Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Conversations about Creating a Culture of Activity: Profiling the people, places, programs, and policies that help to promote a culture of activity within our communities.
Note: This transcript was exported from the video version of this episode, and it has not been copyedited
00:00:00:01 - 00:00:20:11
Phil Levin
So here are sort of foreign factors that we think work utilizing existing housing stock that exists in most places, to create a living situation that allows you to live in private spaces but near friends and family. So this is not this is not like living in the same, like, you know, room as someone, just an apartment.
00:00:20:12 - 00:00:39:24
Phil Levin
This is this is like, we each have our own private space where we're near each other rather than being near total strangers. And we're trying to put people through a different frame of decision making, which is which is. Let's start with you. Let's start with the important people in their life. Who do you want to be around? And then let's take a place, and then let's search for our individual homes that we can rent or buy.
00:00:39:24 - 00:00:59:09
Phil Levin
Because people people have different needs within a friend or family group, within a neighborhood. And we try to provide, statistics to help you understand, like, is this neighborhood a good fit for my friend group? Like, does it have the right price stuff? Is there enough availability for the people by how many homes come available per month, you know, within a ten minute walk in this location?
00:00:59:11 - 00:01:06:24
Phil Levin
So we're focused on like a different set of metrics, sort of optimize for creating this mini hood of your friends and family members. Are you?
00:01:06:26 - 00:01:31:01
John Simmerman
Hey everyone, welcome to the Active Towns Channel. My name is John Simmerman and that is Phil Levin from Live Near Friends, a new organization that is, passionate about helping people, connect with their friends and being able to live in proximity, maybe even close proximity. Let's get right to it with Phil.
00:01:31:03 - 00:01:34:24
John Simmerman
Phil 11, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:01:34:26 - 00:01:36:29
Phil Levin
John, it's great to be here.
00:01:37:02 - 00:01:49:01
John Simmerman
So, Phil, I love giving my guest just an opportunity to introduce themselves. What's the 30 minute or. Excuse me, what's the 32nd? Pitches? So who the heck Phil Levin is?
00:01:49:03 - 00:01:51:17
Phil Levin
Yeah, I'm glad I'm not. 30 minutes. I'm not sure. Yeah.
00:01:51:20 - 00:01:56:02
John Simmerman
No, I know we all keep it short this time.
00:01:56:05 - 00:02:18:24
Phil Levin
Yeah. So really, the question that sort of animates my work is like, how do we create housing that makes people happier, healthier, and more connected to the people around them? And so this has taken on various incarnations through my career, in my personal life. And, so I, helped start a company called cul de sac, which I think has been on this, on this podcast before.
00:02:18:26 - 00:02:40:11
Phil Levin
And we are we were building car free, walkable neighborhoods in the US. But, we'll talk about us a bit. I also do a bunch of experiments, sort of in my own life, trying to create the optimal form of housing for myself and my my wife and my friends. So I do sort of a few projects there where we're trying to, like, innovate and actually, like, see what it's like to live in our own creations.
00:02:40:13 - 00:02:55:23
Phil Levin
And recently I started a company, called Live Near Friends. And Live Near Friends is a company that helps people live within a short walk of friends and family, which we sort of think is almost a silver bullet, this sort of living a, happier, healthy, and more active life.
00:02:55:26 - 00:03:18:14
John Simmerman
Fantastic. Yeah, that is great. And, yeah, in. You're right, I did. I did cover, cul de sac. I, went to go, view, cul de sac. I stayed there a couple nights. Got had a chance to, interview Ryan. We had a great time. We went out on bike and sort of rode around, like, pointed a camera at him.
00:03:18:16 - 00:03:38:14
John Simmerman
As we were riding around, real quick, for those of you who haven't seen cul de sac, it's really cool. Cul de sac, like you said, you mentioned it just in briefly. There it is. A an attempt to try to create, a bit of a car free or a car lite lifestyle. We've got the website right here.
00:03:38:14 - 00:03:55:29
John Simmerman
Kind of, popped up, talk a little bit about the early days there, and pulling cul de sac together and, and I guess really like a short, short, brief version of what inspired you all to to want to do this out in the desert there in Tempe?
00:03:56:02 - 00:04:19:13
Phil Levin
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, cul de sac started with, three of us. Meet me, Jeff and Ryan. Sitting in that we work office in San Francisco. And we all we had to our name at that point is like a pile of Legos, that we would like play with on our desk. And, we sort of had these, like, two insights, that we thought were important, and worth building a company around.
00:04:19:13 - 00:04:42:25
Phil Levin
So one is that, that walkable urbanism isn't, like, is deeply undersupplied in the US, relative to its demand. So we did an analysis which showed that, that the majority of Americans, I think the number of 67% on wanted to live in a walkable neighborhood, but very few of them did. So only I think 7% is a number, maybe 6%.
00:04:42:27 - 00:05:04:24
Phil Levin
Actually, actually, within a walkable neighborhood. And so we saw this Delta was a big market opportunity, and we're like, can we actually just built from scratch a walkable, car free community? So that was sort of one insight. I think the second insight was that how we were moving and how we were getting around was changing, and that was going to provide new opportunities for how we built, built cities.
00:05:04:26 - 00:05:27:25
Phil Levin
And so like the, the, the sort of like standard of like one person, one car, which is sort of been like the dominant way that people have gone around in the past. We're sort of seeing a bid to these, like new on demand shared forms of transit. So Uber, Lyft, you know, shared bike system, shared scooters, get around Turo, these sort of services.
00:05:27:27 - 00:05:45:17
Phil Levin
And and the big one was sort of now coming on the scene, which is self-driving cars. And so we found there was an opportunity to sort of think about cities differently, with the arrival of these new transportation technologies. And that transportation to a very great effect determines, like what you can do in a city and in really the shape of the city.
00:05:45:17 - 00:06:10:01
Phil Levin
And if you think about like, why London is the way London is and why, and land is the way of land is it really is about the dominant transportation mode at the time they were built. And so we want to think of like what a city looks like, in the future where the dominant transportation is shared and on demand, and not, not owned, like sort of the dominant, you know, car, you know, paradigm of the last 100 years.
