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- [00:00]
Abby Newsham
Foreign. This is Abby and you are listening to Upzoned. Hello everyone. Thanks for listening to another episode of Upzoned show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the strong town's conversation. And we upzone it, we talk about it in depth. I'm Abby Newsham, a planner in Kansas City. And today I have Chuck back. Back from being on the road for a few weeks or a month or so.
- [00:43]
Chuck
I feel like it's been a while since Labor Day. Actually it's been every, it's been every week since Labor Day. So I think it's nine weeks in a row.
- [00:51]
Abby Newsham
But yeah, that's so crazy. But we've been able to catch you on Up Sound which is really the most important thing, so.
- [00:58]
Chuck
Well, some weeks it's one night, some weeks it's four nights. It just depends. But now I'm done for a while. I'm going to go to Massachusetts next month for a couple days, but otherwise I'm off until next year really.
- [01:11]
Abby Newsham
So that's very exciting. Are you taking the month of December off like you usually do?
- [01:19]
Chuck
You make it sound like I take the month.
- [01:21]
Abby Newsham
Okay, yeah, you have a. I mean it's baking. You have a baking month. Okay.
- [01:26]
Chuck
So in December, the first week, we always have our retreat. So I'm going to Florida with the rest of the strong dance team. And then the next week, week and a half, I work like a normal human. So I come to work and then I go home and I bake in the evening and I do like other like other things and then yeah, I usually take the last like week and a half and don't come in at all. I do a lot of writing during that time, but I also do a lot of chilling, you know, so.
- [01:56]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, well you have to get all the cookies that you make.
- [01:59]
Chuck
Uh huh. That's exactly one of my first jobs. The engineer I work with did not like his family very much and he on. Yeah, it was really very. I mean it's very sad. I realized that, I realized that pretty quickly. But on December 24th he would have us just work really late. Like kept bringing me plan revisions and like this has got to get done. And I'm like, what in the world are we doing? Like we should all be gone, we should all be home. And I just realized, I mean I didn't realize it then, but I realized it like over the next couple years that he just didn't like his family. And I swore to myself I would never have a job where I either was forced to be there on holidays or forced other people to work on holidays. And I know some jobs, like my wife's a journalist. You can't always do that. There's news that happens, et cetera. You know, doctors, obviously some have to be there on these days. But, you know, for most of us, it's a. Let's just call it a life goal. So, yeah, I take some time off and enjoy it and yeah, do a lot of baking. Yeah, I will get started on in a. I'm already planning. So I'm going to get started on it like two or three weeks.
- [03:14]
Abby Newsham
I feel the same way. I mean, it's a total privilege to have holidays off. And when I worked in the restaurant industry, that was not necessarily the case. I worked. Not at all. It was hard to get those holidays off. And so it's great when.
- [03:30]
Chuck
Yeah.
- [03:30]
Abby Newsham
When you don't have to work on those days for sure.
- [03:33]
Chuck
Exactly.
- [03:35]
Abby Newsham
And we have Halloween coming up, which is the most important holiday of all. Do you have a costume picked out this year?
- [03:43]
Chuck
Well, the youngest one and I actually went. She had a few days off from school and we went to Disney World for three days.
- [03:52]
Abby Newsham
Awesome.
- [03:53]
Chuck
Amidst all this travel. And they had like this party and so her. And she said, dad, we have to dress up for this party. So her and I went as pirates to this party. So, yes, I have a pirate costume. We got our picture taken with Jack Sparrow, too. I'll send it to you. Like.
- [04:10]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, very cool. Please send that to me. We'll see. Will you put it in the show notes? We may as well.
- [04:16]
Chuck
I will share it with you right now so you can see it and then, yes, you can decide if you want it in the show notes or not.
- [04:22]
Abby Newsham
Okay. Just blast it out on social media for you.
- [04:29]
Chuck
One, Although I had, you know, the big controversy here was I didn't shave for like two weeks because I was trying to, like, really lean into idea of being a pirate. And, you know, I could have used a shave here, but it worked out. I'll send it to you.
- [04:45]
Abby Newsham
Okay. All right. So we. And we haven't even talked about the weather, so we are going to talk today about condos, which I'm kind of excited about. Florida is kind of on our radar these days, and this is a pretty daunting topic. We've covered it before, so this is kind of a. A revisit of the subject, but I think even more dire than before. So this is published in the New York Times by Julia Echickson. I knew I was going to get that Wrong. I'm sorry, Julia. And it is entitled, why Owning and Buying a Florida Condo Has Turned into a Nightmare. So Florida is one of the most popular states for buying condos, following behind places like Hawaii, New York, and D.C. since the 2020, 2021 collapse of the condo building in Florida that made national news, lawmakers have adopted new requirements for condos that are 30 years old, old, or greater. And that's basically 90% of the units that are in South Florida. So under this law, these buildings need to undergo inspections, make critical improvements based on those inspections, and establish reserve funds for future repairs. So a lot like the Ponzi scheme dynamic that is American infrastructure, condo owners in Florida are now facing a serious dilemma that has been brought on by these new. These new regulations because money has not been saved up to make these. To make these payments. And deferred maintenance is now being kind of hoisted on these current owners, and a lot of them are feeling very blindsided. And to make matters worse, insurance premiums for condo associations are rising due to storm events like hurricanes. There's one couple that's followed in this article that are facing a surprise $225,000 bill. They sold their former home and used the cash to move to Florida and buy a condo outright. And so they basically now have the option to pay that lump sum all at once. They can offer a third of the money and then pay the rest in installments or pay it in 240 installments with interest. And unfortunately, nobody will give them a mortgage to pay for their repairs, so they can't do that, and it's not an option. And they have been trying to sell their condo. They have cut the price by over $150,000 from what they originally listed it for, and nobody wants to buy it because it's a massive liability. So people are basically losing a lot of money on these deals, thinking that they were achieving some kind of American dream retirement scenario. And unfortunately, many of these buildings need some very major repairs. This is very, I think, very serious for the condo market in Florida. And one state representative, Vicky Lopez, she has this quote in the article where she says the crisis is coming, which is kind of a terrifying quote to come from a state representative. But she's probably very right that this is seriously a crisis for that, for the real estate market of Florida on top of everything else going on, like, you know, major storm events.
