In this episode of Built to Divide, Dimitrius Lynch traces how crisis becomes opportunity — not for everyone, but for those positioned to acquire when others are forced to let go.

From psychological influence campaigns and the weaponization of belief to pandemic-era wealth acceleration, this episode reveals how instability reshapes ownership itself. Lynch connects redlining to modern rent burdens, shows how algorithmic pricing may be rewriting competition, and examines how disasters — from COVID-19 to California wildfires — can trigger generational wealth transfers.

You’ll hear how institutional investors, lobbying power, and financialization collide with housing supply constraints, why innovation alone cannot solve affordability, and how narratives shape public policy long before laws are written.

This is not simply a story about housing. It is a story about power. About who gets to own the future — and who keeps paying for it.

If you want to understand why the wealth gap widens after every crisis, why housing increasingly behaves like a financial instrument, and how division itself becomes strategy, this is an episode you cannot afford to miss.

Additional Content:

'Changing the Conversation with NIMBYs' with Chris Adams

The Revolutionary Power of Biobased Materials with Jacob Waddell

Net Zero Community: Veridian at County Farm

Pod Hotels: Stay Open

Hyperframe

Episode Extras - Photos, videos, sources and links to additional content found during research.

Episode Credits:

Production in collaboration with Gābl Media

Written & Executive Produced by Dimitrius Lynch

Audio Engineering and Sound Design by Jeff Alvarez

He was often described as enigmatic, smooth, and effortlessly confident.

2

His colleagues called him Mr.

3

Bond, not as a joke, but as a recognition of how he moved through the world, unbothered by

rules, unconstrained by embarrassment, certain that doors would open because they always

4

had.

5

He once claimed he studied psychology at University College London.

6

When journalists later checked,

7

UCL confirmed that he had never been enrolled.

8

The lie barely mattered.

9

Prestige, in his world, was a costume you could simply put on.

10

In his youth, he attended Eaton College, the largest private boarding school in England, a

place for the wealthiest and most prestigious families, many of them aristocratic.

11

Born into an establishment military family, he socialized early among people from whom

proximity to power felt natural, royalty included.

12

He carried himself like someone who assumed history would bend around him.

13

In the late 80s, he dated Lady Helen Taylor, a member of the British royal family, and he

made headlines when he was caught sneaking into her Grace and Favor apartment.

14

After breaking up,

15

He reportedly crashed her 21st birthday party at a royal residence, Windsor Castle, only

to be ejected by staff.

16

These were incidents said to have dismayed the Queen herself.

17

For most people, that would be the end of the road.

18

For him, it was just proof of access.

19

His name is Nigel Oakes.

20

In the United States, he's virtually unknown, but behind the scenes,

21

The 007 of data helped shape one of the most destabilizing forces of the modern era, the

industrialization of psychological influence.

22

Oakes entered advertising in the late 1980s, joining Satchi & Satchi, one of Britain's

most powerful agencies, famous for its political campaigns as much as its commercial work.

23

There, he became obsessed with a problem advertising rarely emitted out loud.

24

Persuasion worked, but no one could precisely measure how.

25

He conveyed that sentiment in this interview on the Daily Maverick with influence

directors Richard Publick and Diane Neal.

26

Advertising agencies were quite good at informing you of stuff or making you think or even

potentially changing your attitudes to stuff, but were particularly bad at changing your

27

behavior.

28

And changing your behavior is really where it counts.

29

In 1989, he formed the Behavioral Dynamics Working Group, part think tank, part

intellectual experiment, bringing together academics and strategists interested in

30

psychology, motivation, and behavioral modeling.

31

The group later formalized as Behavioral Dynamics Institute, or BDI, where their premise

was simple and unsettling.

32

If group behavior could be mapped, it could be engineered.

33

The company's About Us section reads, where a problem of group behavior can be identified,

the BDI works to determine its primary causes and precisely what, if any kind of

34

intervention,

35

would be most effective in bringing about sustainable and desirable behavior change

outcomes.

36

Oakes pushed further.

37

In the early 1990s, he experimented with sensory manipulation, launching a company called

Marketing Aromatics Limited to influence consumer behavior through scent.

38

The business failed, but the lesson stuck.

39

Subtle stimuli could bypass conscious reasoning.

40

In a 1992 trade interview, Oakes was blunt, quote, we use the same techniques as Aristotle

and Hitler.

41

We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level, end

quote.

42

By 1993, Oakes formalized the approach into strategic communication laboratories or SCL,

adapting military psychological warfare techniques for civilian, political, and commercial

43

use.

44

The firm built massive psychographic super samples, sometimes surveying tens of thousands

of people at once to identify local grievances, housing shortages, job insecurity,

45

migration anxiety, and then weaponized them with tailored messaging.

46

SCL Group bragged of working on over 200 campaigns across 50 countries.

47

Early applications included an election project in Indonesia,

48

surveying for the US military in Iran and Yemen, and an advisory role in post-apartheid

South Africa.

49

After 9-11, the business scaled.

50

SCL secured contracts tied to hearts and minds campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq,

supporting US and British military efforts to manage perception in unstable regions.

51

The logic was clear.

52

If you could shape belief, you could shape behavior.

53

without firing a shot.

54

By 2005, Oakes reorganized everything into SCL Group, a holding company for influence

subsidiaries operating globally.

55

But tensions emerged.

56

Some partners wanted to focus on the research, while Oakes wanted results.

57

To him, measurement wasn't enough when change was the product.

58

Then came 2008.

59

The global financial system collapsed under its own weight.

60

As banks failed and governments intervened, intense public pressures pushed regulators to

reassert control, tightening oversight of finance, data, labor, and markets.

61

In Europe especially, regulation became the tool of choice.

62

The European Union positioned itself as the world's leading regulator on privacy,

competition, environmental standards, and digital power.

63

To supporters, this was accountability.

64

To critics,

65

it was constraint.

66

And that tension wasn't new.

67

if in two weeks' time at the Intergovernmental Conference all 11 of our European partners

say they can accept his hard-eque proposal on the provision that he will accept that that

68

could be used as a transition mechanism towards a single currency, perhaps by the end of

the decade.

69

Will he agree?

70

I'm grateful to the right honourable gentleman for his generous welcome, which I very much

appreciate.

71

I think in the intergovernmental conference there be a wide range of matters to be

discussed.

72

I think we need to discuss those with very great care before we proceed.

73

The government's position about the imposition of a single currency is quite clear.

74

It is not acceptable.

75

Britain's relationship with Europe had always been uneasy.

76

It joined late, resisted often, and negotiated exceptions like a reflex.

77

From the beginning, the UK hovered between integration and distance, inside the system but

never fully of it.

78

By the 2010s, the ambivalence hardened into something sharper.

79

Financial elites detested EU rules.

80

Sovereignty became shorthand, not for democracy, but for flexibility, for deregulation,

for the freedom to move capital faster than laws could follow.

81

The UK independence party surged and sub...

82

by framing Brussels, the de facto capital of the European Union, as an unelected enemy.

83

They were early advocates of a referendum, or public vote, on whether the UK should leave

the EU or not.

84

This was the opening.

85

British Conservative Party members followed with their own calls for a referendum.

86

And after previously saying it would not be the best thing for the country, David Cameron,

Prime Minister of the UK from

87

2010 to 2016 conceded behind an internal party revolt.

88

Three years ago I committed to the British people that I would renegotiate our position in

the European Union and hold an in-out referendum.

89

Now I am delivering on that commitment.

90

You will decide and whatever your decision I will do my best to deliver it.

91

On Monday

92

I will commence the process set out under our Referendum Act and I will go to Parliament

and propose that the British people decide our future in Europe through an in-out

93

referendum on Thursday 23 June.

