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.