- [08:35]
Chuck
So I read this article, and the first thing that I thought was, no one is going to care, because it is. And I'm not even going to Say rich people, because these are not rich people. These are like middle class, upper middle class people who are near retirement who have, you know, saved up and this is their retirement home. This is the thing that they did instead of, instead of buying an RV or, you know, taking multiple trips to Europe, they got a condo or a timeshare unit in South Florida and this is what they were going to do. I am guessing that a lot of the people listening to us now and a lot of people reading this article are rather indifferent to the plight of these people. Yeah, you know that, okay, you, you bought this unit, you got it on the cheap a little bit or you felt you got a good deal on it. You were going to have this beachside property in south Florida and Now you've got 200 plus thousand dollar bills. You should have done your due diligence. You should have figured out what you were, what you were doing before you signed these contracts. Shame on you. Too bad. And I want the rest of the conversation to be kind of bracketed by the idea that this is everybody. Like, this is not, you know, we're talking to me like the condo market in South Florida is the leading edge. But you can see how like, these are insurmountable problems. Yeah, but these are the exact same problems we see with apartment complexes, major buildings, suburban infrastructure. I mean, go down the list. What, what happened was you had a condo unit that everybody knew was old, everybody knew was kind of decrepit and falling apart. And it fell down and part of it fell down and 98 people died and it was horrible.
- [10:26]
Abby Newsham
Yeah.
- [10:26]
Chuck
And then the legislature looked at this and said, well, hey, you know, who's repairing this stuff? Well, theoretically, the homeowners association is. Are they doing that? No. Are they aside to do it? No. Do they have the wealth and capacity within the building to take care of it? No. So what do you do at that point? You just let people continue live in places that are falling apart? Do you continue to go on until the next place collapses and the next place collapses? What do you do? And so what they did is they passed what is a very kind of common sense law that like, hey, if you're more than 30 years old, you're going to have to get this thing inspected. And by the way, you actually have to save up money and be able to maintain this stuff. You've got to be taking care of this stuff.
- [11:14]
Abby Newsham
Yeah.
- [11:16]
Chuck
If we had that rule for hotels, apartment buildings, if we had that rule for suburban family homes, if we had that rule for local governments and their Infrastructure. Look, the water you drink and the sewage treatment facilities and the roads you drive. It wouldn't be a $250,000 bill. It would be millions of dollars of bills for every American. As I read this, I thought, people are going to read this and they're not going to care. And they're not going to care because they think it is people unlike them, when the reality is, is that this is the situation we literally face everywhere in this country.
- [11:56]
Abby Newsham
Yeah. And I think even delving down to the individuals that have bought a unit in a complex in Florida, like, I think people see that and they assume that means that these are like rich people. But I mean, a lot of them are people who probably saved up a lot of money and took all of their retirement, like selling their house, all the equity in their house. You know, they're living on fixed income, and they have just taken all the. Everything that they have created throughout their entire life, all the wealth that they have, and put it into this unit. And now they could lose everything. And some people are facing bankruptcy. So, yeah, I totally understand why people would be a little bit indifferent. But, I mean, we're. We're kind of all caught holding the bag in a lot of respects. So I think it's important to also understand kind of the reasoning why there is deferred maintenance in condo buildings, because I think there's a lot of, you know, perceptions that, well, duh, you need to maintain a building. And this is what happens when you don't maintain a building and you should do your due diligence. But again, a lot of these people are like just regular people like anyone else. When you buy into a condo, there's a condo association that presumably is taking care of the building. Unfortunately, there's like any neighborhood association or a community group. Condo associations, HOAs have a lot of politics and a lot of tension when it comes to assessments. Few people want to be the grown up in the room telling all their neighbors that they need to start, you know, chilling out more cash to pay for the building. A lot of people bought into this thing thinking that their fees were going to be low. And when you come in and say, hey, you need to pay a lot more, there's a lot of tension there. And that tension is very real. And not having regulations in place, I think is a huge part of the problem, that there was no accountability. So these were regular people trying to manage a giant complex, and they are stakeholders within the complex. And I think that's a really difficult position for people to be put in and it makes a lot of sense why deferred maintenance, maintenance would happen. And then in addition to that, because so many people are elderly that are living in these condo buildings, a lot of waivers are given out. So something I think in this article, or maybe it was another one I read, is that a lot of the requirements and a lot of the assessments that were given had stipulations for waivers for people who are retirees or on a fixed income. So that further kicked the can down the road. And yeah, it's kind of like you have this, this rental mentality when you're living in these places. Even though technically you're an owner, you're kind of assuming that somebody else is, is managing things and somebody else is taking care of it and that you don't have to worry about anything. Right. And you can just enjoy your retirement in Florida. I think that's what people get sold when they move into a condo building. And yeah, maybe they should have done more due diligence or been smarter about their purchases. But also they're, they are sold this picture that they're just going to be able to relax and have a maintenance free lifestyle and it all works out. And that's the same way we look at our communities and our streets and somebody's taking care of things and they must be doing it right. And that is not always the case.
