Who Can Fix the Housing Crisis - NYT Pundits, German Shepherds, or Bilbo Baggins?

Episode 105 • 4th June 2025 • Crazy Town • Post Carbon Institute

Rob Dietz

I’m Rob Dietz.

Jason Bradford

I’m Jason Bradford.

Asher Miller

And I’m Asher Miller. Welcome to Crazy Town, where we live in a van down by the dried-up riverbed.

Rob Dietz

In today's episode, we're taking out a huge unaffordable mortgage on the housing crisis. What's behind the shortage in housing? Why is it that no young person except a Tik Tok influencer with a seven figure salary can afford to own a home? While mainstream pundits press for an energy blind build out of conventional housing, we propose a surprising change of course.

Asher Miller

Hey guys. I've got a question for you, Rob. Not you, Jason, I don't care about your family.

Jason Bradford

That's fine.

Asher Miller

Rob, what are your girls doing this summer?

Rob Dietz

Ah, well, they're all entrenched in the college life, and so you come home from summer, you know, you want to get a college job. We know that all the internships have dried up because there's no funding for that sort of research, or nothing like that. So they're going to be working at the pool, scooping ice cream, sweeping up.

Asher Miller

Scooping ice cream in the pool?

Rob Dietz

I don't know. You know, whatever.

Jason Bradford

Like a soda jerk or a car wash person?

Rob Dietz

It's not the: 1950

Asher Miller

You're coming up to the drive through on their roller skates.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, nice.

Asher Miller

Well, Avi needs to figure out a plan B. He had this big, you know, idea that he wanted to do, and it didn't work out. He applied to live in this influencer house in LA, but his social media follows, his Insta followers weren't big enough apparently.

Rob Dietz

Is it like Real World MTV stuff, living in an influencer house?

Jason Bradford

It just sounds like the stupidest thing imaginable.

Asher Miller

You're being very judgmental.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, I am. Yeah, I believe in judgmentalism.

Asher Miller

Do you? Okay.

Rob Dietz

So what house was this in LA?

Asher Miller

This is, it's called the House of Gunther. Have you heard about this?

Rob Dietz

No, but it sounds intriguing.

Jason Bradford

Say Gunther.

Asher Miller

No. Gunther.

Jason Bradford

Okay, I like Gunther.

Asher Miller

I don't care what you like. This is America, dude. It's Gunther, okay? So it's quote, unquote, the world's first dog-funded influencer driven content.

Jason Bradford

I hate you.

Asher Miller

So here's from the press release, okay?

Jason Bradford

Don't hurt me.

Asher Miller

This is from the press release: "Gunter VII"

Jason Bradford

Shit.

Asher Miller

"Will start puppyhood in the digital age by investing in House of Gunther, a Los Angeles based content house composed of Gen Z social media creators."

Jason Bradford

Can someone pith me? You know what that is? It's where you take a probe and you go through the brain of a frog? It's still alive. It can't feel anything.

Rob Dietz

I'll happily do that to you if you want. I can shove that microphone right through your brain.

Jason Bradford

Pith me. Pith me.

Asher Miller

So the Gen Z social media creators will, quote, unquote, "engage in a social experiment to explore themes of happiness, wealth and social behavior."

Jason Bradford

Okay?

Asher Miller

"With unlimited resources, never before seen digital reach in a larger than life puppy personality, anything is possible."

Jason Bradford

Including maximum stupidity.

Rob Dietz

You lost me at dog funded. What the hell does dog funded mean?

Asher Miller

Okay, we haven't talked about Gunther before?

Jason Bradford

No. Thank God. I've lived a sheltered life until now.

Asher Miller

The only reason I knew about this is because I follow Gunther. Gunther had a show on Netflix. There are actually multiple Gunthers. Okay? This is, I just said Gunther the Seventh.

Jason Bradford

Okay, what happened?

Asher Miller

ory a little bit. Back to the: 1990

Jason Bradford

Why isn't he in Germany?

Asher Miller

e in Germany too. She died in: 1992

Jason Bradford

So this is like the origin of the Pet Smart wealth management fund.

Asher Miller

No, no. That would be great, okay? And, yeah, you just put up different stocks in front the dog and you see whichever one he sniffs out or pees on is the one that you invest in.

Rob Dietz

This is how you get rich. You just give your money to your dog.

Asher Miller

You might actually do better than some of these hedge fund guys.

Jason Bradford

Yeah. Well, no Warren Buffet.

Asher Miller

You just give them treats, right? You don't have to, like, you know, pay a fee. They don't get a cut. Anyways, a lot of Gunther's money has come from real estate holdings, right? Including, and this is where I feel like we talked about Gunther before, but maybe we didn't. Gunther, one of the Gunthers, once owned a house that Madonna once had on Miami Beach. 8,400 square feet mansion, and you know, he would sleep in Madonna's old bedroom. Yeah, Gunther is living in a material world. He's a material dog. Exactly.

Jason Bradford

He's house trained, though.

Asher Miller

But Gunther sold that house for $29 million, right? And then, you know, Gunther has had some setbacks. Gunther tried to buy Nicholas Cage's island. But no go. Couldn't happen. That was an island that Nicholas Cage owns, apparently, in the Bahamas. So, I guess that's why, you know, Gunther the Seventh now, is doing this influencer house.

Jason Bradford

This is his plan B, like obviously.

Asher Miller

Right. Exactly. That's right.

Jason Bradford

Well, okay, okay. Well, this explains, I think, fully why there's a housing crisis.

Asher Miller

Right. This is it. This is the source of the housing crisis.