00:06:10:04 - 00:06:40:05
John Simmerman
Right. And what's really I think and Ryan and I talk a little bit about this in, in, in our interview and, and I think this is going to be relevant to, your latest project, Live in Your Friends as well. Is that a big part of the opportunity for success? In, in cul de sac or other, you know, schemes that we come up with in terms of trying to, create more livable, more sociable places, too.
00:06:40:11 - 00:07:07:14
John Simmerman
And you mentioned is the is is transportation and that ability to get from, from where you're at to where you need to be, to get to meaningful destinations and have mobility choice. And really, what has been very, very, much our Achilles heel in North America is we've had one mobility choice, and that has been the automobile and specifically the personal owned automobile.
00:07:07:16 - 00:07:32:17
John Simmerman
And that's already putting things in many people, most people at a severe disadvantage when you look at the cost of supporting an automobile. And Ryan and I talked about this, I mean, it's just it's it's ridiculous. You know, how expensive it is, you know, to have the upkeep of an automobile. And if a household has more than one, it's even it's even worse.
00:07:32:17 - 00:07:56:19
John Simmerman
I mean, right now they're they're estimating at the annual cost. It's like over $12,000 for a personal automobile. And in certain in certain states, with climate change happening, it's even getting or nearly impossible to insure them. I mean, Florida right now is in a, in a in dire straits. My sister, you know, lives there. And she's just like, yeah, I mean, insurance rates are, you know, doubling and tripling.
00:07:56:21 - 00:08:22:03
John Simmerman
And so it's getting, you know, really, really crazy. And so what I loved about that visit to cul de sac was really experiencing the fact that, oh, transit is literally right at the front door. Yeah. Huge, huge. You know, and so you're able to set up, you know, and then, you know, the opportunity for, you know, using bikes, bikes is a huge part of that.
00:08:22:06 - 00:08:48:02
John Simmerman
That mix of what's happening there at cul de sac, that relationship with electric, the electric assist bike, which what the electric assist bike really does is it. And, you know, helps open up the opportunity for many, many more people to be able to get around it. You don't have to, quote unquote, be a cyclist to be able to jump on, you know, an electric assist bike or, you know, for that matter, an e-scooter.
00:08:48:02 - 00:09:12:24
John Simmerman
If you want to look at, you know, emerging technologies and things like that of being able to get to meaningful places. But the key, and this is the challenge that even Tempe has, is you can't have a dangerous strode right outside your door and expect that people are going to feel comfortable getting on a bike or getting on a scooter or, you know, you know, being able or even walking for that matter, to get to their meaningful destinations.
00:09:12:29 - 00:09:36:24
John Simmerman
So that therein lies a some of our challenges. Yeah. With that now, what's what's interesting to so so you go back into, into the, the Silicon Valley area, back into the Bay area and you start focusing in on, on this next project. What was the real inspiration that that got you kind of honed in on this concept?
00:09:36:24 - 00:09:50:23
John Simmerman
You alluded to it a little bit there in terms of wanting to to have a different living situation and be closer to meaningful people. But what was the real impetus? What was the spark that got you interested in doing Live Near Friends?
00:09:50:25 - 00:10:14:04
Phil Levin
Yeah. So the spark was really my own life experience. And so, my wife and I, you know, back back a while ago when we were sort of starting the date and talk about moving in together. I was thinking we would do the normal thing and, like, go get, like, a one bedroom apartment somewhere. Somewhere sort of near near the center of San Francisco, or, like, a little further away.
00:10:14:06 - 00:10:42:11
Phil Levin
But I shouldn't I should have no. And she's a behavioral scientist. So she she does not take the normal thing as the way to do things. She, she wants stayed informed by research. And she, she sort of came to me with a raft of research, which basically all had the same punchline, which essentially said something like, that, you know, very much our, our, our behavior is determined by the environment around us and specifically one element, the environment, which is the people around us.
00:10:42:14 - 00:11:02:04
Phil Levin
So it's like we are a product of our surroundings. We are a product of the people who make up our surroundings. And so she said, if we're going to live a great life, we're going to do it because we're in very close proximity to people that we love and inspire and support us. And that is going to be the like, central design principle of how we live.
00:11:02:06 - 00:11:27:07
Phil Levin
And so we since we've done this, we've ended up sort of having a couple of like living situations that we've created that sort of like, you know, a like that principle, but like, makes sense for whatever stage of life. Right now, we have a two year old daughter. A lot of our friends have sort of started to have kids, and, we, we live in a place called Radish in Oakland, which is sort of designed to be a great place to raise young kids with, with your friends.
00:11:27:09 - 00:11:44:08
Phil Levin
So we have we have, just to maybe, like, describe what it looks like. We have ten housing units, sort of very close to each other. We call them within baby monitor distance. Right. Which which is like, you know, the distance at which you can just take a baby monitor over your friend's house and leave your kid in your house and still get to them.
00:11:44:10 - 00:12:02:18
Phil Levin
So it's basically like that. No coordination, no babysitter distance. Which is really, really critical. We so it's like 19 of our friends, ten housing units, most of which have their private kitchen, private bathroom, and we now have five kids under the age of three. The sort of insight from this is like, oh, like, our life's really great because we did this.
00:12:02:20 - 00:12:18:01
Phil Levin
I started seeing just like lots of people. We started writing about this a bit, in a blog called Super Nuclear, which I can share the link for and, I would just have hundreds and maybe even thousands of people just reach out to me, be like, how did you do this? I want to do this in my own life.
00:12:18:03 - 00:12:39:12
Phil Levin
And what I realized is that it's what we pull off there is actually quite difficult. It took a lot of work. It took a lot of took a lot of resources, like most people probably wouldn't want to put in that sort of effort that we did. Right. But I'm sort of asking the question like, what's the like the 90% easier version of what we did that like most people can do in most situations.