94

The choice is in your hands but my recommendation is clear.

95

I believe that Britain will be safer, stronger and better off in a reformed European

Union.

96

Thank you very much.

97

citizens, migration anxiety collided with austerity fatigue.

98

And beneath it all, wealthy donors began funding movements that promised control, freedom

and taking back power.

99

In fact, five of the UK's richest businessmen supplied 4.9 million of 24.4 million euros

that were donated.

100

The bulk of the funding for Leave.EU, the political campaign group

101

that supported the UK's withdrawal from the EU.

102

This moment was the stage for SCL.

103

One of its subsidiaries, founded in 2013 with funding from billionaire hedge fund manager

Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebecca, was called Cambridge Analytica.

104

Its pitch was simple and terrifying.

105

Use behavioral science, big data, and psychological profiling to predict and shape how

people vote.

106

The firm built models using personality traits and darker psychological indicators layered

atop consumer data and voter files.

107

For the Brexit referendum, as it became known, Cambridge Analytica advised Leave.eu,

identifying immigration as the emotional lever most likely to fracture consensus.

108

Parallel firms handled Facebook ad delivery, saturating targeted geographies with tailored

fear narratives

109

which I'll discuss in a second.

110

On June 23rd, 2016, 71.8 % of eligible voters turned out.

111

Well, at 20 minutes to five, we can now say the decision taken in 1975 by this country to

join the common market has been reversed by this referendum to leave the EU.

112

We are absolutely clear now that there is no way that the remain side can win.

113

It looks as though the gap's going to be something like 52 to 48, so a four-point lead for

leaving the EU.

114

And that's the result of this referendum, which has been preceded by weeks and months of

argument and dispute and all the rest of it.

115

The British people have spoken and the answer is we're out.

116

The vote to leave passed by less than 4%.

117

Across the Atlantic, the same playbook was unfolding simultaneously.

118

This populist language is that of Steve Bannon, a key strategist for Donald Trump's 2016

presidential campaign.

119

Later, the White House chief strategist for the first seven months of Trump's

administration.

120

Oh, and by the way, vice president of Cambridge Analytica.

121

What you have to understand is that government, however flawed, is one of the few

institutions capable of restraining corporate power.

122

From the 1930s through the 1960s,

123

It did exactly that.

124

Setting rules, enforcing standards, and absorbing risk markets wouldn't.

125

That made it an obstacle.

126

So for decades, corporate interests invested in priming the public to despise government

enough to slowly dismantle it piece by piece.

127

The administrative state, the deep state, bureaucracy as villain.

128

But for corporations, the deep state translates to standards, rules, and regulations.

129

Regulations intended to protect the public.

130

Anti-government rhetoric is in line with corporate interests.

131

So wealthy elites and corporations gladly empower right-wing populist rhetoric as a means

to an end.

132

Less regulation, less rules, less standards, and a shift from competing with government to

being contracted by the government.

133

Behind the rhetoric sat lots of money, and behind the money sat tools to pull off a

favorable electoral win.

134

And this is how.

135

Around the same time, a researcher named Alexander Kogan partnered with Facebook on

academic studies.

136

As part of the partnership, Facebook provided Kogan data on 57 billion friendships across

the world aggregated by country.

137

In collaboration with Cambridge Analytica,

138

Kogan developed a personality quiz app called This Is Your Digital Life, where users

consented to share their data.

139

What they didn't realize was that the app also harvested data from their friends.

140

Tens of millions of profiles were collected.

141

With that data, Cambridge Analytica claimed it could build up to 5,000 data points per

person.

142

Psychological fingerprints used to micro-target fear, anger, and identity.

143

During the 2016 US presidential election, Cambridge Analytica first supported Ted Cruz's

Republican primary bid, testing similar psychographic tools.

144

After his withdrawal, the firm shifted to the Trump campaign, securing a $5 million

contract for digital operations.

145

The operation targeted swing voters in battleground states with Facebook ads amplifying

concerns over immigration and national security.

146

such as portraying Muslims as threats, aiming to mobilize low propensity and disaffected

demographics.

147

Though he maintained no operational role in Cambridge Analytica itself, Oakes later

attributed this strategy's success to straightforward, emotion-driven narratives that

148

bypassed rational debate and echoed historical mass influence tactics.

149

Having been involved in political campaigns all my life is the

150

pretty much always you're going to upset 50 % of the people who go, well, you shouldn't be

using that.

151

And then the 50 % that's on your side go, well, I think it's okay to use that as long as

it's on our side.

152

And everybody thinks that their own morality is the right thing.

153

But I maintain a very simple position on this is that I'm not smart enough or bright

enough to make moral judgments myself.

154

I famously have said I have no

155

moral compass because a lot of what I designed is used for good.

156

A lot of what I've designed has been used for bad.

157

And often stuff that was used for good has now turned out to be bad.

158

In this undercover investigation by Channel 4 News, a British public broadcast service,

Alexander Nix, the CEO and more prominent name behind Cambridge Analytica,

159

boasts on hidden camera about additional methods of their influence campaigns, including

bribery, entrapment, and information warfare.

160

We do a lot more than that.

161

I mean, deep digging is interesting, oh you know, we're effective.

162

It can be just to go and speak to the incumbents and to oh offer them.

163

deal that's too good to be true and make sure that that's video recorded.

164

You know, source of tactics are very effective.

165

Instantly having video evidence of corruption.

166

Right.

167

When you get on the internet.

168

And the operative you will use for this is home.

169

Well, someone known to us.

170

OK, so it is somebody.

171

You won't use a Sri Lankan person, no?

172

then there's issue.

173

We'll have a wealthy developer come in.

174

Somebody posing as a wealthy developer.

175

I'm a master of disguise.

176

Yes.

177

They will offer a large amount of money to the candidate to finance this campaign in

exchange for land, for instance.

178

We'll have a whole bunch of people with cameras, flank out face of our guy, we'll have

posts on Instagram.

179

So it'll be Facebook or YouTube or something like this.

180

We have lots of history of things.

181

For example, you're saying when you're using the girls to introduce to the local fellow

and you're using the girls for this seduction, they're not local girls, not Sri Lankan

182

girls.

183

I wouldn't have thought so.

184

That was just an idea.

185

Bring some Ukrainians in on holiday with us.

186

They very beautiful Ukrainian girls.

187

They are very beautiful.

188

Yes.

189

I find that's very well.

190

Please don't pay too much attention to what I'm saying because I'm just giving you

examples of what can be done and what has been done.

191

Yes.

192

When you can deploy tactics like these, map people's fears, nudge their choices, and

predict their behavior at scale, you don't just win elections.

193

You position yourself to write the rules and policies for your own interests.

194

And while deregulation can create opportunities for innovation, it does the same for

abuse.

195

In unregulated systems, bad actors don't just survive, they scale.

196

Because if you can shape belief,

197

You don't need consensus.

198

If you can fragment truth, you don't need trust.

199

And without trust, power concentrates quietly, efficiently, and potentially permanently.

200

Brexit didn't deliver sweeping deregulation overnight.

201

Trump didn't dismantle the state in four years.

202

But the influence and destabilization were the opening.

203

That was the win.

204

Institutions weakened.

205

Trust eroded.

206

Norms dissolved.

207

And that destabilization would soon echo into housing, land, data, and daily life itself.

208

I'm Demetrius Lynch, and this is Built to Divide.

209

I don't want to blame the real estate markets because I always made a lot of money in bad

markets.

210

I love bad markets.

211

You can do very well in a bad market.

212

And when his father told you not to rent apartments to people of color, what was Donald's

response?

213

And he shook his head.

214

And that's the way it's supposed to be.

215

Agreeing with his father.