Jason Bradford

Because we've got German Shepherds, like Gunther. I'm gonna say it properly. There's probably corgis out there. There's probably beautiful long haired dauschaunds...

Asher Miller

There are a lot of dog influencers online. We don't know how many homes they own.

Jason Bradford

They probably own all the homes. All of these extra homes.

Rob Dietz

You don't know how many mountain villas are owned by Bernese mountain dogs.

Jason Bradford

Totally.

Rob Dietz

You have no idea how many islands --

Jason Bradford

Saint Bernards.

Asher Miller

You know, when people have been arguing for the rights of nature and the more than human world, I don't know that this is what they're envisioning.

Jason Bradford

No, not a domesticated canine.

Asher Miller

Or a domesticated canine that is worth $500 million.

Jason Bradford

God, I want to work for Gunther.

Rob Dietz

When we're talking about the U.S. housing crisis, aside from the dog issue that apparently is causing most of it. I mean, what else is going on here? Are we talking about people living in the streets?

Jason Bradford

Well obviously there are, I've looked at some stats.

Rob Dietz

Oh, that's surprising. Jason numbers man. Come on, lay them out.

Jason Bradford

Okay. There's about three quarters of a million people who are unhoused. And this rotates, but that's about the rate there is in the country. You're talking about the U.S.

Asher Miller

I'm assuming it's gone up over over years.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, I think in COVID it was probably one of the peak periods. But there's a housing shortage estimate between 1.5 and 5.5 million units. And there's a huge range because how you estimate this is mind numbingly difficult to understand. But anyway, that's what the, you know, economist type people decide is the housing shortage. But even this high end of those estimates may be understating the housing crisis numbers. So there's about 150 million housing units in the United Statesand if you look at how many are considered of a really poor quality, like shoddy, maybe dangerous to live in, and you do some extrapolation, there's probably about 20 million people in situations where it's not a great place. Like maybe it's got mold or the roof leaks a lot -- you know, that kind of thing.

Asher Miller

So not great housing. So we're talking about --

Jason Bradford

Substandard

Asher Miller

You know, between one and 5 million housing units short, but also 20 million people probably not living in ideal, you know, housing conditions. But that's not the only issue, right? I mean, housing is also too expensive. It's not just that there aren't enough homes. It's like, you know, there's about 10 million young people, they can't afford to move out of their parents’ home. This better not be my issue.

Rob Dietz

Get him out. Get him out the door. Well, once he gets that influencer job.

Asher Miller

Right, but that fell through. I couldn't work my connections with Gunther enough.

Jason Bradford

You gotta work your dog. Willow could be an influencer. That's how you make it.

Asher Miller

I know. Or buddy up with Gunther.

Jason Bradford

There you go. Snuggle.

Asher Miller

Yeah. So the average American commutes about 42 miles a day between their job and in their home. And so, millions of people can only afford a place that's like an hour or more away from their house. So it's, we're talking there's homelessness, there's people that are in substandard housing, and then there's people that might, maybe their home is just fine, but where they're living . . . You know, they're either living with their parents and they don't want to be living with their parents --

Jason Bradford

Who wants to do that? I don't want to.

Asher Miller

Or they're living far from their work.

Rob Dietz

Well, of course, the housing shortage and the affordability problems are related, right? Simple economic supply and demand kind of stuff. By the way, do you guys know that the Chief Economist at the, whatever the U.S. Housing Developers Association is, is me?

Jason Bradford

Are you?

Asher Miller

Are you moonlighting with us or are you moonlighting with them?

Rob Dietz

Well you know, tomato, tomato.

Jason Bradford

You do the rest of this show then.

Asher Miller

I bet he gets paid better by them.

Rob Dietz

It's not actually me, but same name. So, like, if you --

Asher Miller

There's a guy named Rob Dietz?

Rob Dietz

Yeah, who's the Chief Economist for the Home Builders Association.

Jason Bradford

There's probably a couple 100 people named Rob Dietz in the U.S.

Rob Dietz

I thought that one was very related to this.

Jason Bradford

Yes, good job.

Asher Miller

A couple 100 people? I think there's a shortage of Rob Dietz actually.

Jason Bradford

There needs to be more.

Asher Miller

Yeah, clearly.

Rob Dietz

But on the affordability front, I think the the idea of the American Dream is disappearing. And one of the ways I know this, very anecdotal, but I bought a house kind of in the years after college. It's actually right after graduate school. So I went to college, worked for a while, then went to grad school. Didn't need any money to go to graduate school. That was back in the days where you could maybe get a grant or whatever, scholarships. And so then when I came out, I wanted to buy a house. Okay?

Asher Miller

All the Gen Zers and Millennials listening to this are just like, "What the fuck? You could buy a house just coming out of grad school?"

Rob Dietz

ent, and this was in the year: 2000

Jason Bradford

Well, it's a big mansion then.

Asher Miller

You should have kept the house, dude.

Rob Dietz

Huge mansion. Yeah. Listen to this, 768 square feet, two bedroom, one bathroom, starter house. It was a Sears Home.

Jason Bradford

Oh, those are great.

Rob Dietz

You order from the Sears catalog and bring the materials --

Jason Bradford

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen those

Rob Dietz

house on site. Yeah. Built in: 1923

Asher Miller

The last episode we did was on, you know, bunkers and survivalism. We had flaming moats there. You should have kept that house and could have lit them up.

Jason Bradford

You could have bespoke that place.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, good point. I should have had some kind of flammable gel that would come out and, yeah, keep the riff raff out. I mean, that thing, you just think about that like --

Jason Bradford

That's a starter home.

Rob Dietz

Who can have a starter home that's like, you know, three quarters of a million dollars?

