"Everybody says we want more affordable housing... at the same time, they don't want to see anything new."

On this episode of Most Modern - a podcast about the built environment - Alex talks with Jesse Batus, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Development at The Community Builders (TCB), one of the largest nonprofit developers in the country, building across 15 states and Washington, DC.

We get past the buzzword and into the machinery: the real definition of affordability (no more than 30% of income), why construction now runs "upwards of $500,000 per unit," how NIMBYism and delay quietly drive up costs, and why "time kills all deals." Jesse walks through the ground game - from a food-desert grocery store and hundreds of new apartments in Schenectady's Hamilton Hill, to the desegregation history behind Yonkers, to transit-oriented projects like Park Haven in the Bronx (with BronxWorks and a FRESH grocery store) and a childcare-anchored development in Far Rockaway.

We also cover the plumbing nobody sees: the 10-11 layer capital stacks behind a single deal, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the starvation of public housing, resilient design in a flood zone, and why good affordable housing should be indistinguishable from market-rate. The throughline: housing is the platform everything else - childcare, school, work, stability - is built on.

Chapters:

00:00 - "Affordability is not a dirty word"

00:14 - Who is TCB, and what does a nonprofit developer do?

02:02 - What "affordability" actually means (the 30% rule vs. the human version)

04:49 - Affordability = stability: staying in your school district, near work

05:32 - The headwinds: construction costs, inflation, interest rates, NIMBYism

07:00 - "City of Yes" and unlocking supply through zoning

08:11 - How delay and sentiment get baked into the final cost per unit

10:55 - Turning detractors into participants: the Yonkers "Show Me a Hero" story

14:32 - Building on the edges: Park Haven (Mott Haven, Bronx) and Far Rockaway

17:46 - Where affordable housing belongs: transit-oriented development

18:43 - Build everywhere, or build thoughtfully? The abundance question

21:01 - Why a unit costs $500,000: land, electrification, prevailing wage

22:58 - The 10-11 source capital stack and the LIHTC explained

26:20 - Why affordable housing is so hard to create, in four forces

26:43 - Public housing, HOPE VI, NYCHA and the PACT program

30:39 - Design: what should affordable housing look like?

32:44 - Resiliency, healthy materials, and the "wow factor"

34:27 - TCB's "secret sauce": the Community Life department

36:31 - The future: from NIMBY to YIMBY, and "a rising tide lifts all boats"

Key takeaways:

- "Affordability" has a technical definition (30% of income) and a human one - groceries, a modest vacation, better schools for your kids.

- Housing is the platform - stability, childcare, and proximity to work all flow from it.

- Cost, not intent, is the hardest constraint: ~$500K/unit in dense, electrified, high-code markets like NYC.

- Time kills deals - delay and duplicative studies compound into real dollars.

- Good affordable housing should be seamless with market-rate. People should be proud to live there.

About the guest:

Jesse Batus is Senior Vice President of Real Estate Development (NY & NJ) at The Community Builders, where he has worked since 2007.

Web: https://tcbinc.org/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-batus-766739b/

About the show:

Most Modern is a podcast about the built environment - the people, economics, and design shaping how and where we live.

#AffordableHousing #BuiltEnvironment #RealEstateDevelopment #Housing #UrbanPlanning #YIMBY #Architecture

Small multifamily housing is illegal and too expensive to build. Architect Sam Naylor breaks down the building code reforms that could unlock the "missing middle."

We know zoning blocks housing. The quieter, equally powerful force is the building code. the invisible rulebook on stairs, sprinklers, and elevators that almost nobody outside the trade ever reads. When a project crosses from two units to three, it leaves the residential code and enters the "commercial" code, where a triple decker answers to nearly the same rules as a skyscraper.

Sam Naylor, co-founder of the design firm Nominal, practicing architect, and adjunct faculty at the University of Minnesota, returns to walk through his new report with Boston Indicators (with support from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies). It's a working map of why three-to-twenty-four-unit buildings stopped getting built, and a menu of fixes.