216

In the last episode, we examined a housing industry under pressure, NIMBYism, CEQA, why

new construction skews luxury, influences of the creative class, the cause and impact of

217

gentrification, and global investment into housing.

218

If you haven't listened to that episode, I encourage you to go back and listen to all of

the episodes of this series in order.

219

In this episode, we'll trace how crisis, chaos, and division reshape ownership.

220

From the pandemic's economic shock to wildfires that erased entire neighborhoods, we'll

follow how moments of collective vulnerability became moments of private accumulation.

221

We examine how housing instability deepened during COVID, how disaster accelerated

displacement, and how policies, markets, and money moved faster than people could recover.

222

And we'll get into all of that after this break.

223

Episode 10, Divide and Conquer.

224

For much of American history, a home was more than a place to live.

225

It was how families saved, built stability, and passed something forward.

226

A house wasn't just shelter.

227

It was a store of value, a hedge against inflation, a quiet promise that tomorrow might be

easier than today.

228

Home ownership became the backbone of middle-class growth.

229

After World War II, government policy and cheap suburban land opened that door.

230

Millions of households bought homes.

231

What followed wasn't just comfort, it was equity.

232

Down payments turned into leverage.

233

Mortgages turned into college tuition, small businesses, retirements.

234

A wealth machine ran quietly in the background of everyday life, but the gate narrowed.

235

Land prices and job-rich cities soared.

236

Construction costs rose.

237

Zoning locked neighborhoods into low density.

238

Supply lagged behind demand.

239

Entry costs climbed and millions were priced out.

240

And when you can't buy, you rent.

241

When you rent, you miss the house as investment channel entirely.

242

The wealth ladder tilts away from you.

243

Those who bought earlier captured compounding gains.

244

Appreciation, tax advantages, equity extraction.

245

They passed down help.

246

Down payments, credit, even homes.

247

Wealth reproduced itself.

248

Renters, meanwhile, paid to stand still.

249

Rent consumed income that could have gone to savings or investment.

250

Without equity, a rung on the ladder disappeared.

251

And over generations, the gap widened.

252

Families whose parents never owned started adulthood without assets to lean on.

253

That divide was not accidental.

254

In the 20th century,

255

Redlining and mortgage discrimination systematically blocked black families from buying

homes in appreciating neighborhoods.

256

The most powerful wealth engine in America was selectively walled off.

257

The consequences compound to this day.

258

Housing wealth is historically engineered.

259

Ownership built wealth, exclusion built stagnation.

260

And once you see that wealth also moves through belief as much as balance sheets,

261

Housing stops looking like shelter alone and starts looking like a story people are taught

to accept, defend, or never be allowed to enter.

262

Well, the new book is entitled Surviving at the Top.

263

There are many people who would say failing at the top.

264

Well, I think what the press has done is taken a situation where they see something and

blown it to kingdom come.

265

I've never seen anything like it, whether it's a marriage, by the way, or whether it's

financial.

266

I've never seen press reporting.

267

as I have with regard to me.

268

And I hope the general public understands how inherently dishonest the press in this

country is.

269

As a member of the press, let me try to clear up some of the things which you say are

untrue.

270

You write in your book, my bankers and I worked out a terrific deal that allows me to come

out stronger than ever.

271

I see the deal as a great victory and eventually the rest of the world will too.

272

Being on the verge of bankruptcy.

273

being bailed out by the banks, skating on thin ice and almost drowning, that's a

businessman to be admired.

274

You say on the verge of bankruptcy, and you talk on the verge and you listen to what

people are saying.

275

to your bankers.

276

Well, that's fine.

277

And what do they say?

278

mean, you know, depending on which banker you're talking to, what do they say?

279

This is Donald Trump in 1990 speaking with Barbara Walters on ABC's 2020.

280

In this worldview,

281

Truth is not something discovered, it's something asserted.

282

Whatever is said last becomes reality.

283

Consistency is irrelevant, evidence is optional.

284

The logic isn't persuasion, it's domination.

285

Reality bends, not because it's weak, but because repetition and confidence can overpower

doubt.

286

But false narratives create tension.

287

The facts don't line up and that friction generates resistance.

288

What turns distortion into danger isn't just the lie itself, it's the people who decide to

benefit from it anyway.

289

Some align themselves with the narrative not because they believe it, but because they

hope to profit from what follows.

290

That complicity produces chaos.

291

And chaos is not a flaw in the system, it's the growth medium.

292

It's inside that disorder that this personality scales.

293

Authority hardens as confusion spreads.

294

Attacking institutions becomes easier when trust is already fractured.

295

Veterans CBS journalist Leslie Stahl later described an exchange with Trump that exposed

this strategy plainly.

296

At one point he started to attack the press and it's just me and my boss and him and he

has a huge office and he's attacking the press and there were no cameras there was nothing

297

going on and I said you know that is getting tired why are you doing this you're doing it

over and over and it's boring and it's

298

It's time to end that.

299

You've won the nomination.

300

And uh why do you keep hammering at this?

301

And he said, you know why I do it?

302

I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about

me, no one will believe you.

303

This is a glimpse into the ethos of financialization, a world where belief is not

incidental, but instrumental, where outcomes matter more than consequences and success is

304

measured only by extraction.

305

It is a system obsessed with results and indifferent to fallout.

306

That ethos gained more momentum with the rise of social media in the early 2000s, where

narratives could be tested, amplified, and normalized at scale.

307

By around 2015, it reached maturity, armed with influence techniques refined by firms like

SCL.

308

Behavioral science, psychological targeting, and emotional manipulation turned belief

itself into infrastructure.

309

And as crisis multiplied, those who controlled the narrative learned to convert disruption

into advantage.

310

Wealth didn't retreat from chaos.

311

It learned to feed on it.

312

In 2020,

313

built wealth and built stagnation widened again, fast.

314

Because in tragedy and chaos, opportunists follow.

315

And in a media environment already primed for manipulation, crisis becomes fuel for fear,

for division, and for control of the narrative.

316

In December 2019 in Wuhan, an unfamiliar city name soon became globally known in

connection with a respiratory disease, COVID-19.

317

a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

318

At first, it's distant, a headline you scroll past, a clip of masked commuters, a chart

with a curve that looks like someone else's problem.

319

Then it starts hopping borders.

320

It starts leaving fingerprints.

321

And in January, warnings enter the US system.

322

Embassy alerts, early airport screenings, the first confirmed case.

323

But the country still thinks the outbreak is an issue overseas.

324

Inside the White House, the first instinct isn't triage, it's optics.

325

The CDC has identified a case of coronavirus in Washington state, the Wuhan strain of

this.

326

If you remember SARS, that affected GDP, travel related effects.

327

Have you been briefed by the CDC?

328

Are there words about a pandemic at this point?

329

No, not at all.

330

We have it totally under control.

331

It's one person coming in from China and we have it under control.

332

It's going to be just fine.

333

That was on January 22nd, but behind the curtain, the tone and knowledge is different.

334

As early as January 3rd, U.S.

335

officials were alerted on the severity of the outbreak, conveyed by Health and Human

Services Secretary Alex Azar, who informed his chief of staff,

336

to make sure that the National Security Council was aware that, quote, this is a very big

deal, end quote.

337

In fact, on January 18th, Azar called President Trump to warn him about the virus.

338

The National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien, also told Trump that COVID-19 would be the,

quote, largest national security crisis of your presidency, end quote.

339

On February 7th, Trump

340

privately told journalist Bob Woodward what he knew.

341

It goes through air, Bob.

342

That's always tougher than the touch.

343

You know, the touch, don't have to touch things, right?

344

But the air, you just breathe the air.

345

That's how it's passed.

346

And so that's a very tricky one.

347

That's a very delicate one.