Jason Bradford

than there were in that year: 2000

Rob Dietz

So these are like, if you're dividing houses by the number of people, you're basically saying that a lot of them are sitting empty.

Jason Bradford

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

So we have a really high number of houses per person, but . . .

Asher Miller

That's interesting because I don't hear that number floated around very often in all the conversations about the housing crisis, right? Like they're talking about building more homes, which we'll get into. But I don't hear a lot of people talking about the fact that there are you said, 6 to 8 million that are basically not used all the time.

Jason Bradford

So you go to the, the St Louis Fed tracks all this. And you can just look at this. The math is easy. So I just said, how out of whack are we compared to the historic norm? And it's like, we've been building houses faster than our population has grown for the last 25 years. It's not a huge difference, but it's still like --

Rob Dietz

Well and remember when you go asking questions like how out of whack are we, the whole premise of this show is we're way out of whack.

Asher Miller

Okay, so speaking of way out of whack, I gotta share this little story. I was at a wedding a month or two ago and met this, you know, lovely couple, didn't have a lot in common with them. I mean, he literally works in finance in, you know, Manhattan. And we're talking about our kids and what our kids are doing. And, you know, they have a daughter and she also was a freshman in college and she went to University of Texas. And the wife was explaining to me kind of how they figured this whole thing out.

Jason Bradford

Cause they're from the east coast?

Asher Miller

Yeah, they're from New York. Right. So apparently there's a whole cottage industry that's set up to help people find -- Not cottage, condo.

Jason Bradford

Oh, condo.

Asher Miller

To get residency for their kids so their kids can get cheaper tuition, you know, in state tuition. So they basically found this guy through a friend who'd done this. He basically buys up properties, condos. In this case it's in Austin. He registers the condo basically in the name of the kid.

Jason Bradford

Genius.

Asher Miller

Right? So the kid gets residency, and he rents out the property. So because the family has money that they can invest in this thing --

Jason Bradford

Well do it in five states and hedge.

Asher Miller

They should have, yeah. But they don't have that many kids. You need to have a kid to get the residency.

Jason Bradford

One kid, five states. You don't know where they're gonna go. Give them options.

Asher Miller

So the girl is living at the sorority. She's not even living in this place. They rent it out and they get the rental income. This guy makes a bunch of money on the top, right, for doing this like turnkey solution for these out of state people who have a bunch of money, right? And they're netting out actually positive because of this.

Jason Bradford

Why didn't I think of this?

Rob Dietz

Yeah, I don't know what we're doing here. Why are we talking into microphones trying to make sense of the world when we could be making money out there.

Jason Bradford

So see, I'm pointing that direction, okay? I'm pointing north.

Asher Miller

Our listeners can really see what you're doing.

Rob Dietz

Yeah.

Jason Bradford

But there's a house. There's a house at the farm next door that has been rented out to this couple. It's the same deal, but for like, 15 years. She went to, the daughter went to U of O, but they did this thing. They just registered and crazy, crazy.

Rob Dietz

Well, I don't mean to pile on, except that I'm going to pile on.

Asher Miller

Oh okay. Cool.

Rob Dietz

Because we're talking housing crisis. You know there's a looming climate migration crisis that's going to happen. There's all this analysis looking at people are going to have to move. You know, the desert south is going to get too hot, the coastal zones are going to get flooded. So there's going to be a lot of people needing to move at some point. And you know, there's certain parts of the country that look more attractive. Maybe the Upper Midwest, you know, and maybe where we are, Pacific Northwest. But, you know, all these ideas about migrations due to climate, they're not saying we're gonna have to live differently. They're just saying, "Oh, just move!" But one of the things that stands in stark contrast to the idea of climate migration is, look up the fastest growing metro areas in the United States. Now, of course, the reporter here of note is US News and World Report. They like to rank everything.

Jason Bradford

They love ranking. I wonder what our podcast is ranked.

Asher Miller

Yeah. By then? Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Best three morons sitting in a room saying dumb stuff. Yeah, we topped that list. So let's go to the rankings, Jim, and look at the top metro areas that are growing.

Jason Bradford

Let's go Jim.

Rob Dietz

So number one is Wildwood, Florida.

Asher Miller

Are there any woods there?

Rob Dietz

That's wild, yeah. Number two: Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Jason Bradford

Oh, that's gonna get blown away.

Rob Dietz

Yep. Leander, Texas is number three.

Jason Bradford

Probably no water.

Rob Dietz

Palm Desert, California, speaking of no water, is four. Naples, Florida, Casa Grande, Arizona, Zephyr Hills, Florida, San Marcos, Texas, Conroe, Texas, Bonita Springs, Florida. The rest of the 25 are all in the same vein. Like places in Florida and Texas, in the sun belt, on the coast. Nothing against these places, but you know, they're mostly hot, coastal, and not going to do well in a warming environment.

Asher Miller

Okay, so obviously we've had this housing crisis, this problem, for a long time, but it's become, it seems like it's become more of an issue that's being talked about. Like for example, during the last presidential campaign, Kamala Harris had a proposal for building 3 million new homes. I think she was kind of trying to go right there in the middle of the fairway between some of those estimates of the housing shortage. But you know, even just taking that amount, okay, which is it's on the low end, I think, of what we talked about, think about the cost of that, right? So a newly constructed house, on average, sells for about $665,000 which is not quite as much as your little -

Rob Dietz

My two bedroom, one bath Sears house for 700. . .

Asher Miller

They're much bigger. So you're getting a deal house on a new house. I mean $665,000. . . .

Rob Dietz

Congrats to all you college grads and young newlyweds with your $665,000 house.

