Affordability Is Not a Dirty Word - Building Housing People Can Actually Afford | Jesse Batus

<p>&quot;Everybody says we want more affordable housing... at the same time, they don&#39;t want to see anything new.&quot;</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>We get past the buzzword and into the machinery: the real definition of affordability (no more than 30% of income), why construction now runs &quot;upwards of $500,000 per unit,&quot; how NIMBYism and delay quietly drive up costs, and why &quot;time kills all deals.&quot; Jesse walks through the ground game - from a food-desert grocery store and hundreds of new apartments in Schenectady&#39;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.</p><p><br></p><p>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.</p><p><br></p><p>Chapters:</p><p>00:00 - &quot;Affordability is not a dirty word&quot;</p><p>00:14 - Who is TCB, and what does a nonprofit developer do?</p><p>02:02 - What &quot;affordability&quot; actually means (the 30% rule vs. the human version)</p><p>04:49 - Affordability = stability: staying in your school district, near work</p><p>05:32 - The headwinds: construction costs, inflation, interest rates, NIMBYism</p><p>07:00 - &quot;City of Yes&quot; and unlocking supply through zoning</p><p>08:11 - How delay and sentiment get baked into the final cost per unit</p><p>10:55 - Turning detractors into participants: the Yonkers &quot;Show Me a Hero&quot; story</p><p>14:32 - Building on the edges: Park Haven (Mott Haven, Bronx) and Far Rockaway</p><p>17:46 - Where affordable housing belongs: transit-oriented development</p><p>18:43 - Build everywhere, or build thoughtfully? The abundance question</p><p>21:01 - Why a unit costs $500,000: land, electrification, prevailing wage</p><p>22:58 - The 10-11 source capital stack and the LIHT