- [15:51]
Chuck
This used to bother me a lot. And I didn't understand why say a city would build a road that they knew they couldn't maintain. And I didn't understand why people would ask for it to be built when they knew they couldn't maintain it. Like why would we cheer when we get there's a small town up the road that got a ten and a half million dollar interchange built for them. And I mean that's like 20 years of tax of city budgets for this place. I mean it's like there's zero chance they'll ever maintain it. Why would they cheer for this? Why would they like it? And it bothered me because it felt like they were getting like the few professionals that were making money off the project were kind of bamboozling everyone. And I realized after a while that that was just not the case, that humans are actually wired this way. And I spent a couple of years reading just psychology books. Like there's stuff here that I don't understand. I mean obviously they don't teach you this in engineering school, but humans have like a propensity to highly value things today and to mentally like deeply discount things in the future that is like a part of human behavior. And it doesn't mean that we're incapable of planning ahead, but it does mean that we will put the pains of today ahead, or the displeasure of today ahead of the pain tomorrow. Think about people who smoke. There's nobody who smokes today that doesn't know that they're likely to get lung cancer. And that lung cancer is horrible and awful and has all these really wretched side effects that are worse than the withdrawal symptoms from smoking. But we're sensitive to those withdrawal symptoms and smoking. For people who. I've never smoked, so I'm not speaking firsthand, but like, people who smoke, you know, have a certain level of pleasure that they get out of it. Today. I'll give you an example that's closer to me. I've seen adults in my family suffer with heart disease. I know that eating fatty foods, I know that that bowl of ice cream I enjoy at night is not necessarily like the best thing for me, but I really enjoy that bowl of ice cream. Am I thinking deeply about 20, 30, 40 years from now when I'm going to have a heart problem? Probably not really. It doesn't cross my mind. It is even harder for humans when they act in groups to do this. Because if you buy into a condo association like this, or an apartment building or, you know, a cluster of single family homes on a cul de sac, the homeowners association in this condo unit for the first 30 years is worried about things like changing the chlorine in the pool. And you know, this person's got a grill on their balcony. They're not worried about is this structurally sound, you know, like, is this building going to fall down? These are not things that people are in a sense, like, conditioned to look at. And then all of a sudden everything starts to fall apart because it has a time span on it. You build a condo unit, you build a house, you build a street, you build a dam, you build a bridge. Whatever it is, it has a lifespan to it. It will start to fall apart. And it's almost like we're not, you know, we enjoy, because of that human propensity to value the pleasure today, we enjoy the time when it's new. And then when we approach that time when it starts to fall apart, we almost rationalize our way out of our responsibilities. And I'll add this caveat to it. If you bought this townhouse, if you, if you bought a townhouse 30 years ago for, let's say, $100,000, it's grown 10x in value over that 30 years, if it's been at like 8% a year, that would be 10 times. So you've got a million dollar condo unit, it's not worth a million dollars. It's worth a lot less today because the people who bought it at 100,000, which would have been a premium 30 years ago, were the affluent people. And as the thing has gotten kind of more in decline or approaching that end of life stage, those people tend to leave, they tend to move to the next condo unit, they tend to move and occupy the next thing. And what we do, and we see this in first ring suburbs and second ring suburbs is we trap people of lesser financial means in places that are entering that steep decline curve of the life cycle.
- [20:43]
Abby Newsham
Exactly.
- [20:45]
Chuck
These things have like a slash and burn agriculture kind of feel to them where it's like we use up the ground and then we move on.
- [20:55]
Abby Newsham
The analogy with what is going on in certain first ring suburbs is I think right on. Because we've talked about this in the past where, I mean there, there are areas in every metropolitan that have first ring suburbs that are not the affluent first ring suburbs where people of lesser means have been sold this brochure of the American dream and they end up being the suburbs that actually have major financial problems because they, it's not where all the high earners have moved and they're kind of left holding the bag not only with their home values but also with all of the infrastructure problems that, that exist in those communities. And it's the same way with these condos. And I think people, you know, have, that have, that have the perspective that if someone buys a condo, you know, it's going to be this like luxury thing. And a lot of these are second, third, fourth buyers. These aren't brand new buildings where the high net worth people are, are buying condos. So yeah, I think it's important to have compassion for these people. Even though it's like I understand the, the politics of the government stepping in and subsidizing beachfront property. Because that's one of the things that's brought up in this article is what do you do about this to get people out of these units or try to help in some kind of way. And some counties in Florida have actually stepped in and they're offering up interest free loans that are spread across like 40 years, maybe longer to pay for these improvements. But this is really not very politically popular because you're essentially subsidizing people to have, yeah, oceanfront property. So that also Makes sense.