Asher Miller

So you know, if we said, yeah, let's try to enact Kamala Harris's proposal for 3 million new homes, you know, $665,000. That's about $2 trillion work of investment.

Jason Bradford

That's a lot of zeros.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, that's about the equivalent of the annual budget for social security and national defense combined.

Jason Bradford

Combined? Those are the two biggest . . .

Rob Dietz

Yeah, they're always talked about as these crazy huge amounts of money.

Asher Miller

Now, this is a one-time outlay versus those being annual, but yes, it's a shit ton.

Jason Bradford

What do you mean one time-outlay? Matthew Iglesias, I don't know, New York Times, wants a billion people, some billion Americans.

Asher Miller

Yeah, that's true. You're right. Growth opportunity.

Jason Bradford

Yes, but I can tell you part of why the cost is so much. I just drove through Bend, Oregon, yesterday, which is vying for like the stupidest desert community of Oregon.

Asher Miller

Of Oregon?

Rob Dietz

Didn't know that was a competition.

Jason Bradford

I mean, because we talked Las Vegas about as stupid.

Asher Miller

Sure. So we've got our own?

Jason Bradford

We've got our own version. It's a small version. It's Oregon, okay? But it's still absurd there. And I'm driving by another construction site, you know, and it's about five acres. It's just this gravel death zone with 20 massive pieces of equipment. Everything you could have - It was stunning the variety of heavy equipment there.

Rob Dietz

It's like one of those Richard Scarry children's books, right? With an excavator and a backhoe and a bulldozer and a little gold bug in a car driving by.

Jason Bradford

And a giant trencher. And they were trenching these trenches. And the trenches were full of pipe. And the pipe was, at every housing site, it was like these pipes curled up to the surface where you're going to connect all the houses to -- I imagine, I think of these houses like a patient in the ICU. Like every orifice has got some sort of tube going in or out. And if you were to yank any of those or turn off any of the machines --

Rob Dietz

Don't yank on catheters, okay? Let's just be gentle here.

Jason Bradford

But every one of these homes is like ICU patient that if the power goes out or a tube gets yanked out, they're done for. They're done for.

Rob Dietz

Right, but this is exactly what the like the Kamala Harris or, let's just call it the conventional plan. That's what's being proposed, right? You've got to build these houses and build them wherever. You know, don't pay any attention as long as we can get it done. And you find the nuttiest article. So there was one in the New York Times by this guy, Connor Doherty, who's sort of a tech business economics reporter, called "Why America Should Sprawl." I'm telling you. The subtitle to that was, "The word," he's talking about sprawl. "The word has become an epithet for garish reckless growth -- but to fix the housing crisis, the country needs more of it."

Asher Miller

Oh, yeah.

Jason Bradford

He didn't convince me of that actually when I read it.

Asher Miller

Let's double down, baby.

Jason Bradford

He didn't convince me. He was unconvincing.

Rob Dietz

No, it's weird. He goes to the Greater Dallas area and he's calling for basically more of the same. You know, go 40 miles north of Dallas and keep building and building and building. And there's nothing in there that would make you think anybody's being savvy with regard to energy, or savvy with regard to the ecological health of the of the area. What was most revealing to me, the articles kind of like eye roll as you read it, but in the comments, one commenter sounds like one of us is like, "How are you going to have water in these places?" You know, a lot of them are drying down. And his response was, "Well, we'll need to move to desalinization and wastewater recycling. Yeah, you know, like. . .

Asher Miller

Just waves it away.

Jason Bradford

We're gonna suck water from the Gulf of America, pump it down --

Asher Miller

Thank you for calling it by its right term. I appreciate that. So we don't get sued here.

Rob Dietz

I was struggling. I was like, what is the Gulf of America? Okay, I got you.

Asher Miller

Yeah, that was the opening salvo. Change the name so we can go suck all the water out of it and desalinate it.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Well, think when you do that, you're gonna have a pile of salt where you can build more houses.

Asher Miller

Right. Well, or you could use that salt for cooking. I mean, no big deal.

Jason Bradford

Delicious. Preserve meat.

Asher Miller

I just realized, we're shitting all over the New York Times in this.

Jason Bradford

We are. Every single day. They deserve it.

Asher Miller

But hey man. You know? If it's there, you gotta address it. So another wonderful article in The New York Times is an op-ed by a guy named Binyamin Applebaum. And basically, he's laying out a proposal to build homes on public lands. Literally, that's the title of his stupid article.

Rob Dietz

I can't wait. I'm gonna build a home on top of Old Faithful at Yellowstone. It's gonna be on the ground, but then I'll be up in the air, and then I'll be on the ground. No water shortage.

Asher Miller

No water shortage.

Rob Dietz

Incredible bidet.

Asher Miller

I'm not sure you could drink that water. Yeah, so I guess the Times has been on a bender right with this stuff because they actually published another piece two weeks after that with an article called, "Housing on federal lands aims to ease affordability crisis." I'm just gonna quote from that article for a second, okay? Quote, "Selling about 544,000 acres of developable land, or about 0.2% the land that the Bureau of Land Management oversees, could result in the construction of 1.5 million new homes on land near existing cities over the next decade. And according to recent analysis from Edward Pinto from the American Enterprise Institute," who we see eye to eye with on a lot of things.

Rob Dietz

Bastion of common sense.

Asher Miller

"Another 1.5 million homes could be built over the next five decades if new cities are developed near existing metropolitan areas." So we got to get more cities, you know. And again from the article, quote "David Garcia, the policy director at Up for Growth, a Washington based research group focused on the housing shortage, said he thought the initiative to build on public lands had a huge potential."

