Inside the Housing Crisis: Why You Can’t Afford to Live Where You Work
Ken McElroy Show
Ken McElroy
4.8 • 692 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2025
⏱️ 52 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, Ken and Danille McElroy sit down with the COO of MC Companies, Brian Kearney, to dissect the real reasons behind America’s affordable housing crisis. From zoning laws and NIMBY opposition to the flawed economics of rent control and government housing, they reveal what’s really preventing developers from solving the problem.
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ABOUT KEN: Ken is the author of the bestselling books The ABC’s of Real Estate Investing, The Advanced Guide to Real Estate Investing, and The ABC’s of Property Management. With over two decades of experience in real estate investing, Ken McElroy is passionate about sharing the good life by helping real estate investors grow and prosper. This podcast is a place for Ken to discuss numerous topics connected to real estate investing, including finance, budgeting, the entrepreneur mindset, and creating passive income. Ken offers a wealth of personal experiences, practical advice, success stories, and even some informative setbacks, all presented here to educate and inspire. Whether you’re a new or seasoned investor, the information and resources on this channel will set you on a path where you and your investments can thrive.
Ken's company: https://mccompanies.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | So today we're going to bring in Brian Kearney, my C-O, and of course he was a developer, he was a city manager. |
| 0:11.9 | He knows a lot about this subject. |
| 0:14.2 | Yeah, affordable housing is a real issue. |
| 0:16.9 | And I think people don't understand what affordable housing actually is and why there are so many barriers to producing it. |
| 0:23.5 | And he's going to break that down. |
| 0:24.6 | Yeah, we're going to give you the inside look of what it really takes to build affordable housing. |
| 0:29.9 | So let's first define affordable housing, Brian, because it's a loose term. |
| 0:33.8 | A lot of people throw it around a lot, right? |
| 0:35.5 | But it's a real issue because people are having a tough time with their money right now and wages are not growing like inflation. |
| 0:43.1 | So affordable housing, people, people tend to think of it sort of in absolute terms, I think, |
| 0:47.9 | in terms of a housing product that's offered at a lower rent or lower cost and that there's |
| 0:53.9 | some threshold |
| 0:54.8 | that makes it affordable. But it's actually a relative term, right? It's all relative to the |
| 0:58.8 | income that someone makes. And so by government standards, in order to be affordable, that the rent |
| 1:06.3 | that you're paying and the utilities or the mortgage that you're paying can't exceed more than 30% of your |
| 1:12.1 | income. So obviously for somebody making $60,000 a year, they can afford based on that math |
| 1:18.8 | about $1,500 a month. Somebody making $100,000 a year, what's affordable to them is $2,500 a month. |
| 1:25.9 | So it's all relative to your income. Yeah. I think, |
| 1:29.7 | you know, when people are talking about affordability, though, I think it's really kind of on the, |
| 1:35.3 | you know, the low middle class, right? Would you say generally? Because that's really where a lot of |
| 1:41.5 | government targets a lot of programs. I would say that that is true. I would say that it's an issue that's really where a lot of government targets a lot of programs. I would say that that is true. |
| 1:45.9 | I would say that it's an issue that's impacting more and more of the middle class. However, I mean, |
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