00:12:39:14 - 00:13:00:24
Phil Levin
And can we create a company that helps people do that? And so live near friends was sort of born out of the like the idea that like, people really want this lifestyle, they don't want all the difficulty we went through to get it. So like, can we make as much easier on people? And I think there's like, there's like an analogy for this, which is, which is Airbnb.
00:13:00:26 - 00:13:22:04
Phil Levin
So like before Airbnb, if you want to stay in a stranger's house, like, think about what you'd have to, like, go through to make that happen. I mean, if you went to. Right, you'd have to, like, try to go find someone, reach out to them, like, negotiates some sort of thing, like navigate some, like, you know, a difficult, like, social, you know, questions and then maybe get to stay with them.
00:13:22:06 - 00:13:40:29
Phil Levin
Airbnb allowed you to pick like, just like pick that off the shelf as a product. And, and I think we want to do the same for housing. That is a good fit for living your friends and family. Yeah. And we call this proximity housing. And so I'm glad you brought up this slide. So this slide yeah.
00:13:41:01 - 00:14:03:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. And we'll describe this here for the listening audience too. We pulled up the slide of the five models for living near friends. And the first is what we call a mini hood. The second is the apartment cluster. The third is the duplex dream. And the fourth is an add on Adu. And the fifth is that friend compound.
00:14:03:17 - 00:14:09:00
John Simmerman
And it's that fifth that sounds the most like what you were describing your situation is.
00:14:09:02 - 00:14:29:02
Phil Levin
Exactly. Yeah. So I think we have the realization that, like we've done the fifth, it's great, quite hard to pull off. So we're like, what are easier ways of doing this? I get a lot of the same benefit. And so we come up with basically four other models for how you do that, which we think are like very achievable for a lot of people in a lot of different types of like urban, urban and suburban environments.
00:14:29:05 - 00:14:49:16
Phil Levin
So here sort of form factors that we think work utilizing existing housing stock that exists in most places, to create a living situation that allows you to live in private spaces, but near friends and family. So this is not this is not like living in the same, like, you know, room as someone is going to apartment.
00:14:49:16 - 00:15:08:07
Phil Levin
This is this is like we each have our own private space where we're near each other rather than being near total strangers. We we have a couple models for this. So the first model is something we call the mini HUD. And what this is, is, is simply coordinating with your friends and family and sort of like taking a point on the map, drawing a circle around it.
00:15:08:10 - 00:15:25:24
Phil Levin
So we like to use like a ten minute walking radius circle, for, for reasons I like to do in a second. And you just tell all your friends and family, buy or rent your own home within the circle. Right? And that's like a relatively easy thing to do. You know, you don't you think like a real estate developer to pull that off.
00:15:25:26 - 00:15:49:02
Phil Levin
And so we've, we've created a product within your friends that makes it easy to coordinate this with your friends. We have a second model, coffee called the Apartment cluster, where you sort of, like, go to an apartment building that has a bunch of vacant units, and you say, like, hey, can we when we rent three of them from you all once, and that apartment buildings can be very excited about that proposition, right?
00:15:49:05 - 00:16:05:00
Phil Levin
Especially in a world right now where, like, apartment vacancies are pretty high. So, like, you know, John, I don't know if you've, like, looked at, you know, like a 5 or 1 is. Oh yeah. Yeah. So you probably, so 500 ones are like a, a name for sort of the building that if you don't know the name, you'll recognize it.
00:16:05:03 - 00:16:22:16
Phil Levin
It's like. It's like every new apartment building that's being built in every city around, around the US sort of looks the same way. There's like there's like retail at the bottom, and then there's five, five floors of housing above it. It usually has some like bright siding on it. So if you go to pretty much any one of these buildings, they're gonna have a bunch of vacant units.
00:16:22:16 - 00:16:38:01
Phil Levin
So you can go in, negotiate. The landlord and say, hey, two of my friends or family members on rent multiple units. It's great for them. It's great for you, and you have to live your friends in that way. So that's sort of a second model. You're showing a picture right now of some folks we know that that did this, and they basically actually bought a whole apartment building.
00:16:38:03 - 00:16:41:13
Phil Levin
And then they're with, with 16 of their friends and ten kids.
00:16:41:16 - 00:17:00:25
John Simmerman
Which is, which is a really interesting, you know, kind of twist to what you were just describing, which is, you know, search out, a commercially owned five over one and, and do that and here's, here's a good example of, you know, what our typical, model that, you know, this is what they kind of look like here.
00:17:00:27 - 00:17:15:07
John Simmerman
They might even have like, this one does have a little bit of, retail on the first floor. And then you know, and then obviously the residential, but that's pretty that's pretty wild that the friends went ahead and they're like, oh, let's just buy an entire complex. That's pretty cool.
00:17:15:09 - 00:17:18:07
Phil Levin
Yeah. And that's a pretty maximalist version of this. Yeah.
00:17:18:07 - 00:17:19:00
John Simmerman
Oh yeah. Totally.
00:17:19:01 - 00:17:32:20
Phil Levin
I think and I think if you just like if you have like your cousin who you're really like just moving them into the same apartment building as you is like a ton of benefit already. So I don't if people get put off by like the idea, you need to find like, 16 friends who want to do something.
00:17:32:22 - 00:17:47:16
Phil Levin
I, I think they sort of things, like, evolve over time. It's like in year one, your cousin moves in. In year two, your friend moves in, and year for two more people move in. And then, like, you look back five years later and you actually have something that looks like this. You need to do this all once.
00:17:47:18 - 00:18:05:24
John Simmerman
Yeah. And I think that's a really good point too, is, is is kind of keep it simple, in the sense that it doesn't have to be it's not an all or nothing. There's, there's like great options of this in terms of quote unquote, the level of intensity of how you go about it. This would be pretty intense.
00:18:05:26 - 00:18:13:08
John Simmerman
Fantastic. And then number three, of course, is what you have of of the the duplex dream.
