Bryan Caplan reminds us that builders aren’t criminals, complainers are the minority, and there’s no way around it: we have to build more homes to meet demand.

If you’ve already read too many boring articles on the subject, Professor Caplan has the solution: a scientific comic book. Turns out, it’s actually fun being a YIMBY!

In this episode, land use attorney Kevin Moore walks us through the nearly impossible process of getting a use variance. It’s easy to tell the owner of a failing strip mall or an abandoned office building: “just get a variance, no need for legislative change". But as Kevin explains, that’s practically impossible and borderline illegal... at least in New Jersey.