Rob Dietz

Okay, let's just stop here for a sec. I can't let this pass. There's an organization called Up for Growth?

Asher Miller

Yeah. Up for Growth. Yeah.

Rob Dietz

You know, I hate to call back to really old Simpsons episodes, but I remember one where they were kind of parroting this Super Bowl, and they said, "And the halftime show is by Up for People, celebrating the best hemisphere in the world, the Western Hemisphere." Up for People, Up for Growth.

Jason Bradford

Up for People. I saw one of those shows. It's a real thing.

Rob Dietz

It's bizarre.

Asher Miller

Yeah, I think you, Rob, should go get a job. I mean, I know you have this other job working with a realtor or whatever, the housing development thing.

Rob Dietz

That's my in! I could be CEO of Up for Growth and I'll pass out my old copies of my book, "Enough is Enough."

Asher Miller

You could just do a mea culpa and be like, "I had it all wrong guys. I was, you know, talking about steady state economics. I was a complete fool."

Rob Dietz

I'll write a sequel, "Enough is enough II: There's never enough."

Jason Bradford

Make it a conversion story.

Asher Miller

Oh, yeah. They love that kind of thing. But in any case, you know, so Applebaum, he's talking about basically building in the West, right? And we're going to take public lands because it's just empty scrub land, right?

Jason Bradford

It's sage brush.

Asher Miller

Whatever. Who cares about the other species that inhabit the ecosystems there.

Jason Bradford

Or the brackish water that's: 1500

Asher Miller

You were talking about the comments in I think one of the other articles, Rob. I was actually really heartened to read some of the comments from commenters on some of these articles because a lot of people are like, "Uh water. Excuse me? Water? What about the water? Excuse me, the water situation?" And no answer.

Jason Bradford

No answer, yeah.

Asher Miller

No answer to it. My favorite part of that article, the one I was just talking about, is the photo at the top. You don't really need to read the article. The photo at the top is this like construction site in Henderson, Nevada, right? And it looks like the backdrop of it is basically from the Arabian Peninsula.

Jason Bradford

It does look like the Arabian Peninsula because it's got these palms kind of thing.

Rob Dietz

Well, you don't have to worry about it. Most of the conservatives have evolved from being climate deniers to also being water deniers. It doesn't exist. We don't need it. Just build a structure on sand.

Asher Miller

And the water will come. If you build it, it will come.

Rob Dietz

Yes.

Jason Bradford

The two examples that you guys have gone over ad nauseum are kind of like libertarian, maybe sort of conservative right leaning.

Asher Miller

American Enterprise Institute?

Jason Bradford

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Up for Growth?

Jason Bradford

Exactly. These are sort of the build, build, build people, and they don't really care what you build as long as you build. And they don't care where you build. It could be an inhospitable place like Henderson, Nevada.

Rob Dietz

I feel like that's what they're after. Let's put this where there's going to be big waves, lots of hurricanes, no water.

Jason Bradford

But it's cheap to do it there. Now on the left, there's actually a sort of a counter movement to this a little bit, or they're somewhat aligned on understanding the need for more housing, they say. But it's championed by the book, "Abundance" by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. They're two highly successful writers and podcasters, clients of the New York Times. Thompson's at the Atlantic.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, that's a big book. It's an abundant book.

Jason Bradford

It went best seller for a week.

Asher Miller

It's just more and more pages, you know, every time you open it. I gotta say, I'll give these guys, before we shit all over their ideas, which I'm assuming is what we're doing here.

Jason Bradford

Correct.

Asher Miller

I've been to this podcast before. I think our listeners are probably like, I know what's coming. But before we do all that, I gotta say, I actually appreciate Klein's stuff a lot. He brings on people that he disagrees with and sometimes he has debates with them. He, I think, puts out some really good ideas about stuff. He's a smart guy, you know, articulate. Derek Thompson as well in kind of a different field. So it's what makes it actually slightly more frustrating for me. You know, when people who I think have really good ideas and have a pretty rational way of viewing things -- Like is not a climate denier by any stretch of the imagination, right? He's had lots of good things to say about political polarization and all that. He was one of the people that called out very loudly for Joe Biden to step down early. So I just want to give the guy some credit, right, before you shit all over him.

Jason Bradford

I agree with all that. Now, and this is what it is, is that he's obviously caught up in an eco-modernist sort of liberal vision. And it's not just about housing, but also they have awful things to say about energy and food and transportation.

Asher Miller

By awful, you mean delusional.

Jason Bradford

Completely delusional. Got it? A picture is worth 1,000 words they say. And this is the case. I've got in here a picture of the cover of the book. I want you guys to, I'm sorry to do this. I want you to look at it.

Asher Miller

Oh, yeah.

Rob Dietz

That is excellent. It's like a World's Fair gleaming glass tower just like bursting out of the farm.

Jason Bradford

On the left. On the right, what's that?

Rob Dietz

It's some kind of oasis with waterfalls and an ibis.

Jason Bradford

I sort of think it is Dubai and Bambi, right? Like, that's kind of what it looks like to me. It's just, it's insane. And this vision of ecomodernism, of like, get everyone packed into these big sleek cities with renewable energy and then let nature take over.

Asher Miller

Well there's a little bit of farmland, you know, on the edge between. That's like the border between, you know, the city and wild.

Rob Dietz

The cool part is that city is run entirely by two wind turbines and 16 photovoltaic solar panels. So no problem.

Asher Miller

It actually reminds me of my favorite thing ever, Jeff Bezos’s presentation he gave when he was launching his space penis company. You know, and we're gonna have a trillion people living in space. And he had something kind of like this.

