How to solve the housing crisis #33

Podcast
Written by Nick Halaris

Hi Everyone and Welcome Back!

This week on The Nick Halaris Show we are featuring civic activist Scott Epstein.  Scott is the Director of Policy and Research for Abundant Housing LA, an innovative pro-housing advocacy group making waves here in California, a former candidate for city council here in Los Angeles, and a lifelong social justice and housing activist. 

Ready to dive in? Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music and Youtube or on your favorite podcast platform.

I wanted to have Scott on the show to learn about what he’s seeing on the front lines in the fight against NIMBY forces, explore his vision for how we might fix our broken housing market, and highlight the important work he and his colleagues at Abundant Housing LA are doing.  Scott is someone who has literally dedicated his life to causes like housing affordability, climate change, and the fight against poverty, so I had a feeling this would make for a rich conversation and it did not disappoint.  In this informative, engaging, and inspiring episode, we discuss:

  • Why the NIMBY’s are winning without actually representing the true will of the majority

  • Abundant Housing LA’s innovative 3-part strategy—policy, community organizing, & politics—and how it’s working in the fight for more housing

  • Why Scott’s 3 big ideas—zoning reform, by-right development, and getting rid of parking and the double staircase requirement—could go a long way in solving the housing crisis

  • Scott’s experience with grass roots political activism in LA’s Neighborhood Council System

  • What it’s like to run for city council in a place like Los Angeles

    & Much, much more

Scott also shares how growing-up in a household of social justice advocates informed his mindset and career choices and why wanting to make LA a cooler place led him down the road of civic activism and public service.  He also recounts how his own experience as a victim of the housing affordability crisis—i.e. living in a slum—motivates and animates all the work he does today.    

I hope you all enjoy this episode.  Thanks for tuning-in!      

Love this episode? Please rate, subscribe, and review on your favorite podcast platform to help more users find our show. 🙏 Thank you

Nick Halaris

I’ve been fascinated by investing for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I would read the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and Barron’s, pouring over the data tables, stories and interviews with a passion and an insatiable kind of curiosity. As I grew into adulthood, I struggled to find the right outlet and channel for this passion and spent much of my twenties wandering and trying out different things. I had a very brief career as an attorney, spent some time as a strategy and leadership consultant for big multinational companies, failed in an attempt to start a hedge fund, and even ended up helping run a scrap metal recycling operation for a while.

At the age of 30 though, I took my stand. I made up my mind that no matter what I was going to be an entrepreneurial investor. As crazy as it sounds, I owe everything in my life to this one foundational decision—even my amazing wife and my beautiful kids. I don’t think I would ever have met Alicia had I not made this one choice. At that moment in time, the financial world had just been devastated by the crash in the housing market and the near systemic failure of the global banking system that followed. I’ve always had a contrarian bent to my investment thinking; so, to me the carnage in real estate looked like an opportunity.

It all started with one house in Compton California. The business plan was simple: buy a distressed foreclosed home from a bank, bring it back to life with a big renovation and sell it to a first-time homebuyer. Things progressed slowly as they tend to do with real estate. In the first years of this, I think I did 6-7 homes. But then after plugging away day-by-day, suddenly it seemed, things just came together. I found the right investors and the right loans and the right deals and in just a few short years I ended up investing in over 100 such transactions, building a portfolio of almost 2,500 multifamily units and creating a fully vertically integrated real estate company with almost 100 employees.

Fast forward to today and I’m running the second evolution of my entrepreneurial investing career and having so much fun that I have to stop and remind myself that this is all real.

http://www.nickhalaris.com
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