Who Killed the Starter Home?

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/