Jason Bradford

Right. But in the O'Neill colony it kind of looked like.

Asher Miller

Yeah, that's right.

Jason Bradford

Okay. So the best description of this vision, it comes from one of the more critical reviews of the book that questions kind of the utopian perspective on it, Samuel Moyn, a professor of law and history at Yale, and he actually published in the New York Times. Quote, "The authors envision clean energy to grow meat in labs, more food on smaller plots of land, less work for more pay and Mach two jetliners that run on synthetic fuel to ferry people during the free time, one for leisure. What's not to like?" And that's a little ironic there.

Rob Dietz

I'm just nodding my head. What's not to like? That's awesome. I can't wait. I can't wait. Look, a lot of the arguments that Klein and others are putting forth from the liberal side, it kind of sounds like they're critical of the environmentalists, of this anti-growth, anti-innovation, not in my backyard. You know, these people just constantly getting in the way of projects. Maybe, you know, they're doing it out of good intentions, but you know -- Whatever, slowing the wheels of progress. And Klein is really starting to say that the liberals, the Democrats, are putting up too many roadblocks, and we need to remove those blocks. The example that he's harped on some is this idea of bureaucracy they were talking about in San Francisco. They built a public toilet, and it costs $1.7 million, right? And the reason was, 9 or 10 agencies got involved, there's a big set of public comment periods, there's environmental reviews, all this stuff. And you crap in a corner on the street and no one cares. That's actually in San Francisco also happening. You just nail a plastic bag to a telephone pole. Hardly costs anything.

Jason Bradford

Squat a little bit.

Asher Miller

DIY.

Rob Dietz

But you know, I mean, the argument makes some sense, like your bureaucracy gets out of control.

Asher Miller

And talked about that over complexification of things.

Jason Bradford

Well, that's the thing. They never mentioned complexity. Like none of these people mention that.

Rob Dietz

But here’s the kicker of it. They sort of give this false choice like you give to your two-year-old. You know, you can either eat your green beans or you can eat your squash. You know, they say that if liberals do not want Americans to turn to the false promise of strongmen, they need to offer the fruits of effective government. I mean, fine, effective government. Yeah, we're all for it, but it's not like building $2 trillion worth of housing. It's either that or some strong man's gonna rule the day.

Jason Bradford

Well, I go back to complexity that nobody really understands what to do. And a lot of the Klein guests, they would argue about how do we do this? Not what we do. Like what we do is fine. We need to have the Bambi and Dubai World. But they're always arguing about this. It drives me crazy. But liberals seem to love this. It offers this way for, you know, Democrats to offer some kind of populous solution set, right? The Gunther problem.

Asher Miller

Well, and there is a problem there. Now let's give you know liberals, progressive democrats, credit for actually wanting to solve problems. You know, maybe just out of political necessity, or because, you know, they actually have some values. So there are probably some good intentions there. But you're right. I mean, you know, they've gone on this tour, you know, this abundance tour. And you know, Klein, again to his credit, has brought on critics. Like he did a conversation on this podcast with Saikat Chakrabarti, sorry for mispronouncing the name, and Zephyr Teachout, you know, kind of debating the argument in abundance. But the it's crazy because what they're arguing about what is the cause of the housing crisis, not necessarily his vision for how you solve it, or his vision for the future, right? They're pissed about excusing away the way that centrist Democrats have allowed housing inequality to persist, not addressing that issue. Exactly. Gunther is too cute to really make him the poster child for this. But you know they're saying that --

Rob Dietz

Poster puppy.

Asher Miller

Excuse me, poster puppy.

Rob Dietz

Thank you. Speciest.

Asher Miller

You know they're basically challenging him for using away the role of the wealthy, for not talking about globalization enough as a big part of the problem. But you know, they're all on board with this kind of green vision of urban utopia.

Rob Dietz

Well as Jason quoted, "What's not to like?" You know, Mach 2 jets for my leadership. We love hearing from listeners who are doing good work out there in the world and we hope that maybe you'll find some inspiration in examples like this one. The folks at Holmberg Homestead left a comment on Spotify after an episode we recorded about ecomodernism in the food system. They say, "How very refreshing to listen to a podcast that actually understands small scale diverse multi species farming. We not only raise much of our food with very low inputs, we have extra to give to neighbors and the community food pantry." Well, thanks for the inspiring work you're doing at Holmberg Homestead. We recognize not everyone has access to farmland or skills in farming, but everyone can follow their lead and be giving to their neighbors and community. If you're doing something in service of people and the planet, something that helps us change direction towards sustainability and justice, please let us know. Leave a comment in your podcast app or get in touch with us directly by emailing crazytown@postcarbon.org. That's crazytown@postcarbon.org.

Asher Miller

Alright guys. You know I love just lamenting and bitching and moaning and all that stuff. But I think we should actually start talking about here we are giving these guys a hard time for solutions to the housing -

Rob Dietz

Air quotes around solutions.

Asher Miller

- crisis that we think are BS or stupid. So we've got to put up or shut up, right?

Jason Bradford

Totally.

Asher Miller

So let's talk about more realistic, maybe more sustainable responses. And maybe we start with some low hanging fruit. And here's one, pretty obvious but you don't see it talked about very much, which is let's just tax the ever living crap out of second homes, vacation homes, or homes owned by corporations, private equity funds that, you know, buy up a whole bunch of stuff, and, you know, try to maximize profit through, you know -

Jason Bradford

Market manipulation.

Asher Miller

Yeah, and all that stuff. Let's just tax the living shit out of that stuff.

Jason Bradford

Great idea.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. Good luck overcoming the power of those corporations and getting that through, but I agree.