00:18:13:10 - 00:18:34:19
Phil Levin
Yeah. Duplexes we think are underrated. So if you look at a city most cities right now, duplexes trade at a lower cost per square foot than equivalent single family homes. We think it should be the opposite. A duplex is a place that you can share and build a life with someone you like. It increases the value that you can bring.
00:18:34:22 - 00:18:50:24
Phil Levin
And so our goal as a company is to make duplexes more expensive than single family homes. You know, that's not the case today. But today, if you want to do this, a duplex is a great way to do this. And you can find them and basically all cities, more so now that like regulation is changing to allow for this is sort of missing a lot.
00:18:50:24 - 00:19:07:21
Phil Levin
So here's a case study in a couple folks in near Fort Collins, Colorado, who bought a duplex. They move it to the top unit. They moved their friends or, I think their sister into the bottom unit, to rent from them. And then they built a great life together. It's a very simple thing for for a lot of people.
00:19:07:23 - 00:19:20:05
Phil Levin
And it really does increase the quality of your life quite a bit. They also manage to actually rent the house next door to some other friends, so they're like, totally find more incrementally after it. But I sort of started with this duplex as the as the centerpiece.
00:19:20:07 - 00:19:48:12
John Simmerman
Yeah. This is interesting too, because we see in many cities, around North America, this push to try to, gradually thicken up the housing stock, make it legal once again to, to to build duplexes and triplexes. And, and so this is kind of leveraging that opportunity because that's, that's one of the, the interesting pushbacks that we get.
00:19:48:14 - 00:20:08:17
John Simmerman
Of course, is that it might seem a little bit creepy, you know, being in a duplex. And that's probably one of the challenges of selling the concept of a duplex is that by the time they're getting, you know, at that level of wanting to have a maybe a single family home is, you know, they're I'm done with apartment life, etc..
00:20:08:17 - 00:20:29:25
John Simmerman
I don't I'm tired of living next to people that I don't like and they're rude, you know, etc.. And so this sort of makes it more palatable to be, you know, in a situation where, you know, heck, yeah, you know, you still have your separate space. You're not like you mentioned earlier, it's not like you're sharing a house.
00:20:30:00 - 00:20:47:03
John Simmerman
It's not like you're sharing a bathroom. It's like you're close, but you're separate and it gives you that opportunity to, you know, maybe share it, a single lot, you know, or, you know, a duplex in a type of situation with a lifelong friend.
00:20:47:05 - 00:21:09:10
Phil Levin
And I'll tell you, I'll tell you two ways that, like, this sort of setup has actually benefited my own life of illustrates. So, I mentioned the baby monitor distance thing. I got it, I have a two year old, and I think the experience of most parents who have a kid that age is they sort of can't leave the house because, like, you go to bed at like seven and you're stuck, you can't go anywhere.
00:21:09:10 - 00:21:30:26
Phil Levin
You have to, like, be around in case the kid wakes up or does something. And my experience is I text all my neighbors at 655 and I say year round tonight and they say yes. And I say, watch the baby monitor. And then without any planning, without any coordination, without any babysitters, without any babysitting costs, I can I can just leave.
00:21:30:29 - 00:21:49:16
Phil Levin
I can go out my wife, I can can go get see friends in the city. And so, like, this is the sort of thing that, like a duplex with a friend or family man next door, like, just, like, radically improves the quality of her life. Especially now to a kid having age. The other example is, you know, most of these buildings come with backyards.
00:21:49:18 - 00:22:08:20
Phil Levin
The things you can do with a backyard, with two people investing their time and energy money into it versus versus one that is really different. So like, you know, you can have that like fancy hot tub, you can maintain that garden like you're you're actually you're like life in this like shared space which actually gets used not that many hours of the year, to be quite honest.
00:22:08:22 - 00:22:12:00
Phil Levin
Like, I don't know if you've ever seen those like, studies about where people spend time in their homes.
00:22:12:02 - 00:22:13:08
John Simmerman
Right, right.
00:22:13:10 - 00:22:41:17
Phil Levin
Yeah. So, you know, I have a lot of, like, conflicted views. But you can, you can, you can have some. It's actually quite luxurious, for sort of 50% off time and effort and money, versus not I think, I think the duplex is a great set up. And, you know, our fourth model is adding an Adu, which is essentially just creating a duplex by building another building, more or less, and, you know, I think, I think people have been hesitant to be able to get used for strangers in the backyard because they're like, I don't know if I want some random stranger in my backyard walking through my yard every
00:22:41:17 - 00:23:03:27
Phil Levin
day. But I think it's a very natural thing to do for a friend or family member. I will give a bit of a shout out to, damp Relic who's actually, cul de sacs main architect. He's coined the term missing middle housing, which is something he's sort of worked on for like a decade or more, which is like, you know, getting cities to allow you to build this, like, gentle density of two, three, four units, on a lot.
00:23:04:00 - 00:23:16:26
Phil Levin
So, no, not skyscrapers, not single family homes, but the in-between things. And I think these, these sort of like forms of housing, which are more and more legal in cities every day, are going to enable these sort of living situations. That would have been harder earlier.
00:23:16:29 - 00:23:49:10
John Simmerman
Right? Yeah. And that's as I alluded to earlier, is that we're seeing this, push by cities across the country and really around the world to try to allow, the opportunity to to thicken up the housing stock and create some gentle, gentle density. And that's one of the things that, you know, they're trying to, you know, allow is make it easier to build these, you know, granny flats and accessory dwelling units and being able to make that legal.
00:23:49:10 - 00:24:29:09
John Simmerman
Again, I know in California, they've had a push, for being able to convert, garages, be able to make it. And really the part of the the key thing here, too, is it's much of these, these opportunities to add additional housing has been just mired in, you know, legal challenges and funding challenges. And so making it easier from a city perspective and maybe even a state perspective from a legislative and a policy perspective, so that people can affordably be able to add an accessory dwelling unit.