- [22:53]
Chuck
It is. I mean, Florida. Florida is, is, you know, the leading tip of the spear for craziness in this. In this kind of way. So you do have, you know, the state of Florida providing hurricane insurance, which basically means, like, everybody in Florida is insuring everybody else in Florida at a loss at submarket rates. Right. You know, you have Florida and counties and other places now saying, we'll finance these things for you at a loss, meaning all the other taxpayers will subsidize this bad investment. We had one of my coworkers here at Strong Towns before she came and worked for us, work for a. Did a brief, basically had a brief job at a place that I knew as a timeshare sales place, but she did not do timeshare sales. She did timeshare reacquisitions. And this was so fascinating because what would happen is that you would have a building and a timeshare will have like 52 different shares of the same unit. So say there's 100 units. You've got 5200 owners of this building. And the developer wanted to reacquire the building and redevelop it because it had gotten old and it was not good. And, like, things needed repairs. And so her job was to call and buy out or offer to buy out the existing owners. Well, the owners. You know, when you're running a timeshare, the dollars work a little bit differently because the maintenance is generally handled by. Because you don't live there, the maintenance is handled by a third party. And on those, the maintenance fees tend to be more real urgent. And so you can get a timeshare unit where if you got into it and you were originally paying 200, 300, $, 400amonth, you can now have $1,000 a month fees for what would be like a one week out of the year place that you get. No, it could be really crazy. Really crazy. And so what she would do, what her job was, and she didn't really like this job. So she's like, I'm so happy to work here because I didn't find this very redeeming is she would call and make an offer on the person to acquire their place. And the offer was generally, you pay us $20,000 and we will take this off your hands. And that people would get really angry because they're like, I thought my unit was worth 100,000. I thought my timeshare was worth 120,000. And it's like, well, no, your timeshare is now costing you 12 grand. Cash a year for one week. You would be better off, you know, vacationing somewhere else for 12 grand a year. We'll take that off your, off your hands, but it's going to cost you money to unload it on us.
- [25:45]
Abby Newsham
That makes me so sad, like all of these things where people get caught holding the bag. And it reminds me of like people who are caught in pyramid schemes, essentially.
- [25:56]
Chuck
Yes, it's very sad because on the upfront for all these timeshare units, they are ridiculously lucrative for the seller, right? They're ridiculously lucrative for the seller. That's why you have all those schemes where like you go to a place where they've got a tourist area and if you come listen to our talk, we'll give you a free whatever, whatever. And they're trying to sell you timeshares. There's tons of money that goes into marketing this because the upfront part of it is really lucrative. But the reality is, is that a lot of people who get into these feel like they are getting more value up front than they're actually paying for. I mean, that's why they're doing this. They feel like they're getting a good deal. And if you just look at the first life cycle, they probably are getting a good deal. The problem is, and this is always the problem, and this is the problem with every municipal infrastructure project. This is like a human failing. If you look at it for the first life cycle, it's a good deal. As soon as you have to do maintenance, as soon as you have to care for it, as soon as you have this longer event horizon that you're responsible for, which is what happens when you buy a place. Now it starts to make no sense. Now it starts to be hugely negative. And this is why I use that slash and burn agriculture phrase. Because if you are the first group to come in and slash the forest down, burn it out and then farm, you will actually do really well because there's a high nutrient level in the soil, but then the nutrient level in the soil will go away. And the thing about slash and burn agriculture is you just move on to the next place. Imagine that you had people who followed in your tracks. They would be nutrient deprived every place they went. In the United States, what we have done is we have built decades and decades and decades of stuff that deprives communities of nutrients. And we now just have a lot of denuded places. And you, you see it in these condo units as like the big, the, you know, the, the, the big over the top example of this, but this is really just a metaphor for all of North America.
- [28:01]
Abby Newsham
I mean, it's really true. It really is. I mean, this, this topic of deferred maintenance, it spans so many different sectors. It is unbelievable how big of a problem this really is. I mean, beyond infrastructure, all different types of buildings, all different types of institutions, people are trying to. Right. Size things. We really have built too much. We've built cities that we completely can't afford. And it's hard to imagine what the world would look like if we built only what we can afford, actually accounting for maintenance.
- [28:44]
Chuck
Yeah, it would, it would look a lot. I, that's another question I struggled with for a long time. What would it look like to do this?
- [28:50]
Abby Newsham
Like, what would the world look like?
- [28:52]
Chuck
It would look like a traditional city. It would look like a pre Great Depression city is what it would look like. And I.
- [28:57]
Abby Newsham
But beyond that, Chuck, I think what would it look like? Yes, visually. But even how society functions would be different. How business works, how commerce works, industry, so much would be different. It really would.