Asher Miller

It should be part of the conversation, right?

Rob Dietz

Yes. Another one is we could use the existing housing stock and fill them up with more people. Like we talked about earlier, you've got a lot more square footage per capita than at any time ever in American history, yet we have this scary housing shortage. So this also combines to solve another problem. Talk about multi-solving, as our friend Beth Sawin would say, is there's also a loneliness epidemic in America. And so you put more people in houses, you could help with that too. Our friend Vicki Robin has done that in her home. She rents out part of it, kind of set it up so that person could have autonomous living space inside her house. And, you know, there's been some effort to make this easier to do. You know, it used to be kind of, no that's a single family house. You can't do that. Some places are lightening up those regulation and you can have accessory dwelling units or ADUs on your property. Just ways to get more people in the spaces that we're already inhabiting.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, I think that's all great. But honestly guys, I'm sorry, but it doesn't go far enough. What if I told you though that I have a proposal that can solve the housing crisis affordably, give people meaningful work with little or no commute, and repair landscapes harmed by industrial agriculture and other historical abuses.

Asher Miller

You sound like a great politician. Are you getting ready to run for office here?

Jason Bradford

Well this idea actually came up in the context of a recent sponsor of ours on the show known as the Shire Property Development and Realty Group. So I really love these guys.

Asher Miller

Yeah, they're great.

Jason Bradford

So what I'm proposing is the Modern Shire Project. And this is a way to build rural villages that allow the unplugging from urban metabolism and industrial production of food and junk consumer goods. So imagine building with local and natural materials and people making a livelihood in place, growing their own food, making their own basic goods in community and repairing the ecosystems they live among.

Rob Dietz

Okay so I'm willing to hear you out, but I got two critiques so far.

Jason Bradford

Only two?

Rob Dietz

One, you sound like an infomercial. If anybody even knows what that is anymore -- But what if I told you that I could solve everything and you could be rich.

Jason Bradford

Okay, I'll tone that down.

Asher Miller

I'm sold, dude. I don't know what you're talking about.

Rob Dietz

My second critique is I think you have a real proposal that's based on a fake ad that you came up with a couple of weeks ago which is quite honestly scaring me a little bit..

Asher Miller

Wait are you telling me that we don't actually have these sponsors?

Jason Bradford

What are you talking about?

Asher Miller

We've been doing this for five years and I didn't realize.

Jason Bradford

You haven't audited the books?

Asher Miller

Have there been fake sponsors this whole time?

Jason Bradford

Well I set up a meme coin.

Asher Miller

Jason!

Jason Bradford

Anyway. . .

Rob Dietz

Alright. Well what are the advantages of your Shire build out?

Jason Bradford

Now we don't have time to go through his in the podcast, but I did the math on this and have an article at resilience.org - resilience.org.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, look up Jason Bradford. You'll find all kinds of wisdom.

Jason Bradford

Okay, so to build not just the housing but also purchase farmland and set up commons infrastructure like barns and equipment for community self-provisioning. It ends up being about $70,000 per person instead of what we do now which is about -- What the proposals are -

Rob Dietz

The two trillion dollar build-out of conventional housing.

Jason Bradford

That's about $290,000 per person if you do the math on the conventional housing proposals. So it's 70k versus 290k.

Asher Miller

Now that's like a quarter of the price per person compared to the conventional price, right?

Jason Bradford

Yes. We're talking about, we said $2 trillion investment for this 3 million unit housing shortage, and I can do this, well the Shire Property . . .

Asher Miller

Right. You could do this yourself.

Jason Bradford

This is going to cost under half a trillion. It's a bargain.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, yeah. Well, when you wrote that article, as usual, I was your editor.

Jason Bradford

It was amazing. Only 400 things to change, I think. A lot of helpful comments.

Rob Dietz

You also went into the ecological footprint of these two different development models, the Shire Model and the conventional - can we call it the Mordor model?

Jason Bradford

Conventional Mordor. Yeah. I like that.

Rob Dietz

So the Shire has a really light footprint, definitely within one planet living. You know, people are in relationship with their local ecosystem. The Conventional Mordor housing is stomping an ecological footprint. You know, it's five times too big.

Asher Miller

But it comes with the eye of Sauron.

Jason Bradford

Yes just beautiful gleaming orange.

Rob Dietz

Orcs. You don't have to heat your home anymore. This flaming eye provides all the heat.

Asher Miller

Yeah. So, let me get this right. So ,a quarter of the price and comes with built in community, less vulnerable to the breakdown of modernity. . .

Jason Bradford

Yeah, yeah. You're living with like a 10th of the of the material and ecological harm. In fact, you're doing ecological repair in this scenario.

Asher Miller

Now, are only people with hairy feet eligible?

Jason Bradford

No, I thinkwe have to be open nowadays to allowing people without hairy feet into the Shire.

Rob Dietz

Don't get back into the speciest thing. You've already done that with the dogs. We're letting anybody in here.

Asher Miller

Clearly dogs wouldn't be allowed. Think about hairy feet.

Rob Dietz

So you're saying Gunther can't buy into the Shire?

Jason Bradford

I mean, I think we probably need something to help herd the sheep, you know. So yeah, border collies.

Asher Miller

Gunther has a whole new lease on life.

Rob Dietz

He's a German Shepard, right?

Jason Bradford

Correct.

Asher Miller

Instead of herding influencers to take stupid selfies, he can actually herd sheep. Wow.

Rob Dietz

More happiness for Gunther, too.

Jason Bradford

Oh my gosh.

