Who Killed the Starter Home?

As someone who advocates for affordable housing, I am having a hard time processing this data—but it is officially in, and it’s a massive reality check.

 

Economist Jason Sorens has done extensive modeling on New Jersey’s housing landscape and found that Mount Laurel and inclusionary zoning mandates have had a 0% net impact on increasing overall housing supply or lowering housing costs. While the policy successfully produces a small number of deed-restricted units, it also creates an overwhelming lottery system and a devastating consequence for the middle of the market. When developers have to cross-subsidize the below-market units, the middle is financially impossible. The only projects that survive the math are either hyper-luxury developments with a small inclusionary component or projects that are in some form publicly funded.

    So, what do we do next?

In this episode, we dive into solutions for moving past ineffective mandates to unlock naturally occurring, truly affordable home development. Reduced minimum lot sizes for starter home subdivisions, legalized "by-right" infill density, pre-approved architectural plans, private inspections, and eliminated parking minimums are all being tested successfully around the country. It’s time to talk about how these diverse typologies can count toward the noble goal of creating realistic opportunities to build homes for the lower and middle-income strata of our communities.

When Erick and Carolina were recent architecture grads navigating a long-distance relationship between Houston and McAllen, Texas, Erick dropped a question that would completely rewrite their futures: "Will You Design a House with Me?"

While standard relationship advice warns against co-managing massive financial and design projects, this single speculative starter home on Orange Avenue became the literal blueprint for their marriage, their family, and their entire business. Today, as the founders of the 10-person firm Orange Made Architecture, Erick and Carolina join the podcast to reflect on how a modest starter home didn't just launch their careers—it ignited a modern design movement and catalyzed a profound community transformation in their Rio Grande Valley town.

Our latest episode was recorded live at the NJ Planning and Redevelopment Conference with Randi Moore, CEO of the Affordable Housing Alliance. We dove into a frustrating paradox: under normal circumstances the standard funding, rigid compliance rules, and hyper-fragmented municipal zoning completely freeze the pipeline for modest starter homes. But when a catastrophe strikes—like Hurricane Sandy—emergency recovery funds with more flexible rules suddenly act as a regulatory bypass cutting through the red tape.

Featuring plenty of audience participation that we tried our best to include in the recording, we brainstormed how to bring forward-thinking, resilient, and community-centered housing to our neighborhoods today—without waiting for disaster funding

If we "just fix zoning" all our housing problems will be solved, right? Not exactly. In this episode, Professional Planner Gabby Hart joins us from Colorado to share her experience working with municipalities on master plans and zoning regulations. She explains the unexpected friction between the public process and private restrictions and how sometimes it’s deed restrictions and private covenants that kill starter homes.

Another surprise could be to planners that steering committees could be helpful resources for local knowledge. And not at all surprising, but important, is the role of fun! Zoning Bingo, games, and kids change how we speak about regulations in creative and accessible ways. Fun helps us bring people together instead of driving us apart.

If you had a choice, what board would you like to be on? The helpful, the unhelpful, or the fun?

We would like to hear what you think about this conversation or if you have any ideas for how to bring the starter homes back from the brink of extinction, send us a note at starterhomepodcast@gmail.com

Potholes need fixing: no argument there! But while the "universal pothole consensus" keeps our eyes glued to the asphalt, it can make us miss the grander, more exciting evolution waiting to happen in our towns.

In this episode, urban journalist and researcher John Surico (https://www.johnsurico.com/) challenges us to look way beyond basic maintenance. He shares his firsthand experiences bringing beautiful, community-grown temporary public spaces to life right in his own neighborhood. These grassroots pop-ups do something amazing: they shift our thinking from treating roads merely as conduits for cars to seeing them as vibrant, human-scale places.

I’m also incredibly inspired by John’s take on the rapid emergence of a whole new generation of personal vehicles—from pedal-assist bikes to what are effectively unregulated motorcycles. He suggests that rather than lazily lumping them in with either traditional bikes or cars, we should embrace a more nuanced approach. By rethinking these vehicles, we can expand our shared mobility and connect our communities in entirely new, accessible ways.