- [29:13]
Chuck
It would be a much lower burn rate kind of thing. I mean, I think this is where there's a recognition that what we did after World War II from an economic standpoint is we created or we engineered this financial system that was based on GDP growth transactions. How do we get the economy churning as opposed to, and I'll quote Tomas Sedlick, the economist that I prefer. Everybody has their preferred economists. Tomas Sedlick is mine. He wrote the Economics of Good and Evil. He would say we traded stability for growth. We had a system that was very stable but didn't grow rapidly. We lowered our stability in order to achieve more and more growth. And now we have a lot of growth, but on an unstable framework. If you look, I feel like, because there's a thing I want to talk about with Yimbys here, if you look at this situation, explain to me how you could ever make any of this affordable at this point. We've gone through 25, 30, 40 years of this, you know, in these condo units. And now we have the maintenance costs that come in. So the condo units are old, dated, run down, and they're brutally expensive to maintain now.
- [30:37]
Abby Newsham
Yes.
- [30:37]
Chuck
Okay, make that affordable. You can't make that affordable for people. No, you can't. It's impossible.
- [30:43]
Abby Newsham
You really can't. And that's something in this. One of the points of this article is like, what do you do about this? And one thing that is happening are buyouts. So a lot of, of these board of directors have Basically come to the conclusion that the only logical solution here is to explore buyouts, which is actually very complicated when you have hundreds and hundreds of owners. But basically developers are now coming in and seeing these buildings as opportunities to buy and acquire some cheap real estate at a very steep discount and then implement the improvements that are required and then convert them into probably luxury rentals or hotels, I don't know. But that's likely, I think. What will happen with a lot of these buildings, right. I can't imagine hundreds of people are going to be coming up with this money to pay for the repairs, right?
- [31:44]
Chuck
No, at astounding cost that, that can happen at astounding level of loss for lots and lots of people right through after like lots of turmoil and difficulty and essentially decline in a place you can get that redevelopment to happen. And you know, this to me, I think is like the real tragedy of the post war development pattern. If we go, if we go to the pre Great Depression world development pattern, what you see is this approach that where things are assembled incrementally and because they are assembled in a sense in different timeframes, at different intensities, that there's always something in decline and something in ascension. And what that does is it actually creates this natural redevelopment pressure where it is a benefit to everybody to see investment made here, an investment made there. Things thicken up, things mature, things replaced by other things. I wrote about this in the housing trap book. J.C. nichols from Kansas City gave this talk to a bunch of real estate agents, agents, you know, land developers and stuff in the early 1950s and said, hey, we, we got to get rid of this incremental development pattern. We know how to do things. Let's go out and build it right. Let's go out and build it perfect. No more tearing down and building up and redesigning. No more in a sense nurturing your way up to Paris or, or you know, some like development pattern that would be stable, strong, have a lot of capacity to it and not go through these cycles. We're just going to build things right, and we're going to build them right the first time. And that worked until the maintenance bill came due. And when the maintenance came bill came due, it was overwhelming everything else. And so we just built more and built more and built more and built more.
- [33:42]
Abby Newsham
Exactly. Especially in the case of Kansas City where you have a combined sewer system. Yes, that needs massive reinvestment. So you know that, that just kind of compounds these issues. But yeah, your point, your point in how that translate to condo buildings is really well taken because you have these giant chunks all throughout Florida of property where they're massive investments and they require massive reinvestment all at once. This isn't a situation where one condo owner can make a little investment and then another person can make a little investment. These are collective places where you need massive amounts of money to save the buildings.
- [34:26]
Chuck
Well, in an economy that prioritizes the efficiency of capital allocation. So that, that's when we talk about efficiency in our economy, we're not talking about the efficiency of you or I buying a place or Occupy, you know, we're talking about the efficiency of the deployment of capital. It is much better to build a $200 million building than. Than to build five. You know, it would be 800, $250,000 buildings, right? Like, it's much more efficient to build one big building. And this is, this is seen as like a net good in our economy. And I feel like this is where the, the mindset and the view of economists and like the theoretical kind of laboratory that a lot of economics is kind of spun up in just doesn't match what reality is in the experience of people on the ground. Because what you gain in efficiency of capital allocation, you lose in the ability to adapt, the ability to reinvent, the ability to recreate. In an ideal situation, instead of having one, one unit with, you know, one building, with 200 or 300 units, you would have hundreds of different buildings with multiple units in them that could adapt and become more commercial or become more residential, become multifamily, become different things over time as the market stresses and changes. Instead, you have like, all or nothing, feast or famine, binary outcomes. And it might be an efficient allocation of capital. It's not an efficient way to use the land over time.
- [36:12]
Abby Newsham
Right? So this is a. Obviously it's a predicament that has an outcome. Right. But if you were trying to think up, let's not say solutions, but interventions to the current situation in Florida, do you have any ideas of what, what you would propose?