Asher Miller

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Well, you know, I have some experience with this sort of living. I lived for a dozen years in a co-housing community, intentional community, even call it an aspiring ecovillage right here in Corvallis. That place was expressly designed to fit more people into a smaller piece of land and to have a smaller ecological footprint. To de-emphasize the car, de-emphasize the consumer goods thing, use less energy, compost more, all of that kind of stuff. And to have that tighter knit community. You know, I used to host music night where we would sing really bad guitar songs.

Jason Bradford

I remember singing badly at those things.

Rob Dietz

Lot of fun.

Jason Bradford

Lot of fun. And I think that's right, that's kind of what I'm talking about, and it's a beautiful place. But I also think, I'm thinking we eventually have to go even further, or maybe sooner than later. And I'm imagining a little bit even what I experienced when I was in my travels. And you know, a couple places come to mind, including this little village named Penjuku in the Solomon Islands. Which they have like tin roofs, that was sort of the only industrial aspect. And they will have sometimes outboard motors, but dug out canoes. Like they're building from wood that they harvest, you know, in the area. It's just a shockingly wonderful, beautiful little place. And so I think even the natural material side of things would be fascinating because it can decompose, right? We talk about what can decompose gracefully, right?

Asher Miller

Yeah.

Rob Dietz

Yeah. And I think when you speak to sort of the average American on the street, they might have trouble making the leap to maybe envisioning themselves there. So I think it's always instructive to think of, yeah, what are, what are the ways we can bridge that? And our friend Nate Hagens recently recorded an episode on his great simplification podcast where he interviewed this guy, Alexis Ziegler, who's affiliated with Living Energy Farm in Virginia. And I thought that was a good example. They have this off grid farm community, lots of people living there. They grow almost all of their food. They generate electricity right there and have it very simplified. And he was suggesting this would be a good way to set up residential communities in places that don't have a lot of infrastructure. They use like, 3% of the energy that a typical, you know, U.S. household uses.

Asher Miller

3%?

Jason Bradford

Yes, 3%.

Rob Dietz

And they seem to have pretty happy lives, you know? They are really good at building community and, yeah, just getting on with life without burning and using so much stuff.

Jason Bradford

Now, the land use laws -- So this is interesting talking again about the laws and regulations that get in the way of doing this. Like they allow stuff like the travesty I saw in Bend, or what is being proposed around the nation. They allow those travesties. But they don't allow people to go back to the land as easily in community on highly valuable farmland, right? I think we need trials and variances to allow people to reoccupy highly productive landscapes and remove the machines a bit and go back to these places. There was, some years ago, there was an interview we passed on that Vicki Robin did with Jane Davidson of the Wales One Planet Development Law. And so I think more stuff like that is required in places like --

Asher Miller

That was about trying to support people to get back on to the land, right?

Jason Bradford

Yeah, the idea being that you could buy a large rural farm property and actually re-inhabit it. Because a lot of these places, if you don't just run it with machines, you don't have housing on these anymore. They're not allowed. It's trying to protect them from development. But the idea is that no, we need to actually open them up to certain kinds of development.

Asher Miller

My friend, Kieran, this is exactly what he did. He and a few others bought property in Wales, a farm property.

Jason Bradford

Wow, really?

Asher Miller

And they were living there together. And yeah.

Jason Bradford

Oh fantastic.

Rob Dietz

Actually works. That's episode 37 of Crazy Town.

Jason Bradford

That was a long time ago.

Rob Dietz

Yeah, "Discounting the Future and Climate Chaos."

Asher Miller

Now I just need to do a little tweaking here. Because we're talking about bridging from kind of the current paradigm, you know, to something that's coming next. And I think we have a real need to fast track this. I think there's also opportunity for making some money here, Jason. So I mean, you tried for a while there. You tried to, you know, create this new institute, Tipsy, right?

Jason Bradford

Yes, yes. Wonderful. Wonderful failure.

Asher Miller

And you were trying to raise - Well, you're trying to raise, what? $350 billion for that.

Jason Bradford

Yes.

Asher Miller

Not very successful.

Jason Bradford

No.

Rob Dietz

Thinking small. I mean we're doing the trillions now.

Asher Miller

So I think we've got to write this up.

Jason Bradford

Okay.

Asher Miller

You know, put it a pitch deck together. We can go and raise. What you know, how much do we need for this build out?

Jason Bradford

About half a trillion. $500 billion. This is bigger than Tipsy, but more impactful.

Asher Miller

Right. I think you've got to a corner this market. You've got to patent the hell out of it, Jason. Okay?

Jason Bradford

We've got to get a Gunther on board.

Asher Miller

So we need to go pitch Gunther.

Jason Bradford

Yeah, because he's got money.

Asher Miller

I've got treats that Willow loves. If keep them in my pocket - Like liver? Yeah, maybe he'll come up and like lick me, or whatever, sniff me. And maybe that'll be a good indication for the people who manages his money. I don't know if it will be enough to go around the dog influencer circle, but we could start there. And then maybe the next ring out is going to all the Lord of the Rings fans. Okay. You know? And see if we can get them to invest in this thing.

Jason Bradford

So when I put this out, I thought, God, this is really edgy. Like who is insane here? I'm talking about living like hobbits in the Shire as a solution. But then -

Asher Miller

Well it's not any more insane than building, you know, housing units in the fucking desert on public land and then hoping that water is going to show up someday.

Jason Bradford

Exactly.

Rob Dietz

Well I hope it's more sane than doing that.

Jason Bradford

It's more sane. So yes, Gunther should back this big time. Gunther, you're a good boy!

Melody Allison

That's our show. Thanks for listening. I you like what you heard, and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much-needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.

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