348

It's also more deadly than your, you know, your even your strenuous flus.

349

This is more deadly.

350

This is five per, you know, this is five percent versus one percent and less than one

percent.

351

You know, so this is deadly stuff.

352

This wasn't confusion.

353

It was a glimpse behind the messaging.

354

Because in a crisis, what leaders choose to say isn't just information.

355

It's instruction.

356

Later on March 19th, Trump explains the difference in his messaging to Woodward.

357

Well, I think Bob, really, to be honest with you, I wanted to, uh I wanted to always play

it down.

358

I still like playing it down because I don't want to create a panic.

359

In public, the administration sells calm, bordering insignificance.

360

Not because calm is always a virtue, but because calm protects markets, and markets,

especially in an election year, protect incumbents.

361

The virus becomes a communications problem before it becomes a national mobilization.

362

And that delay is critical, compounding the problem and the extent of the damage.

363

In public,

364

February is filled with reassurance and minimization.

365

It'll go away with the heat.

366

The numbers are small.

367

The press is hysterical.

368

Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.

369

You know that, Coronavirus.

370

They're politicizing it.

371

We did one of the great jobs.

372

You say, how's President Trump doing?

373

They go, not good, not good.

374

They have no clue.

375

They don't have any clue.

376

They can't even count their votes in Iowa.

377

They can't even count.

378

They can't count their votes!

379

One of my people came up to me and said, Mr.

380

President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.

381

That didn't work out too well.

382

They couldn't do it.

383

They tried the impeachment hoax.

384

That was on a perfect conversation.

385

They tried anything.

386

They tried it over and over.

387

They've been doing it since you got in.

388

It's all turning.

389

They lost.

390

It's all turning.

391

Think of it.

392

Think of it.

393

And this is their new hoax.

394

But you know, we did something that's been pretty amazing.

395

We're 15 people in this massive country.

396

And because of the fact that we went early, we went early, we could have had a lot more

than that.

397

We're doing great.

398

Our country is doing so great.

399

We are so unified.

400

We are so unified.

401

Another hoax, another plot, another reason to distrust institutions.

402

And this wasn't new.

403

By 2020, we'd already watched influence become a monetized professional industry, an

assembly line that turns psychology into turnout, outrage into clicks, and uncertainty

404

into obedience.

405

Different crises, same operating system.

406

Control the frame, control the public, protect the machine.

407

Because when people are arguing about whether the fire is real, they aren't watching the

back door for intruders.

408

By March 11th, the World Health Organization declares a pandemic.

409

Two days later, the US declares a national emergency.

410

And by then, the country is already behind.

411

Testing limited, mixed messaging doing their work, the public unsure whether to stock up

on canned beans, get tissue, or keep shaking hands.

412

Then to prevent the spread of COVID-19, stay-at-home orders and restrictions on social

interactions followed.

413

But in that isolation, another disease flourished.

414

The algorithm continued to do its work, spreading extremism like a digital virus.

415

With the background of social unrest and rising messages of hate, it became impossible to

see what was happening and who was behind the curtain.

416

Even before COVID,

417

Housing was a slow motion emergency.

418

Wages flattened, supply lagged, rent climbed, ownership drifted out of reach.

419

The floorboards were already rotting.

420

COVID just jumped up and down on them.

421

And when shutdowns hit, it wasn't an abstract economic contraction.

422

It was a hard stop.

423

Restaurants went dark, hotels emptied, flights vanished from departure boards.

424

Millions of workers were told to stay home and figure it out.

425

others, the essential workforce, were told to keep showing up and absorb the risk.

426

In April 2020, payroll employment collapses by roughly 20.5 million jobs and unemployment

spikes to around 14.7 to 14.8%.

427

In one month, America experiences a crash that usually takes years.

428

By early summer, families are falling behind on rent, skipping utilities,

429

stretching groceries and wondering whether an eviction moratorium means anything when the

tally keeps a croon.

430

This is where built wealth and built stagnation widen the gap because crisis doesn't hit

evenly.

431

It never has.

432

don't want to blame the real estate markets because I always made a lot of money in bad

markets.

433

I love bad markets.

434

You can do very well in a bad market.

435

In a leadership role, the tone you set changes what people do.

436

Narratives don't just calm people, they shape timing.

437

And timing in markets is everything.

438

The federal response to the economic crisis hit the housing market like a match in dry

grass.

439

In March 2020, the Federal Reserve drops interest rates to nearly zero.

440

The Federal Reserve announced a number of other actions today to support the flow of

credit to households and businesses, thereby promoting our maximum unemployment and price

441

stability goals.

442

Of these, I will highlight two.

443

First, we reduced the interest rate on discount window loans by one and a half percentage

points, bringing that rate to a quarter of a percent.

444

The discount window plays an important role in supporting liquidity and stability in the

banking system, and we encourage banks to turn to the discount window to help meet demands

445

for credit from households and businesses.

446

To make the discount window more effective, we will also offer discount window loans for

periods up to 90 days.

447

We've seen this story before.

448

When money got cheap, the winners were the ones already positioned to harvest the upside.

449

At first, housing stalls under uncertainty.

450

Then it surges.

451

For homeowners, remote work turned spare bedrooms or any available nook into an office.

452

Quarantine made space essential.

453

So families with equity and means started hunting for yards, garages, extra rooms.

454

anything that feels like control in a world that suddenly has none.

455

Work from home policies allow movement to larger homes and even relocation from cities to

rural properties in other states.

456

Low rates supercharge buying power.

457

Scarcity does the rest.

458

Prices skyrocket, inflating even low-cost markets.

459

Houses go under contract in hours.

460

Buyers wave inspections like they're waving their right to reality.

461

Cash offers win.

462

And the line between shelter and asset gets erased in real time.

463

By 2023, the median existing home price is dramatically higher than it was at the start of

the pandemic, often cited around $406,700 at peak points.

464

The exact month-to-month number matters less than the shape of the story, a surge that

turns stability into a bidding war.

465

Investors notice that

466

They don't need a home, they need a yield.

467

They don't need a neighborhood, they need a portfolio.

468

They don't need stability.

469

They need you to pay.

470

Every month.

471

Forever.

472

Meanwhile, renters live inside the contradiction.

473

You're told to stay home to keep society safe, but the bill for staying home is the very

thing pushing you towards instability.

474

Then, predictably, inflation follows cheap money.

475

Supply chains seize

476

prices climb.

477

The cost of daily life balloons and the same Fed that flooded the system with cheap money

starts pulling the brake and rates rise.

478

Mortgages get heavier, deals die, buyers disappear.

479

But here's the trap, higher rates make homes harder to buy, especially when the price is

480

move.

481

inventory tightens and the market freezes in place.

482

So by the time the country is recovering, it's in a housing market worse than the one we

entered with.

483

Prices elevated, mortgage rates punishing, inventory scarce.

484

First time buyers boxed out again.

485

COVID didn't invent the housing crisis.

486

It put the crisis on steroids.

487

And in America, crisis is not just a disaster.

488

It's a sorting mechanism.

489

Some people lived through the pandemic and came out with more equity, more stock gains,

more leverage, and more options.

490

They worked on laptops and their money worked while they slept.

491

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the wealth of the wealthiest Americans has

surged significantly, with the top 1 % saying their wealth increased by approximately $4

492

trillion, reaching a record $52 trillion by mid-2025.

493

Overall, U.S.

494

billionaires' assets have nearly doubled, with their combined wealth growing from $4

495

Other people lived through the pandemic and came out with debt, anxiety, lost savings,

lost time, and the kind of instability that doesn't show up on a chart until it becomes

496

eviction, homelessness,

497

or moving your kids again because your neighborhood got too expensive while you were

trying to survive.

498

That is the financialization of survival.

