Episode #40
Affordability Is Not a Dirty Word - Building Housing People Can Actually Afford | Jesse Batus
"Everybody says we want more affordable housing... at the same time, they don't want to see anything new." On this episode of Most Modern - a podcast about the built environment - Alex talks with Jesse Batus, Senior Vice President of Real Estate Development at The Community Builders (TCB), one of the largest nonprofit developers in the country, building across 15 states and Washington, DC. We get past the buzzword and into the machinery: the real definition of affordability (no more than 30% of income), why construction now runs "upwards of $500,000 per unit," how NIMBYism and delay quietly drive up costs, and why "time kills all deals." Jesse walks through the ground game - from a food-desert grocery store and hundreds of new apartments in Schenectady's Hamilton Hill, to the desegregation history behind Yonkers, to transit-oriented projects like Park Haven in the Bronx (with BronxWorks and a FRESH grocery store) and a childcare-anchored development in Far Rockaway. We also cover the plumbing nobody sees: the 10-11 layer capital stacks behind a single deal, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the starvation of public housing, resilient design in a flood zone, and why good affordable housing should be indistinguishable from market-rate. The throughline: housing is the platform everything else - childcare, school, work, stability - is built on. Chapters: 00:00 - "Affordability is not a dirty word" 00:14 - Who is TCB, and what does a nonprofit developer do? 02:02 - What "affordability" actually means (the 30% rule vs. the human version) 04:49 - Affordability = stability: staying in your school district, near work 05:32 - The headwinds: construction costs, inflation, interest rates, NIMBYism 07:00 - "City of Yes" and unlocking supply through zoning 08:11 - How delay and sentiment get baked into the final cost per unit 10:55 - Turning detractors into participants: the Yonkers "Show Me a Hero" story 14:32 - Building on the edges: Park Haven (Mott Haven, Bronx) and Far Rockaway 17:46 - Where affordable housing belongs: transit-oriented development 18:43 - Build everywhere, or build thoughtfully? The abundance question 21:01 - Why a unit costs $500,000: land, electrification, prevailing wage 22:58 - The 10-11 source capital stack and the LIHTC explained 26:20 - Why affordable housing is so hard to create, in four forces 26:43 - Public housing, HOPE VI, NYCHA and the PACT program 30:39 - Design: what should affordable housing look like? 32:44 - Resiliency, healthy materials, and the "wow factor" 34:27 - TCB's "secret sauce": the Community Life department 36:31 - The future: from NIMBY to YIMBY, and "a rising tide lifts all boats" Key takeaways: - "Affordability" has a technical definition (30% of income) and a human one - groceries, a modest vacation, better schools for your kids. - Housing is the platform - stability, childcare, and proximity to work all flow from it. - Cost, not intent, is the hardest constraint: ~$500K/unit in dense, electrified, high-code markets like NYC. - Time kills deals - delay and duplicative studies compound into real dollars. - Good affordable housing should be seamless with market-rate. People should be proud to live there. About the guest: Jesse Batus is Senior Vice President of Real Estate Development (NY & NJ) at The Community Builders, where he has worked since 2007. Web: https://tcbinc.org/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesse-batus-766739b/ About the show: Most Modern is a podcast about the built environment - the people, economics, and design shaping how and where we live. #AffordableHousing #BuiltEnvironment #RealEstateDevelopment #Housing #UrbanPlanning #YIMBY #Architecture