- [36:34]
Chuck
This is a good, this is a really fair question. And let me go back to the city analogy, the city part of this, because one of the things that I've said from the early days of Strong Towns is that the first thing that you do when you're digging a hole is stop, stop digging it deeper. And so I do think that building in this style, in this way should be something that we should be really reluctant to do. And that gives me to my tension with the Yimbys, because there's a lot of Yimby, especially the California Yimby folk who are like, hey, five over ones everywhere, build these big units, build them in single family neighborhoods, build them along the highway interchange. Build them where like we just need more units. Just go build, build, build, build, build. And the only efficient way we can do this is in large blocks and large buildings. And when I see one, the thing that comes to my mind right away is future slum. That's the future slum. We just built. We just built the headache that we will have in 25, 30 years where the Abby and Chuck of the future will be saying, why didn't these people in 2024 think about this when they were building this massive building? And we'll say, well, because we were too hasty. We only cared about solving a housing crisis. We couldn't think in more than one dimension. We just wanted to go out and build, build, build units. So I feel like the key policy response here is to recognize this flaw in human nature and actually overcome it by building differently, building in a more compact, a more human scale, a more neighborhood focused kind of pattern. You can go up the coast from where these buildings are and get to Seaside and Rosemary beach and like a whole collection of places that are the same type of touristy places but are just built in a different manner and will never, ever, ever have this problem. We'll never have this problem.
- [38:35]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, exactly. These places, yeah. Along, along 50A or yes. Have these problems because they don't have these massive condo buildings. And I do think the, the new regulations, while it's not explicitly saying, I don't think it's explicitly saying that you can't build these anymore. I think it's now probably changing a lot of the current behaviors around how, how development is going to be approached in Florida if people continue to inhabit Florida long term. Given the insurance issues, the everything else going on, it seems a little bit silly to think that people will keep building these buildings. But they probably will.
- [39:24]
Chuck
No, they, they certainly will. Well, you saw that in the article where you know, there you've got large amounts of capital, people with large access to immense amount of capital going in buying these buildings. I'm not sure as they will fix them up as much as they might just demo them to build the next luxury unit and understand what that is. That is a really, really, really expensive redevelopment to in a Sense get another 25, 30, 40 years out of that site. And if the plan is to do that every time, you might be able to get by with that on some places in high value Real estate like South Beach, Florida, where the ocean is gorgeous and, like, the sand beach is nice and all that. You. You won't do that on the cul de sac in Brainerd, Minnesota. Like, you just won't. Because there's always another cul de sac. There's always another place. No one's going to buy that five over one that you built, you know, on the edge of nothing. Not connected to transit, not connected to anything of value. But you just built it because you wanted units. No one's ever going to buy that when it goes bad and tear it down and build a brand new one in its place. It's just not a viable thing.
- [40:46]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, well, I. I have a lot of compassion for all the people in. I do, too, Florida that, like, waste a lot of money on condos and are now left with this predicament. It's. I don't know why. It's just really sad to me reading this article. Yeah, super.
- [41:05]
Chuck
Can I say why I think it's sad?
- [41:07]
Abby Newsham
Yeah.
- [41:09]
Chuck
So this is a Midwestern thing. I think you and I are both Midwestern.
- [41:13]
Abby Newsham
Well, I just feeling really bad. When you think bad things happen to good people.
- [41:19]
Chuck
I think other people have compassion, too.
- [41:21]
Abby Newsham
No, it's just Midwest.
- [41:24]
Chuck
It's just Midwesterners. No, I live around people who are not wealthy. I live around people who are middle. Like the middle class here in Brainerd, Minnesota, that I live around are, you know, by the standards of my friends in New York, my friends in Minneapolis, you know, friends out on the west coast are not rich in any way. And their life dream would be, if I could have a condo unit in Florida, I will have made it. Like, I will have something amazing, substantial. Like, I've always dreamed about that. It sounds funny to people who are not from, like, really cold places, but the idea of, like, reaching a certain age and then being able to afford, like, the winter home that you could go to is really, like, one of those signs of success. And I look at, like, the gym teacher and the police officer and the, like, just go down the list of normal people who, like, this is what I'm, you know, have maybe been a little bit better off than, like, the person working at the grocery store or, like, what have you, but, you know, not rich by anybody's measurement. And they are largely the people who are getting caught in this. And so, yeah, I. I feel like this isn't the. The wealthy business owner or the banker or like, the whoever who's made six figures for three decades, who made a bad Investment. These are people who are largely like, this was their dream, and they just. Getting screwed.
- [42:58]
Abby Newsham
Exactly. I mean, it's like. It's like teachers or nurses that, like. It's like teachers and pension or. Yeah. Sold their houses. And, you know, this is the. One of the American dreams that was sold is you can retire and move to Florida.
- [43:15]
Chuck
Right.
- [43:16]
Abby Newsham
Sounds like a nightmare to me personally.
- [43:18]
Chuck
But I would want.
- [43:21]
Abby Newsham
Yeah. Also don't want to hate on anyone who, you know, was sold that idea and right now.
- [43:27]
Chuck
But the other side of this problem, the other side of this equation is that they also look at the house they have here, which maybe they hung on to. You know, maybe it's just a neighborhood that they identify with. They also look at that as having this residual value that it doesn't have. And so, in a sense, they're getting screwed on both sides of the equation. And that's, I think, the hard one. You know, all this. The reason the condo unit is in the New York Times and the suburban cul de sac is not. Is because the condo unit, it's a chronic problem that has, like, a catastrophic end to it. Everyone's cul de sac going bad. Everyone's like, neighborhood going bad is just a chronic problem that. I mean, if neighborhoods went bad and. And then one day there was like, a conflagration and, like, the whole thing burned down because we didn't maintain the road. It would be in the New York Times. But the reality is it just goes bad. It just goes to crap. It just stops working. And it happens slowly over time. And so you don't notice it in the same way.