499

The conversion of a public health emergency into a private wealth event.

500

And the people who minimize the danger to protect the economy weren't just protecting GDP.

501

They were protecting the machine that decides who gets to own the future and who just

keeps paying for it.

502

By now, the playbook is familiar.

503

manage attention during the crisis, manage assets after it.

504

You see the pattern of equity following catastrophe in neighborhoods all across America.

505

And one particularly tragic occurrence was in Altadena, California.

506

Altadena is a foothill community where porches matter, where neighbors know your and your

dog's names, where you can smell citrus when the wind comes down from the San Gabriel

507

Mountains.

508

A place built in layers.

509

Early settlers chasing water.

510

Ranchers and growers proving the land could produce at higher elevations.

511

Midwestern transplants chasing health and sunlight.

512

And eventually, black families chasing something even rarer in mid-century California.

513

A fair shot at ownership.

514

In 1960, it was still overwhelmingly white, but the 1960s and 70s hit Southern California

like an earthquake.

515

School integration fights, redevelopment battles in Pasadena, freeways carving up

neighborhoods, smog thickening against the mountains, and the larger national convulsions

516

of civil rights, riots, war, and assassinations.

517

White flight followed, and in the vacuum, minorities moved in, many of them Black families

who had been shut out of mortgages and neighborhoods across the region by discrimination

518

and red lines.

519

Altadena became for many families what the American dream was supposed to be.

520

A house that could become stability, then security, then inheritance.

521

That history matters because catastrophe doesn't just burn structures.

522

It burns leverage and upward mobility.

523

In January 2025, a powerful Santa Ana wind event took shape.

524

Dry forceful winds accelerated through passes and canyons with forecasts warning of

dangerous gusts and extreme fire conditions.

525

The region had endured months of dry weather.

526

By the time the catastrophe arrived, the landscape was primed.

527

Dry grasses and shrubs, low humidity, and wind that doesn't just push fire, it throws it.

528

businesses and other structures were destroyed.

529

CBS News correspondent Carter Evans joins us now from Pacific Palisades, California.

530

So Carter, what new information did this report reveal?

531

there have been lot of reporting all night long.

532

This fire, the Eaton fire has chewed through homes.

533

This is one of them that we're able to get close to ah at this hour.

534

What we're seeing is.

535

Honestly, pure pandemonium and chaos.

536

huge plume of smoke is blowing all across Al-Fadina and Al-Fadina, right?

537

We just have one house after another that is completely on fire.

538

Only way to describe the destruction of what we're seeing out here, it looks like a war

zone.

539

On the evening of January 7th, the fire ignited near Eden Canyon.

540

Within minutes, it was moving with the kind of speed that makes a neighborhood feel like

paper.

541

Embers jumped, spot fires formed at distance.

542

Air tankers were forced to pull back from violent air, and the fire grew into a

structure-eating event that outpaced the normal rhythm of response.

543

By the end,

544

The Eden Fire killed 19 people and destroyed more than 9,000 buildings, becoming one of

the most destructive fires in California history.

545

The cause, as later determined, pointed to high-tension power lines operated by Southern

California Edison, the primary electric utility company for much of Southern California.

546

A private utility and serving 15 million people across approximately 50,000 square miles,

a regulated monopoly.

547

It is a corporation entrusted with infrastructure so essential that failure doesn't just

inconvenience people, it can kill them.

548

That detail matters because if you want to understand why privatization paired with

corporate personhood is dangerous, California has already run the experiment.

549

Look north to Butte County, Paradise, California.

550

In 2018,

551

The Camp Fire became the deadliest wildfire in California history at that point.

552

This was in the territory of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, or PG &E, an investor-owned

utility that covers the northern two-thirds of California, providing natural gas and

553

electricity to 5.2 million households.

554

The cause of the Camp Fire was PG &E's Caribou Palermo transmission line, built in 1921.

555

nearly a century old when it failed.

556

Investigators found the company knew the risk, knew the infrastructure was aging, knew the

danger, and still failed to act because of high costs for repairs and upgrades.

557

PG &E pleaded guilty to 84 felony counts of involuntary manslaughter for the campfire.

558

Eighty-four.

559

One for each life loss.

560

It also pleaded guilty to a felony count tied to its own criminal negligence.

561

And PG &E wasn't new to this.

562

At the time, the company was already on probation for federal felonies related to the 2010

San Bruno gas explosion that killed eight people.

563

Another case rooted in poor safety practice and management failure.

564

The consequences, like so many corporate consequences, were structured to preserve

continuity.

565

Fines, settlements, bankruptcy reorganization, policy changes,

566

and an uncomfortable political fact that even after becoming a convicted felon, PG &E

continued to lobby and politicians continue to accept its donations.

567

This is the problem with treating corporations like people.

568

When a person commits manslaughter, we ask, who did it?

569

When a corporation commits manslaughter, the answer dissolves into org charts, committees,

and quarterly reports.

570

The company pays a fine

571

writes a press release, and keeps operating.

572

PG &E has since faced additional scrutiny, including investigations tied to later fires

573

risk management.

574

To be clear, Southern California Edison is not PG &E, but the structure rhymes.

575

Privatized utilities, shareholder pressures, aging infrastructure,

576

climate accelerated risk, political insulation, and regulatory systems that punish after

the fact rather than preventing catastrophe before it happens.

577

And here's where the Eden Fire folds back into Altadena's story.

578

Because the fire didn't just destroy homes, it destroyed generational wealth.

579

In the wake of the Eden Fire, signs sprouted up in ash-laden yards.

580

Quote, Altadena not for sale.

581

But families who might have rebuilt over five or 10 years suddenly face decisions measured

in weeks.

582

Stay displaced, drain savings, fight insurers, or sell and try to move forward.

583

Developers don't feel that pressure.

584

They arrive with cash, patients, and attorneys.

585

This is how disaster becomes acquisition.

586

Burned lots are a particular kind of opportunity.

587

To investors, they look clean.

588

No old structure, no renovation surprises, just location.

589

Schools, foothill charm, proximity to Pasadena and job centers, and the brutal fact that

many families cannot afford years of rebuilding.

590

If you can't carry the cost of waiting, you sell.

591

If you sell under pressure, someone with cash has the leverage in negotiations.

592

If enough lots change hands, the neighborhood's future gets written by whoever can afford

the pen.

593

That's the fear in Altadena, a reversal current.

594

The first wave of white flight created conditions for black home ownership at scale in a

region that often denied it.

595

Families built wealth in a place where they could finally buy.

596

They passed keys down.

597

Now the fire knocked those keys out of people's hands.

598

And the market doesn't ask what a neighborhood means.

599

It asks what it can become and for how much.

600

When the ash settles,

601

The question isn't whether Altadena will be rebuilt.

602

It will.

603

The question is whether the people who made it, the families who turned the refuge into

community, will still be there when the new paint dries.

604

Because if catastrophe becomes a pipeline for acquisition, then the fire doesn't end when

the containment hits 100%.

605

It ends when the deed changes hands.

606

And if new owners turn around and rent these homes, as trends suggest is likely,

607

Tenants will have to contend with technology that is now playing an outsized role in

housing insecurity for millions of renters.

608

A widely cited rule of thumb says housing should consume no more than 30 % of income.

609

Go much beyond that and shelter becomes a burden.

610

Millions of renters now spend 50 % or more on rent and utilities.

611

When half your paycheck goes to your landlord, what's left for healthcare?

612

education, emergencies, savings.

613

Rent burden becomes a trap rather than merely a cost.

614

In October 2022, ProPublica published an investigation into RealPage, a Texas-based

company whose rent-setting software provided price recommendations to property managers.

615

The reporting raised a cold question.