00:24:29:12 - 00:24:57:07
John Simmerman
I think is is really, really important because right now, when, when we've like looked at the opportunity here in, in, in Austin to do it in our backyard, it's, it's like the cost of pulling those permits and doing all that work. It just doesn't ever pencil out. But if we but cities can actually help themselves with this by changing some of their land use codes, making it easier to be able to do it, streamlining the process.
00:24:57:10 - 00:25:11:17
John Simmerman
And if if memory serves me correctly, California's done a lot of things to try to make that a lot easier, which makes this a possibility a much more viable possibility, a much more affordable possibility.
00:25:11:20 - 00:25:30:01
Phil Levin
Yeah. And actually, you're on the perfect slide for that point. So we built one of these in California. So what you're seeing in this slide, is a is an accessory dwelling unit we built in our yard in Oakland for our friends to live with us. So this is Carmen Osmond, and they're in their baby.
00:25:30:03 - 00:25:50:23
Phil Levin
And, they got to basically design their own home. And so, and I think when people think about these, they often think about, like, the garage conversion, which is certainly a nice form factor and is very inexpensive. But you can actually build, like reasonably sizable homes for people under these laws. So this is a two bedroom, two bath standalone house.
00:25:50:25 - 00:26:10:06
Phil Levin
This is like, as nice as whatever single family home. And everyone got built for themselves by for themselves and like, you know, tremendous props to California, for making this happen. We we got this permit for this in 40 days after applying, which I think, you know, before this happened, that would have been like a three year, you know, software fest together.
00:26:10:08 - 00:26:18:26
Phil Levin
And so we were able to like, you know, get permit relatively easy to build this. There's still a lot of kinks and work out in the system. I don't want to get too rosy in a picture. It was, we we did.
00:26:18:27 - 00:26:46:22
John Simmerman
I, I I'm I'm I'm looking at this going 40 days. I don't know if you have read the new book, by Chuck Marone, housing trap. But he addresses that in the book. And one of the things that he talks about is, you know, cities, you know, can help this along. They can help, you know, make more housing become more affordable by streamlining the processes, which is just what you said.
00:26:46:24 - 00:27:14:04
John Simmerman
And the way he frames it in the book is, you know, you should be able to walk in in the morning with, you know, your plans and with your paperwork filled out, and then walk out with the permit, you know, after after that afternoon or whatever. I mean, it's essentially instantaneous, as long as you are not, like, completely, you know, doing something that is out of the ordinary, it should not be, you know, something that is so onerous.
00:27:14:07 - 00:27:21:03
John Simmerman
I guess 40 days is great if, you know, before it was 400 days, but still, it's a long way from being streamlined.
00:27:21:06 - 00:27:33:04
Phil Levin
I think, I want to live in a world where you upload your plans and instantly to the computer just evaluation and says, doesn't need the rules or not. Yeah, exactly. On the spot.
00:27:33:06 - 00:27:34:00
John Simmerman
Exactly.
00:27:34:03 - 00:27:42:02
Phil Levin
Exactly where I think we're pretty far from that, but, yeah, but it it's, it's the I don't think it's anything really standing in the way of that aside from the desire to do it.
00:27:42:05 - 00:28:14:00
John Simmerman
Yeah. Now we're back at it at the form factor number five, the friend compound. And this really reminds me of, the pocket neighborhood, type of, of context. It also harkens back to, the apartment courts that were, really popularized in Southern California in, down in the Los Angeles and Pasadena area, around the 1930s and 1940s and into the 50s.
00:28:14:02 - 00:28:36:26
John Simmerman
I just had the opportunity to chat with Ross Chapman a couple days ago, at the Congress for New Urbanism and Cincinnati. And I've had the opportunity to film and profile some of his pocket neighborhoods. This really reminds me a lot of of that. And we talk about in my video with him about the levels of sociability that is reinforced.
00:28:36:28 - 00:29:01:05
John Simmerman
And I get I get the, the idea that this is exactly what you're talking about is, you know, having that, that type of opportunity to, make your living situation much richer and much more fulfilling and again, still being able to have separateness, but actually but also being together within a neighborhood or within a community.
00:29:01:08 - 00:29:19:17
Phil Levin
Yeah. That's right. Yeah, I think, I think, I think you're right to analogize this to a, to a cottage courtyard or a neighborhood. I think, I think they're, I think they're speaking to the same thing. We call a friend cop out just because, you know, in our version, it's it's occupied by your friends. But I think I think the architectural factor is, is basically the same.
00:29:19:19 - 00:29:37:10
Phil Levin
Yeah. So radish is my home. It's where I live with my wife, my kid, and, 19 of our friends and their kids, and we, we, we sort of built it for them. And together with them, it's actually, it's actually co-owned by by 23 people. And, and an LLC, there's a whole financial structure to it.
00:29:37:18 - 00:30:00:24
Phil Levin
It's a complicated thing. And like, we we like we enjoy this because we're, we're geeks and we, we enjoy things like this. I think it's a I think, I think there's a lot of people that, like, want to do this and have the energy to, the other the other models we talked about earlier, I think are more approachable by most people and most places where this is more of a, hey, this is more of a like, a enthusiast.
00:30:00:27 - 00:30:09:22
Phil Levin
And so I start a project to take on, but when you can pull it off, it's, it's really fantastic. And, and our life, our life there has been really has been really great because of it.
00:30:09:24 - 00:30:34:29
John Simmerman
Yeah. And and going back to even to cul de sac. What really I think helped make that possible. And Ryan and I talked about this in the interview, is that they were able to work with the city to have a relaxation of parking minimums. And this is the same thing that comes up when I think about this.
00:30:34:29 - 00:30:55:22
John Simmerman
It's the same thing that I think of, when it comes to the most recent, you know, policy change that happened here in Austin just last week when the City council, made it legal for every single family, you know, or the minimum lot size for a single family dwelling is now something like 1800 feet and so huge.
00:30:55:22 - 00:31:27:05
John Simmerman
I mean, essentially, that means almost every single current single family lot could be, you know, three households instead of just one. And the number one thing that people start freaking out about within the neighborhoods, the Nimby is, is, oh my gosh, the cars in the, in Detroit. And, and, and it's imperative that there is that thoughtfulness of trying to decouple parking minimums from doing these types of things.