What you'll get:

Who this is for: architects, planners, housing advocates, and small developers who keep running into the same invisible wall and want to know where to push.

Chapters:
00:00 - Meet Sam Naylor and His Code Report
00:59 - What "Small Multifamily" Really Means
03:14 - Building Code vs. Zoning Code
06:00 - The Sprinkler Requirement Problem
08:12 - How America Ended Up With Two Codes
13:01 - Missing Middle: Everyone's Missing
16:05 - Why We Only Build Five-Over-Ones
18:08 - The One-Third Cost Jump
21:32 - Code Hacking Around the Rules
24:17 - Syncing Zoning and Building Code
29:12 - Digging Out: Sprinklers and Elevators
39:51 - A Vision for Shorter, Denser Cities

Resources:

Los Angeles urban development faces severe housing scarcity and bureaucratic strain while pioneering polycentric node architecture across 88 cities.Los Angeles attracts creative talent with its promise of personal reinvention, yet physical boundaries and rigid municipal codes hold its built environment static. Developers face multi-year entitlement delays and fractured county leadership while trying to expand housing and fortify against rising wildfire risks. Resolving this urban dilemma requires moving past single-family sprawl toward large-scale destination planning.Architect Alex Yuen and co-host Libo Li examine the physical and administrative friction blocking Los Angeles urban development with guest Sam Pepper, principal at Padaro Development Group and host of the Building LA podcast. Designed for practicing architects and architecture students, this episode evaluates how LA can transition from car-centric sprawl into a network of high-density destination nodes.### Key Takeaways* Spanish-style courtyard apartments and bungalow courts offer manageable middle-scale density without destroying single-family neighborhood character.* Administrative fragmentation across 88 distinct cities in LA County creates conflicting zoning interpretations that stall entitlement processes for years.* Los Angeles operates as a coarse-grained polycentric matrix where real estate value concentrates in destination nodes rather than continuous walkable streets.* Cohesive commercial nodes require single-developer anchors or unified property ownership, whereas fragmented parcel ownership leads to retail corridor decay.* Building along urban-wildland interfaces requires structural fortification against inevitable wildfire threats rather than attempting complete hazard elimination.### Who This Is ForArchitects, urban planners, real estate developers, and architecture students analyzing municipal housing policy, polycentric master planning, and climate-resilient design.### Episode Chapters00:00 - Why Los Angeles Resists Transformation01:03 - From London Architecture to LA Development04:53 - Hollywood Cachet and South Bay Aerospace07:43 - Physical Constraints and Byzantine Bureaucracy12:38 - County Governance and 88 Competing Cities18:11 - Managing Encampments and Wildfire Threats19:55 - Courtyard Apartments and Manageable Density22:38 - Polycentric Nodes Versus Jane Jacobs Walks27:27 - Single-Developer Anchors and Asian Urbanism33:21 - Personal Expression and High-Wire Nature40:41 - Padaro Group's Destination Development Model44:47 - Optimism for Los Angeles's Urban Future

### Resources Mentioned

* [Sam Pepper](https://www.linkedin.com/in/samhpepper/)

* [Building LA Podcast](https://www.buildinglapodcast.com/)

* [Padaro Development Group](https://www.padarodevelopment.com/)

* [Norman Foster's Gherkin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gherkin)

* [Lincoln Property Company](https://lpc.com/)

* [The Grove](https://thegrovela.com/)

* [The Row DTLA](https://www.rowdtla.com/)

* [Larchmont Boulevard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larchmont,_Los_Angeles)

* [Third Street Promenade](Third Street Promenade)

* [Hudson Yards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_Yards,_Manhattan)

### Subscribe & Connect

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/3zYvX2lRZOpHcZW41WGVrp

Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/most-podern-podcast/id1725756164

Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@MostPodern

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/most.podern

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/most-podern

#LAArchitecture #UrbanDevelopment #MostPodern #UrbanPlanning #HousingDensity