In this episode, I spoke with someone who’s actually seen starter homes for sale—Kol Peterson, an author, educator, and housing advocate based in Portland, Oregon.

Thanks to Kol’s efforts, and the work of many other incredible advocates, Portland is seeing real change and real results. It’s a true success story we can all admire—and learn from.

Lots of people have asked us: Why is it so expensive to build starter homes?

In the final episode of our mini-series featuring conversations with brilliant millennials, I spoke with Shane Phillips, author of The Affordable City: Strategies for Putting Housing Within Reach (and Keeping it There).

We dug into what’s broken in the housing ladder—and what kinds of housing policy could help fix it.

In this episode, I spoke with Daryl Fairweather. Dr. Fairweather is the chief economist at Redfin as well as a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Academic Advisory Council. She explained the idea of Land Value Tax and how taxing land differently can help us incentivize denser and more sustainable development.

In this episode, I spoke with Christian Calderon. Unlike our other guests, he isn’t working to build starter homes—he’s trying to buy one. Christian shares a powerful immigrant story and an unwavering belief in the American Dream. We were also joined by Chris Costa from Stevens & Lee, who helped shed light on the technical challenges Christian faced in the process of purchasing his home.