00:31:27:08 - 00:31:56:03
John Simmerman
Because it doesn't pencil out, you know, and cul de sac would not have penciled out to the same level of richness, you know, and that was one of the, you know, the quotes that, you know, that Ryan had is we have all this, all this sociable space because we didn't have to provide parking. I look at this, I look at radish and say, yeah, this wouldn't pencil out if you had to have X number of parking units per every, every dwelling in most cases.
00:31:56:05 - 00:32:01:17
John Simmerman
And, and if you did, what a waste. Because then that would be a whole lot of wasted space.
00:32:01:20 - 00:32:11:10
Phil Levin
Absolutely. Yeah. You know, we were talking earlier, John, about like the, the sort of societal costs of, you know, you know, everyone owning their own car.
00:32:11:12 - 00:32:12:03
John Simmerman
Yeah.
00:32:12:06 - 00:32:29:27
Phil Levin
I know one that extra Chronicles that talks about a lot is, is that, you know, for every for every car, there's actually four parking spaces allocated to it. And a lot of the reason for that is we have these parking minimums, which essentially mandate that that parking spaces are built, whether or not there's anyone there to use now.
00:32:29:29 - 00:32:50:07
Phil Levin
And the way this sort of appears as a cost in your life is this increases the cost of, of, of housing and increases the cost of retail. And it ends up in the cost of your goods, too, because that shopping center has to build parking more than they need because, you know, they're they're mandated to and they can't respond to the actual demand for parking you.
00:32:50:08 - 00:33:19:03
Phil Levin
But I think at the end of the day, like we as a society do like grapple with with tradeoffs. And in places with scarce land, which we have scarce animosity, we need to basically ask ourselves, like, you know, are we are we in deeper need of more parking, or are we deeper need in more housing? And I think the pendulum has swung so far to us being in deep need and more housing, asking the fine by the just extravagant like rise in housing prices the last couple decades.
00:33:19:05 - 00:33:39:12
Phil Levin
And, and I think we need to like, reevaluate this sort of like mandated use of land for parking, especially in urban areas. Even just like letting housing be built is step one, you know, and like but the the opposite of mandated parking would be mandated housing we're not even gonna talk about. But even just allowing housing I think is like is is maybe a pretty reasonable first step.
00:33:39:14 - 00:34:05:22
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So let's pop back on over to the website and talk a little bit about how people can interface with, live near friends, all that. You just kind of, you know, riff on it as I kind of scroll down. So when somebody lands here at, live near friends, I know that you do have a blog and people can sign up, you know, and get, you know, posts when you guys do your posts as well.
00:34:05:25 - 00:34:09:18
John Simmerman
But go ahead and walk us through what happens when they interact with the site.
00:34:09:21 - 00:34:26:04
Phil Levin
Yeah. Sure thing. So, so right now we built live near friends to, sort of allow you to organize around one of those models we talked about earlier, which is the mini model. You know, the the cup is only six months old, and we're we're still developing some of the, some of the other product lines right now.
00:34:26:07 - 00:34:45:25
Phil Levin
So we plan to have more stuff around apartment clusters and duplexes soon. But right now we're focused on this, on this mini HUD. And so what the tool is, is, is a coordination and search tool that is a multiplayer tool rather than a single player tool. So, so right now, if you search for housing on any of the sites, you might go to search for housing.
00:34:45:28 - 00:35:13:29
Phil Levin
It's it's trying to optimize for your individual needs just for yourself with no with no reference to any of the people that you might be wanting to live around. And so we turn this into a coordination game, where, you know, one person is going to sort of put a stake in the ground and say like, hey guys, let's all try to move near into this neighborhood, and then you can invite your friends, and you and your friends kind of can search for housing together in the neighborhood.
00:35:14:02 - 00:35:24:01
Phil Levin
You can favorite homes, comment on homes, share the homes. It's sort of like a it's a social network on top of, on top of a listing site. It's sort of like a group chat on top of this. That is maybe a better way. But yeah.
00:35:24:01 - 00:35:35:10
John Simmerman
I'm, I'm that's exactly what I'm looking at right now is it looks like you see all the little icons there of the, the initials, BFFs and so. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm with.
00:35:35:10 - 00:35:57:08
Phil Levin
You. And so, you know, you think about, like, you know, if you had a typical listing site, like, you know, I think and my, my wife, who's a behavioral scientist, talks about this a lot, like, I think like our, our, our like choice architecture is really important. Right. And so like the choice architecture of Redfin, Zillow, whatever Realtor.com is like how big of a yard was the bathroom tile like how many square feet?
00:35:57:10 - 00:36:11:16
Phil Levin
And it turns out now that's not actually makes us happy like none of the research shows it does. But this is the frame of decision making they put you in. And so we're trying to put people into a different frame of decision making, which is, which is let's start with you. Let's start with the important people, our life.
00:36:11:18 - 00:36:29:15
Phil Levin
Who do you want to be around? And then let's pick a place, and then let's search for our individual homes that we can rent or buy. Because people, people have different needs within a friend or family group, within a neighborhood. And we try to provide, statistics to help you understand, like, is this neighborhood a good fit for my friend group?
00:36:29:22 - 00:36:46:21
Phil Levin
Like, does it have the right price stuff? Is there enough availability for the people? Like how many homes come available per month, you know, within a ten minute walk in this location? So we're focused on like a different set of metrics, sort of optimize for creating this mini herd of your friends and family members that are you.
00:36:46:24 - 00:37:11:15
John Simmerman
I love it, I love it, it's so fascinating too. You mentioned your wife a couple of different times and the, you know, the behavioral side of things. It's very much a part of my background as a behavioral sciences. And my area of emphasis was health care behavior and really looking at health promotion and how we can create environments which encourage healthy, active lifestyles.