616

What happens when many of the largest landlords in a city

617

used the same pricing tool informed by shared market data and rent increases began to move

in parallel.

618

take Atlanta, which is a down market right now and has suffered significant job loss and

really an erosion of rental rates unlike we've seen in a long time.

619

And what we found was, what we thought intuitively that in order to maintain the occupancy

levels that we decided were important as the market went down was we felt that we were

620

giving under the old system, just giving away too much to get to that point to be able to

retain and maintain the occupancy levels that we had targeted for the properties.

621

And as we began the switch over to YieldStar, we started to look to see what impact that

would have on how we retained and how we brought new residents in.

622

What we found was that under YieldStar, we didn't have to give away as much as the market

was uh providing for in order to retain our occupancies.

623

And we also found, from a renewal's perspective, that we didn't have to meet the market

every day in order to keep our residents.

624

And so what we found was that while

625

rents inherently in Atlanta are going down.

626

There's nothing that anybody either using Yieldstar or any other revenue management system

can change that.

627

What we found was though relative to our competitive set, we were outperforming.

628

So we were maintaining our occupancies and at the same time, not having to give away the

amount of revenue or the amount of rents, both for new leases and for renewals that our

629

competitors were doing.

630

And so for us and our partners, we viewed that to be very positive.

631

If rent isn't only rising because of supply and demand,

632

but because a system is guiding the market toward the highest tolerable price, then

competition starts behaving differently.

633

The Department of Justice and lawmakers began examining whether algorithmic pricing could

facilitate coordination that old antitrust frameworks weren't built to anticipate.

634

Now imagine, each lease renewal brings a higher number.

635

Your friends across towns see the same.

636

It feels like the market

637

It feels inevitable, but zoom out and you see the possibility of something else.

638

A market nudged by code, where comps are generated by the same system that recommends the

next increase, where maximum tolerable rents become the target.

639

Kind of sounds like collusion, but renters, because housing is an essential need, do

whatever they can to stay.

640

Good for business, bad for a society already under strain.

641

And when your income is low and your rent is high, even a modest shock, a mischief, a

medical bill, a car breakdown can tip you over.

642

Eviction becomes less a story of personal failure and more a story of structural

vulnerability.

643

Eviction is not just losing a roof, it's losing stability, schooling, job access, support

networks.

644

It can propel households into homelessness.

645

And once you've been evicted, your chances of rehousing decline sharply.

646

In cities where wages haven't kept pace with housing costs, rent burden feeds

homelessness.

647

And homelessness rarely appears overnight like a lightning strike.

648

It is often the final stage of a longer sequence.

649

Low wages, constrained supply, rising rents, lack of savings, shocks, eviction, then no

fallback.

650

In Matthew Desmond's book, Evicted, he documents the lifestyle and conditions for

low-income families in Milwaukee, sharing a blunt insight.

651

Evictions aren't simply a result of poverty.

652

They can deepen and reproduce it.

653

Displacement unravels job stability, school continuity, social ties.

654

Poverty compounds.

655

So what do we do?

656

Well, there are tools and policies like Housing First, Eviction Moratoria, Right to

Counsel in Housing Court, Rental Assistance, and Strong Tenant Protections.

657

These are often framed as radical solutions, but in reality, they're baseline

interventions, attempts to stabilize people before the ground disappears beneath them.

658

During the Obama administration,

659

Housing First moved from localized models into broader federal policy.

660

The premise was disarmingly simple.

661

If you want someone to address addiction, mental illness, unemployment, or trauma, they

need a door that locks first.

662

Housing First prioritizes permanent housing as quickly as possible with voluntary

supportive services layered afterward without requiring sobriety, treatment, or readiness

663

as a precondition.

664

This wasn't just philosophy, it was evidence driven.

665

Studies show that approximately 85 % of individuals in Housing First programs remain

housed for years, indicating a significant improvement over traditional models.

666

There's also evidence of improvements in health and wellbeing among participants, although

results can vary widely based on program implementation.

667

Program evaluations repeatedly found that Housing First

668

could reduce chronic homelessness and lower public costs by reducing reliance on emergency

rooms, shelters, and the criminal legal system.

669

But there are critics to this approach.

670

The Housing First model tells us that people are homeless because they're down on their

luck and all they need is a leg up.

671

They need a house to stay in and they're gonna be fine.

672

But that's not the case.

673

Any of you who've dealt with addiction in your lives, in your family's lives, and I know

that every single one of you has been touched by addiction by somebody, knows that you

674

can't just give them some money or give them an apartment or give them a college degree

and they're gonna be fine.

675

No, they've gotta deal with the demon.

676

of drug and alcohol abuse in their lives.

677

The criticism typically comes from two places and they often get blurred together on

purpose.

678

There are good faith critiques, concerns that voluntary services may not be enough for

people with severe needs, that supportive housing is expensive and slow to build, that a

679

shift in funds from programs that require treatment to providing units can multiply tents

faster than units.

680

These are real.

681

They're problems of scale, supply, and clinical capacity.

682

We've spent $10 billion in the past few years on the Housing First model.

683

That has resulted in 35 % more housing units, which is great.

684

But it's also resulted in 48 % more people on the streets.

685

But the loudest backlash often comes from somewhere else, an ideology that treats

homelessness as moral failure instead of market outcome.

686

In that worldview, housing without punishment feels like cheating.

687

Stability without compliance feels undeserved.

688

That's where the conversation gets messy, especially in California, where homelessness is

both enormous in scale and constantly politicized.

689

California has spent extraordinary sums in recent years, often cited around $24 billion

690

local governments, encampment response, and behavioral health investments.

691

In March 2024, voters narrowly approved Proposition 1, authorizing billions in bonds for

behavioral health facilities

692

in housing for veterans and people experiencing homelessness.

693

The state also created encampment resolution funding to help jurisdictions move people off

the street and into housing.

694

Then came the audit.

695

Later in 2024, the California State Auditor reported that the state had not consistently

tracked whether large portions of its homelessness spending actually improved outcomes.

696

The review found that only some programs could be assessed as likely cost effective.

697

Others could not be evaluated because of insufficient data.

698

A state senator who requested the audit described the landscape as a data desert.

699

That's not proof that programs can't work.

700

It's proof that accountability systems didn't keep pace with spending.

701

And in any data desert, uncertainty follows and corruption can grow like weeds.

702

In 2025,

703

Federal prosecutors brought real cases alleging fraud tied to homelessness funding, fake

financial documents, suspicious property flips, secrecy clauses, and public money buying

704

private margin.

705

If proven, those cases demand accountability.

706

But they also serve another function.

707

They fuel political narratives designed to discredit political parties and Housing Firsts

by association.

708

Not because Housing Firsts is corrupt,

709

But because it competes, like public housing before it, housing first removes people from

profit-generating pipelines, emergency rooms, jails, treatment churn, eviction cycles, and

710

most critically, it reframes housing as infrastructure, not commodity.

711

Studies have shown that it stabilizes lives in ways that reduce recurring revenue for

systems built on crisis.

712

And it's important to caution that abandoning an evidence-based model because oversight

failed repeats a familiar American move.

713

Sabotage the system, then declare it broken.

714

Housing First gets blamed not for what it is, but for what the surrounding system refuses

to become.

715

So the choice isn't between Housing First and accountability.

716

It's between abandoning what works or fixing the system around it.

717

That means

718

Tracking outcomes and enforcing audits, closing loopholes that let public dollars leak

into private extraction, scaling housing supply so vouchers have somewhere to land, and

719

pairing emergency response with structural reform.

720

But even a strong model hits a hard ceiling in an unaffordable market.

721

If rents are detached from wages, if supply is constrained, if land is treated as

speculative asset,

722

instead of shelter, then Housing First is still triage instead of cure.