- [44:36]
Abby Newsham
Exactly. That's a really good point. It happens through potholes, smaller system failures, rather than having bigger taxes, lower services. You know, it's. It's harder for people to point to why this is happening and how it's happening. Having a single site with one giant building on it and then it collapses. That's. It's easy to understand what happened there. It's harder to do that for a large area.
- [45:08]
Chuck
Precisely. Precisely.
- [45:11]
Abby Newsham
All right. You want to do the down zone?
- [45:13]
Chuck
I'd love to.
- [45:14]
Abby Newsham
All right. What have you been up to?
- [45:18]
Chuck
So, lots of travel. And I'm an ebook person when I'm traveling, so I have my Kindle. I also have audiobook. I finished two books in the last week that were very fun. There's a new movie out called Conclave, and I read the book. It's about the choosing of a new pope. It's a fictionalized thing, so there's fictional characters through the whole thing, but it goes through, like, the conclave process. And the movie's getting a lot of hype. Is like, movie of the year. And it's got the. I keep forgetting his name. Ralph Fiennes. I don't know how you say his last name. He's the guy that played Voldemort. He's a fan. I mean, I'm sure that's not what he wants to be known as because he has done some other, like, amazing things, but he's the main star of it. And it does look really good. And I'll tell you, the book was a page turner. The book was really fun. The book was really good. And, you know, I've seen some Catholic things. Not like it. I liked it, let me tell you. I'm not a very good Catholic, but I. I thought it was a worthy story and I thought it was. It was really good. I'm excited to see how they do it. My daughter and I, my youngest, who is interested in this stuff. I got her this book and then I listened to it on audiobook. It's called the Secret Life of the Universe. An Astrobiologist Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life. And it is kind of like an overview of astrobiology, which is the study of life throughout the universe. And a lot of this stuff, I knew this is a passion of mine and of hers, and we both kind of like this stuff. But a lot of it was. Was. Went beyond things that I had thought about and just, you know, there was a news article a couple of weeks ago where people were laughing at Elon Musk for saying that you could see the lights on Proxima B. You can actually, like. We actually do have telescopes where if there's a civilization on a planet in a different solar system and they are having artificial light that is lighting up the planet in some way. We will not be able to see individual lights, but we'll be able to detect an unnatural level of lighting that would indicate that they have lights. And we actually will have that capacity within a few years. The things that we are capable of knowing and understanding and detecting today is just astounding. And I think it's incredible. And I think that we are on the cusp of being alive. We, Abby, you and me, are going to be alive when we have definitive proof that there is life on other planets. Now, maybe not intelligent life, maybe not aliens, and da, da, da, da. But we have really strong indications that there is things that we would categorize as life in other places. And we Just have, like, a few steps left to, in a sense, prove it. And we are very close to doing that. And I think that that will be like the printing press, like the Polynesian development of the Alphabet, like agriculture. I think this will be like, one of those watershed moments of, like, before and after. Chuck, have you really cool.
- [48:43]
Abby Newsham
Have you watched the Three Body Problem on Netflix? Yeah, that is what that makes me think of. Very scary.
- [48:53]
Chuck
Parts of it are very scary. Parts of it are less scary. I don't know. I feel like if you believe the laws of large numbers and if you also are inclined, as I think most astrobiologists would be inclined today to think that the building blocks of life are pretty universally spread across this vast cosmos and also very likely to combine in short order into things that we would identify as life. You have to believe that life is both very ubiquitous and intelligent life is also fairly ubiquitous. So I would think that we would probably. You know, there's. There's different theories. The one that I think is probably the most likely is. Is called, like, the zoo theory, which is we're kind of like ants who are just not interesting to whatever's out there, you know? But the three body problem is like, well, now you've become interesting, so it changes things, right?
- [49:57]
Abby Newsham
Yeah. What is that? There was a movie like that that I had recommended to you, and I'm trying to remember what it's called, but it's like a couple that gets trapped in this, like, suburban neighborhood, and they're actually just being studied.
- [50:14]
Chuck
Oh, I don't remember this one. No.
- [50:19]
Abby Newsham
Well, it's right up your alley. I'll find out what it's called. Because that was. What is it called? Anyway, I'll. I'll find out. We'll put it in the show notes. When I.
- [50:31]
Chuck
When it comes to me, my youngest kid wants to do astrobiology and astrophysics. And astrobiology. She's. She's such a cool kid. Both of my kids are cool, but, like, the younger one. And this week when I was gone, she had applied before we went on our little trip. She had applied to five universities with early. You can apply early in October. And she did, and she got accepted to two of them already in one week. So pretty proud of that.
- [51:04]
Abby Newsham
Very exciting. Yeah, congratulations.