00:37:11:18 - 00:37:38:10
John Simmerman
Hence, Active Towns is the name of the, the channel here. And so I really look at, our communities, designing our communities that give us the opportunity to live that healthy, active lifestyle. But it's also important to that we we have that sense of sociability that comes with it. And I had an Sussman on, a couple of years ago.
00:37:38:12 - 00:38:05:11
John Simmerman
She's the author, along with Justin Hollander of the book Cognitive Architecture and looking at how architecture and how we, you know, from a behavioral standpoint, we as humans, relate to our surroundings and our, our, our environments. And we they hone in a lot on, you know, the architecture of buildings and how, how the human body relates to that.
00:38:05:13 - 00:38:34:24
John Simmerman
And, you know, going back to what we were talking about earlier with the clusters and the and the and the, the pocket neighborhoods, one of the things that Ross does a really good job on with the with the architecture in the design is creating design that is sociable just by the way it is created with the front porches and with the, the, the different layers of, of of interaction and privacy that goes with that.
00:38:34:27 - 00:38:56:28
John Simmerman
And so as you're mentioning this, I'm like, oh yeah, I mean, there's so many different layers that we need to think about for this to, you know, really fire on all cylinders. And I can totally see how your little, you know, friends who that you have put together, is, is just you know, got to be just so delightful on so many different levels.
00:38:57:00 - 00:39:05:05
John Simmerman
What from your experience to people need to, like, think about so that the whole thing doesn't blow up in their faces.
00:39:05:08 - 00:39:07:15
Phil Levin
You mean after everyone's moved in?
00:39:07:17 - 00:39:29:05
John Simmerman
Well, yeah. And you know, the concept of even getting to that point, because I'm imagining there there could be some drama even getting there. So I'm sure you guys have some experience now, of because you're living through this, of how to navigate through because, you know, even amongst friends, sometimes you can have some challenges.
00:39:29:07 - 00:39:58:02
Phil Levin
And this is true. So there's sort of a common success factor we see in every example this that we see working. That is there's usually a personality that we like to call the instigator, who's like who's like the person who pulls it together and, and every friend group and family knows who this person is. It's like, it's like the person that organizes the ski trip or like the person who organizes, like the bachelor party or like whatever the thing is, it's like it's like the organizer of the friend group.
00:39:58:04 - 00:40:23:08
Phil Levin
Typically what we see is like, that person is is like planning the flag and saying like, hey guys, let's do this. And maybe they're a little persistent, maybe they're a little annoying, like, you know, but like, they're the ones that actually make things like this happen. And, and so what we usually don't see is like seven people all come together at the same time and try to like, co negotiate something that actually doesn't work very well.
00:40:23:10 - 00:40:48:24
Phil Levin
It's hard to come to consensus on anything. Usually we see like one person is like guys let's make it happen here. Who's here? And people either follow them or don't follow them. And so I would, if you think you are this personality and I suspect John, many of your listeners are probably it's personality. I would encourage you to think about yourself as the instigator for creating, like, you know, the best set up of, like, life you can have for the people you care about.
00:40:48:27 - 00:40:54:25
Phil Levin
And I think of it, this is like a gift that you can give to the people, that people that you love.
00:40:54:28 - 00:41:16:10
John Simmerman
I love it. That's really, really wise too, because the the example you gave was like the ski trip. Yeah, the friends ski trip. And it's like, yeah, there always is that one person, that instigator that's like, oh yeah, we're totally going to do this. And and by the way, I've already done the research. I've got this, you know, figured out we're going to, you know, go to Vail this year and that ended it.
00:41:16:12 - 00:41:50:27
John Simmerman
And it's like then everybody, you know, falls in line and follows and gets going, to close this out, talk a little bit about what you imagine the organization doing and being to help facilitate more of this being a feasible option. I had this discussion with was Ryan about, you know, cul de sac and how they really were very you all were very intentional about working with the city to ensure that the project could be set up for success.
00:41:50:27 - 00:42:14:10
John Simmerman
You had the transit stop there. You're working on trying to make some, some safer, bike facilities, a reality there to connect to the Tempe marketplace. What do you imagine your organization, this organization doing to help, you know, grease the skids? A little bit and maybe encourage, some policy change we mentioned, you know, land use, stuff.
00:42:14:10 - 00:42:21:11
John Simmerman
We mentioned parking minimums. Talk a little bit, to to that. And that'll be a good way to bring this all to a close.
00:42:21:13 - 00:42:39:08
Phil Levin
Yeah. So I think that I think the main response we need to see is actually is actually from the people that actually build housing, and so right now the incentives are such that if you have a piece of land, you're like, I'm going to go build something. You know, you're probably building like a single family tract home.
00:42:39:10 - 00:43:05:09
Phil Levin
So like that and, you know, the our built environment is not determined by like a few people in a room. It's determined by like, you know, it's an incredibly fragmented industry with like hundreds of players in every market. No one has more than even like a 1% market share. I think I may be wrong about that, but like, it's it's extremely fragmented as as these things out and to to to get to change what you need to see is you need to change the incentive structure for all these small players.
00:43:05:11 - 00:43:24:29
Phil Levin
And, and I think there's an analogy for a company that has done this recently, which is Airbnb. And so, you know, Airbnb, started by sort of like, you know, saying like, hey, let's have people like rent out their extra bedroom and they're extra the problem when they're not there. It's actually now an Airbnb is today Airbnb.
00:43:24:29 - 00:43:51:01
Phil Levin
But today Airbnb today is like mostly like professional, owners, professional developers building purpose built Airbnb units and professional managers renting them out to people on Airbnb. So they've gone through this like evolution and, they've been so successful on this that like, you know, the whole industry is now building real estate differently to like to, like, serve the Airbnb audience.
00:43:51:04 - 00:44:18:08
Phil Levin
So much so that like regulation is coming on to like, prevent them from doing that. That's how that's how successful you've been. And so what I want to provoke is a like supply side response to by proving that there's a huge demand for people that want to live near friends and family, and having developers build for that demand in the same way that Airbnb proved there is a latent demand for short term rentals, that that allowed a developer to like, build for that, for that demand.