723

You can help someone into a unit, but you can't solve a structural shortage one voucher at

a time.

724

Messaging matters here too.

725

Based on a 2019 point in time count, approximately one third of homeless individuals have

a mental health or substance abuse issue.

726

So most people become homeless because they couldn't find a job that paid a sustainable

wage,

727

housing is unaffordable, or they encounter family issues including death, divorce, or

abuse.

728

But public perception of homelessness is constantly shaped through images of encampments,

selective stories of disorder, moral narratives that shift from lack of shelter to

729

choosing to be unhoused.

730

That framing invites punishment instead of solutions.

731

It makes enforcement easier to sell than investment.

732

You can see the outer edge of that dehumanization and cruel rhetoric from public figures

like Brian Kilmeade on Fox News.

733

Billions of dollars to mental health and the homeless population a lot of them don't want

to take the programs a lot of them don't want to get the help that is necessary you can't

734

give them a choice either you take the resources that we're going to give you and or you

decide that you're to be locked up in jail that's the way it has to be now or uh

735

Involuntary lethal injection or something.

736

I just kill him Brian.

737

Why did it have to get to this point?

738

I would say this we're not voting for the right people in North Carolina wake up.

739

It's the same old play

740

strip people of humanity and the public becomes numb to their suffering.

741

After the Obama administration, government posture changed.

742

Housing and civil rights were no longer framed as protections to be enforced, but as

constraints to be rolled back.

743

Donald Trump didn't arrive at this moment neutral.

744

His worldview was shaped by ownership, not shelter, and by a career as a landlord.

745

In 1973,

746

the Justice Department sued Trump and his father for refusing to rent apartments in

predominantly white buildings to black tenants.

747

Applications from black renters were allegedly marked with a C for colored.

748

The case ended without an admission of guilt, but the government stated the Trumps had

failed and neglected to comply with the Fair Housing Act.

749

As part of the consent decree, the Trumps promised to basically desegregate their

properties.

750

But three years later,

751

the Justice Department returned to court alleging non-compliance again.

752

Then in 1982, Trump management faced another class action discrimination suit, settling by

again agreeing to rent a share of vacant units to black tenants.

753

Stanley Leibowitz, a rental agent for the Trumps at the time, later described his

experience to NBC News.

754

A black lady completed an application for an apartment in the building, a one-bedroom

apartment as I recall.

755

And it was a very professionally cleared application.

756

It was checked and verified.

757

There were no liens, no judgments against her.

758

And she was calling me on a daily basis wanting to know the status of her application.

759

And one day Mr.

760

Trump and his son Donald came into the office and I asked this Fred Trump what I should do

with this application because she's calling me constantly.

761

And his response to me was, you know, I don't rent to the N word.

762

Put the application in the desk and forget about it.

763

So, Fred Trump is the N-word, told you, you don't credit to people?

764

That is correct, yes.

765

What was your response?

766

Well, I was employed by them.

767

I did what he said.

768

The reporter followed up to find out Donald Trump's actions at the time.

769

And when his father told you not to rent apartments to people of color, what was Donald's

response?

770

And he shook his head.

771

And that's the way it's supposed to be.

772

Degreeing with his father.

773

Later as president, Donald Trump's administration went on to weaken fair housing

enforcement.

774

Whatever the politics, the pattern holds.

775

Ownership remains protected.

776

Exclusion remains active.

777

When you trace ownership, exclusion, and disinvestment, homeownership on one side,

homelessness on the other, you don't see two separate stories.

778

You see two endpoints of the same pipeline.

779

And this isn't only American.

780

Around the world, housing shortages are acute.

781

Population growth, urban migration, limited usable land, climate stress, and the

financialization of real estate converge.

782

Institutional investors, private equity, and REITs compete for housing as an asset class.

783

Affordability and sustainability collide.

784

The rising costs of labor and materials, lengthening construction timelines, and income

785

These regulations have pushed architects, developers, and policy makers to rethink how we

build.

786

I've had ongoing conversations with professionals attempting to tackle these problems

through design.

787

Two key themes emerge.

788

Build faster and build smarter.

789

In dense urban markets, there have been explorations into micro housing and co-living.

790

Smaller units with shared kitchens, lounges, co-living models emerged.

791

Think Tokyo's capsule apartments as a way to reduce per-tenant costs while staying in city

cores.

792

Steve Schapilski, CEO and co-founder of Stay Open, shared his insight on pod hotels.

793

And I said, what are the pain points of a hostel?

794

And one of those pain points was you don't get any privacy and the bunk beds are like

you're sleeping like in a prison cell, right?

795

And like the mattresses are razor thin and you have no physical barriers.

796

You have no privacy with lighting.

797

So we started to explore different concepts in Australia, New Zealand, actually, and in

Asia.

798

And we're like, okay, there's people that are using pods, some which, you know, looked

like porta-potties, like plastic-y, space-ag, and we didn't like those, and some that were

799

very cool and designed.

800

And we're like, okay, those are, there's a little bit more along the lines.

801

And we designed ours in-house on our own and built them in Southern California with the

vendor, actually, the company that did our cabinets for our hotel.

802

We're like, can you kind of build a big cabinet with a mattress in it?

803

And we did lighting and we did.

804

some like sound insulation and ventilation and a bunch of charging ports.

805

We tested them.

806

So we said, know, a pod is finds this great middle ground where we can have a room with

eight people.

807

But when you close up your pod, you may, don't know if there's one other person or if

there's seven other people in there.

808

And when someone comes in and flips on the lights to the room, it's not going to bother

you because your lights insulated, you can flip on a light, you can charge your devices.

809

You know, it doesn't take up that much more real estate, but we

810

but like the bang for the buck in terms of user experience made a whole lot of sense.

811

There are approaches like Passive House, Net Zero Housing, and even Net Zero Communities.

812

These are buildings designed to use minimal energy, tight thermal envelopes, solar panels,

efficient HVAC, reducing long-term costs, and helping tenants avoid runaway utility bills.

813

I had an inspiring conversation with Matthew Grokoff.

814

founder of Thrive Collaborative about Viridian at County Farm, a beautiful 13 and a half

acre community in Ann Arbor, Michigan that is one of the US's first mixed income net zero

815

energy communities.

816

And so I said, if we do our job right and we start the design from the bottom up, meaning

what is this land?

817

Where does the water want to go?

818

What was this land like pre-human development?

819

And then all and so we began not by placing buildings on a square box, which is what all

the other proposals did.

820

We began by looking at the complexity of the soils and the water flow and the park were

surrounded by 130 acre park.

821

ah Where's that water coming from?

822

Because the water in the park is part of the water that's on our site.

823

They're not two separate things just because some lawyer drew a boundary around it.

824

Lawyers love boundaries and water doesn't give a So we showed that pattern first and then

what emerged was a street pattern, a path pattern that is almost identical.

825

So on that first day in 2006 that we all got together in that room for eight hours, what

emerged in that conversation is almost exactly what we ended up with here five years later

826

and what we'll be building because the soil and the water

827

and the ecology of that property is what guided the design.

828

Modular construction, offsite building components, 3D printing for concrete shelves, all

aiming to cut construction time and costs.

829

One fascinating product I've come across is HyperFrame, a snap together metal framing

system enhanced by software and mixed reality technology.

830

Founder and CEO Ken Sobel discussed the product

831

and how the system can lead to lower labor costs.

832

Basically, the way that our application will work is that you pick up a piece off the

ground, you glance at a QR code on that piece, you get some arrows, some holographic

833

arrows that show you which way you should move your body or pivot your head.

834

uh And then you see a hologram of the part you're holding in the physical location where

you need to snap it in place.

835

And so it's very visceral.

