The American Compass Podcast
Our mission is to restore an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation’s liberty and prosperity. The American Compass Podcast features conversations on a wide variety of policy issues aimed at helping policymakers and the broader public navigate the most pressing issues that will define the future of the conservative movement in America.
The American Compass Podcast
What Happened to the Starter Home? with Bobby Fijan
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America’s housing shortage is often framed as a simple supply problem, but building the kinds of homes families actually need has proven far more complicated. While capital continues to flow into large suburban developments and luxury apartment buildings, the market has stopped producing the modest, family-friendly housing that once anchored stable communities and enabled young families to remain in thriving cities.
Bobby Fijan, co-founder of the American Housing Corporation, joins Oren to discuss why the “starter home” has largely disappeared and how development incentives, zoning rules, and capital markets have reshaped what gets built. They explore why current housing designs increasingly favor singles and roommates over families, how housing supply shapes family formation, urban vitality, and economic mobility, and how prefab manufacturing and vertically integrated construction start-ups like the American Housing Corporation could help deliver row homes in established neighborhoods and begin to change the culture.