- [51:07]
Chuck
So I'm trying to be the dad who, like, you like astrobiology. I like astrobiology. Let's talk about this. While also being the dad who's like, you know, you need to pursue the things that make you happy and don't do the things that make dad Happy.
- [51:22]
Abby Newsham
Yeah.
- [51:22]
Chuck
So I'm trying to walk that fine line between being like, you know, this is awesome. Like, this is really cool. And then, you know, you got to do what you got to do. But yeah, she applied and got into two astronomy. I mean, one. One is the University of Minnesota she heard back from in eight days, and they accepted her into astronomy.
- [51:39]
Abby Newsham
Excellent. Congratulations.
- [51:41]
Chuck
That's your low bar, kid. You will do fairly well.
- [51:44]
Abby Newsham
Fantastic. Yeah. But by the way, the movie is called Vivarium, so.
- [51:50]
Chuck
Virium.
- [51:50]
Abby Newsham
I have not heard of this. I sent you the. The trailer. It is. It's one of the freakiest movies, honestly, but it is. It's that concept that you just described, so I think you'd like it. And they get trapped in a suburban neighborhood, which is very, very strong. Towns horror movie.
- [52:11]
Chuck
Horror.
- [52:11]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, totally.
- [52:13]
Chuck
All right, what's your down zone?
- [52:15]
Abby Newsham
Well, I. So I have a. I have a psychology one, although I haven't. I'm. I'm early in the book, so I haven't finished it, and I don't have a lot of conclusions to share about it. But I'm reading this book called no Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz, who is a doctor. And this book, it's really kind of interesting. It's. It proposes a new framework of like, conceptualizing self and relation to different parts of self within, like you, like different ways that your ego operates, essentially. And he breaks it into these three different camps, really four, because the fourth is like the true self, like who you really are, but the other parts of yourself. One is like the manager, which are the parts of yourself that want to control things, that want to be perfect, that want to, you know, have. Have ultimate control over your life and kind of operate in. In ways that. That are meant to, I guess, protect another camp of yourself, which is like what's called the exile, which are all the ways that you beat yourself up and kind of the. Yeah, like the. The things you don't like about yourself or whatever. And then there's the. Oh, what is it called? The third one is the firefighters, which is kind of a weird name for that, but it's like the destructive ways that people cope. And then that feeds into a cycle where the manager steps in and then starts beating up the firefighters. And it's kind of like this interesting way of looking at how people operate internally. And it's my understanding is that it's. It's kind of a radical approach in. In this world of psychology and a new way of looking at these things. And I'm pretty early in the book But I'm really interested in it because I. I personally love ideas about. About, you know, understanding self and other people and. And kind of the internals of how. How the mind works. So, yeah, since you like psychology, you might. You might like.
- [54:39]
Chuck
I. I might check it out. It looks very interesting. It's got a lot of really high ratings, so. And I think the concept of no bad parts is consistent with what we know about the human mind, which is, you know, the. The part that would beat yourself up is actually a necessary part, but it also needs to be countermanded by the part that takes control and, like, gets things done.
- [55:03]
Abby Newsham
Right. Exactly.
- [55:04]
Chuck
And you can't have all of one and none of the other, otherwise you won't function very well as a human.
- [55:09]
Abby Newsham
Exactly. And I think my understanding is the reason why there's, like, criticism that has formed around this theory in this book is because the doctor who created it, you know, he calls the book no Bad Parts. And so through his practice with many, many patients, he's worked with people who have, like, murdered people. And he holds to that idea that there are really no bad parts. And that his. His approach to, you know, psycho psychotherapy is to, like, really dive into these parts that would lead somebody to murder somebody or do terrible things. And rather than, like, the manager coming in and pathologizing it and rejecting that part, which is typically what we would like to do and react to that, instead, it's about, like, actually speaking to that part and actually understanding and acknowledging why it did that or why it felt the need to do something. And apparently it's been a very impactful way of relating. So. Yeah, fascinating. I'm very early.
- [56:27]
Chuck
I've added it to my read list, and I put Vivarium on my watch list. And I'm a little freaked out about it, but I'll do it for you.
- [56:34]
Abby Newsham
Abby, I sent you the trailer, so. Watch the trailer. It's on Netflix, so.
- [56:41]
Chuck
Looks a little scary for me, but I will try it.
- [56:44]
Abby Newsham
It's. It's not. It's. It's. It's more weird and freaky, and for me, it's. It's not. It's not so much scary, but it's more. It's one of those books or one of the movies that will kind of disturb you for many days after and.
- [57:02]
Chuck
Well, you've given me good recommendations in the past, so.
- [57:05]
Abby Newsham
Yeah, well, I'm the type of person that I love. I love shows and movies that will make me contemplate about it and, like, spend a lot of time on Reddit reading about the plot and the movie and the characters. And this is one of those movies that you kind of walk away from it feeling a little confused, and then you spend a lot of time contemplating it, at least if you're all right.
- [57:29]
Chuck
So that sounds like a good movie.
- [57:31]
Abby Newsham
All right. Well, thanks, Chuck. I will see you next time.
- [57:36]
Chuck
Sounds good. Take care.
- [57:37]
Abby Newsham
Take care. Bye.
- [57:38]
Chuck
Let me show you what I'm about to do. I'm about to.