836

um It's very

837

It's like you don't even need to be trained on how to use it.

838

It's just, it's like in the same way that you need to be trained how to use a video game.

839

You just kind of like do what it tells you.

840

The Yenby movement and advocacy for upzoning and high density housing near transit and

jobs as one lever to increase supply and affordability.

841

Chris Adams, president and founder of Balancing Act, highlighted that most people are

aware of

842

and went to solve the housing crisis.

843

His innovative simulation tool changes the conversation with NIMBYs, helping local

governments engage with constituents to collaboratively address complex housing

844

challenges.

845

And so what our tool does is instead of just saying, hey, we're thinking about rezoning

this area three blocks or six blocks from your house, it says, this is what we need to do

846

as a community.

847

And then it provides

848

options, places that could be changed, could be rezoned, could be accommodated in planning

process for more housing.

849

But then it also gives a goal.

850

And that's really the key part is it gives the goal of the jurisdiction of the community

and then asks people to show how they would meet that goal.

851

And so it's perfectly fine for people to go in and participate using our simulation

product and be against something, but they can't just be against it.

852

They also have to say what they would do in order to meet the goal.

853

And there are innovative materials that are renewable and cost effective like hemp that

can revolutionize construction.

854

Jacob Waddell from the Hemp Building Institute highlighted the capabilities of hemp and

sustainable building practices.

855

Hemp alone, you can do insulation in multiple ways.

856

You can have hempcrete, you can have hemp bat insulation.

857

There's boards that are like trying to replace like foam boards that are created.

858

You have

859

Hempwood that's used on flooring, cabinetry, desks.

860

They're doing research right now to get it into uh being able to carry a structural load.

861

You have pottery and interior design.

862

can have fabrics.

863

It's a little bit less construction.

864

But then you have things like bamboo.

865

And bamboo is amazingly amazing for structural components.

866

So there's a wide range of things that can be used.

867

for all aspects of a building.

868

And it's really cool because you're seeing more and more companies come out with different

products that kind of fill different gaps.

869

the design and construction side, the industry has been busy solving for speed,

efficiency, carbon, and costs.

870

We have a surplus of tools.

871

What we don't have is alignment.

872

Because every one of these innovations runs headlong into two forces design alone,

873

cannot defeat.

874

Policy resistance and financialization.

875

Start with resistance.

876

Not the loud kind, the quiet institutional kind.

877

The kind that doesn't chant at city hall, but files comments, drafts amendments, and

writes checks.

878

The National Association of Realtors is a useful case study with roughly 1.5 million

members

879

and one of the most powerful lobbying operations in Washington, NAR is a heavyweight in

housing policy.

880

Publicly, it talks about access and opportunity, but its incentives are complicated.

881

Scarcity supports home and property values, and 6 % of that higher price is quite

attractive to members.

882

Appreciation supports wealth, and through local affiliates,

883

Political campaigns often defend the zoning status quo that constrains supply.

884

NOR has opposed or resisted some statewide up-zoning efforts that would legalize more

small multifamily housing in single-family zones.

885

It has lobbied for tax policies like restoring the full state and local tax, or SALT,

deduction cap.

886

Framed as protecting home values,

887

even as benefits skew toward higher income homeowners in high cost markets.

888

And while it has apologized for a segregationist past, the local politics of neighborhood

preservation often continue to carry exclusionary outcomes.

889

The contradiction is structural.

890

The association that represents people who sell homes also lives inside a system where

rising prices reward existing owners.

891

and themselves.

892

And then there's the force no amount of better design can solve on its own.

893

Financialization.

894

When housing is treated primarily as an asset, bundled into portfolios, traded by

algorithms, warehoused by institutional investors, innovation becomes cosmetic.

895

A net zero building can still be unaffordable.

896

A modular unit can still be bid up by cash.

897

A beautifully efficient apartment can still sit empty if it performs better as a balance

sheet placeholder than as a place to live.

898

When you map the system, the pattern is clear.

899

Ownership for some, rent burden for many, homelessness for the most exposed.

900

Consider that, a society where a majority are burdened and vulnerable, what type of

leverage and control does that afford those with the most?

901

Innovation runs into resistance, supply strains under demand, and all of it operates

inside rules written by power.

902

Rules that quietly decide who gets to stay, who gets priced out, and who never gets in at

all.

903

This isn't just a housing problem.

904

It's a political economy problem.

905

One that design can reveal, but only policy can undo.

906

Division isn't simply gated communities versus public housing.

907

It's embedded in tax codes, zoning maps, financing pipelines, and labor markets.

908

It's who gets to own, who must rent, and who is pushed out entirely.

909

When half your income goes to rent while someone across town builds equity, division is

built into the bricks.

910

When a rent hike leads to eviction while housing is converted into yield, division is

built into the floors.

911

When density is blocked in the name of character,

912

division is built into the lot lines.

913

And the divide isn't just in land and structures.

914

It receives its power in the division of us as a society through the mapping of fear,

shaping belief, nudging behavior, and steering outcomes at scale until disorientation

915

becomes policy and displacement becomes predictable.

916

We can build differently.

917

We can protect renters, make ownership reachable,

918

and restore a pathway from shelter to stability to equity.

919

But first, we must ask, are the rules built for yesterday's winners or for tomorrow's

neighbors?

920

History gives us the warning.

921

Power has always protected itself the same way.

922

Name and other, stoke fear, destabilize, then acquire.

923

From red scares to moral panic, fear has always mapped neatly onto land and profit.

924

And now the pattern repeats at borders, in war zones, and in American cities.

925

People are branded as threats.

926

Neighborhoods are destabilized.

927

Capital moves in.

928

Division becomes policy.

929

Property becomes the prize.

930

We'll follow that map into the worlds of theocracy, technocracy, and oligarchy to identify

where this all goes and expose who profits

931

when fear redraws the lines of ownership.

932

Next time on Built to Divide.

933

in Gaza's waterfront property.

934

could be very valuable to, ah if people would focus on kind of building up, know,

livelihoods.

935

You think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and into all the

munitions.

936

If that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done?

937

And so I think that ah it's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think

from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up.

938

But I don't think that Israel has stated that they don't want the people to move back

there afterwards.

939

Thanks for listening.

940

Built to Divide is presented by Lines, my architecture and creative studio.

941

This podcast is produced in collaboration with Gable Media.

942

If you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend and rate and review it on Apple podcasts and

Spotify.

943

It really helps others find it.

944

And if you're looking for similar content, Built to Divide is part of the Gable Media

network where you can find even more like this.

945

Visit gablemedia.com.

946

That's G-A-B-L media.com.

947

And before I go, if you want to see additional photos, video clips, and content that went

into this episode, you can visit me at lines.studio slash podcasts.

948

Talk soon.

949

When we came, these were the only two antique pieces of furniture in the room.

950

This pair of card tables.

951

As we hate to change, we decided that we would let them dictate the style of the room.

952

But the funny thing about them is, know, Henry DuPont, who's the chairman of my committee

in an established winter tour, he noticed them right away and said, these are the only

953

good things in the room.

954

I wonder who gave them.

955

Turned out it was his sister, Mrs.

956

Crown and Shield.

957

What other objects of special interest are there in the room now?

958

Well, there's this sofa, which belonged to Daniel Webster, and is really one of the finest

pieces here in this room.

959

And then there's this mirror.

960

It was George Washington's, and he had it in the executive mansion in Philadelphia.

961

Then he gave it to a friend, and it was bought for Mount Vernon in 1891.

962

And it was there until Mount Vernon lent it to us this fall.

963

And I must say, I appreciate that more than I can say.

964

It's when Matt Vernon, which is probably the most revered house in this country, lends

something to the White House, you know they have confidence that it will stay here and be

965

taken care of.