00:44:18:10 - 00:44:39:19
Phil Levin
And so I want to get like as many people searching to live your friends on our platform as possible. And then if you're a developer and city, you can look and say, oh, man, there's like there's like a thousand people that want to live in a like three person setup on a piece of land. I'm going to build that for now, and we want to be the platform that trends actually can easily take place, to, to make that easier for both the buyer and the seller.
00:44:39:22 - 00:44:57:09
Phil Levin
So that's what the eventual goal is that provoke like a different response from all the entities that actually make the city where they are. Who are these like small players who just everyday go out and build things? And today they're building lasting family homes, and tomorrow we want them building the cottage courtyards, out of this world.
00:44:57:09 - 00:44:58:23
Phil Levin
Instead.
00:44:58:26 - 00:45:33:12
John Simmerman
And what's interesting, too, is that one of the, one of the biggest challenges about what we're getting today is that the the financial you mentioned the incentives, the financial incentives of, what we're getting is a product, in it's primarily two main products, really, that we're, we're getting in in abundance. And that's the single family homes. And as you mentioned earlier, the five over ones, those are the two financial, essentially the they have become financial products in and of themselves because you can get easy money to do it.
00:45:33:20 - 00:45:58:28
John Simmerman
You can, you know, not only can you get easy money to build it, you can also get easy money to buy it. And then that, you know, ultimately is a financial product in and of itself because then your mortgages is, is sold off and etc.. So it's it's really the game is right now structured in such a way that that is very much, fundable.
00:45:59:00 - 00:46:18:07
John Simmerman
It sounds like one of the biggest challenges that we have is creating, a better game, you know, a better system, so that if you want to have a five unit cluster, how how many, how many acres is is your place where you guys are with your cluster?
00:46:18:10 - 00:46:19:20
Phil Levin
So it's about a half an acre.
00:46:19:23 - 00:46:32:07
John Simmerman
Okay, so it's a half an acre. So it's it's certainly much larger than your typical single family lot. What's the origins of that? Did you like cobble that together or was it already a cluster?
00:46:32:09 - 00:46:43:03
Phil Levin
Yeah. We, we bought we bought a lot with two, two buildings on it. We built two more buildings and we, were able to acquire two neighboring properties. Coincidentally.
00:46:43:06 - 00:47:06:27
John Simmerman
Yeah. So you, you, you cobbled together in terms of, you know, piecing that together. And I think that that's very, very doable. And I guess that would be one of my, my, my hopes is that as this catches on and I think it will catch on because I think there's a lot of very, very attractive incentives to being able to create a more sociable living environment.
00:47:06:27 - 00:47:26:21
John Simmerman
And within that, hopefully we can help guide many of these communities to make it legal to do this, make it easier to do this. And that's what we were talking about earlier, is let's let's streamline the process so that it's not taking somebody 40 days just to get a simple permit for an Adu time.
00:47:26:23 - 00:47:45:04
Phil Levin
And John, I think you're absolutely right about like, why the things that we're seeing and built are getting built. It's like, you know, if, if in column A, you have the thing that has like, you know, zoning certainty and financing certainty and it can't be you have a thing with zoning uncertainty and financing uncertainty, like, which one are you going to build?
00:47:45:07 - 00:47:46:23
John Simmerman
Right. Yeah.
00:47:46:25 - 00:47:59:18
Phil Levin
Yeah. I think this is a general challenge is like, how do we build and experiment with new kinds of housing product? When like the, the like risk premium to doing is quite high.
00:47:59:20 - 00:48:00:11
John Simmerman
Right.
00:48:00:14 - 00:48:19:00
Phil Levin
You get you you get punished for new ideas by the market, you get punished by the planning authorities, you get punished by that, that other people that finance these things essentially, for for doing that and I think, I think we need like a, I think we need a system where we can have a framework of experimentation. Right.
00:48:19:03 - 00:48:33:19
Phil Levin
That we don't right now in the real sanitary. And so in the tech industry, we've got this, you know, so like, you know, there's a there's a whole system where you can, like, start a startup. And it's quite easy to start a startup. Like, you know, they will roll out the red carpet for you to start a company.
00:48:33:19 - 00:48:55:25
Phil Levin
There's only services. They have to do it. There's accelerators and whatever. We don't really have the equivalent in the real factory. And so everything will push against you rather than to try to help you do it. And I think we'd see a lot more innovation in the space if, if cities would see value in basically experimentation on a small scale and like, they, they know, like one development is going to destroy your city.
00:48:55:28 - 00:49:17:05
Phil Levin
I think we should be more willing to see, like, one thing happen and then just just to see just to see how it goes and like, learn from that. And, and experimentation is how we is, how we make progress. And I think the same goes on the findings and so on, things like, you know, it's like we we can't know we can't know the underlying data on something if we haven't tried to underwrite it before.
00:49:17:08 - 00:49:19:21
Phil Levin
So like we, I think, I think we just need data points out there on things.
00:49:19:25 - 00:49:37:25
John Simmerman
Yeah. Yeah. And that would be my call to action is, you know, for anybody tuning in, watching this or listening to this, if you are at all, within city governments and in have the ability to to start influencing some of these policies that are in place, for, for land use and, yeah, we need more housing.
00:49:37:25 - 00:50:08:07
John Simmerman
We desperately need more housing. We may need to make it easier, to build that housing from a financing standpoint, from a permitting standpoint and the opportunity to, densify and thicken up our housing stock within meaningful walking and biking distances to other meaningful destinations, including your friend's place. Is good for active towns. And I am absolutely delighted to have had this opportunity to, you know, promote this and, chat with you here to today.
00:50:08:07 - 00:50:12:01
John Simmerman
Phil, thank you so much for joining me on the Active Towns podcast.
00:50:12:04 - 00:50:14:19
Phil Levin
John. Thank you. Thanks for the work you do. This has been really fun.
00:50:14:21 - 00:50:31:01
John Simmerman
Hey everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed this episode with Phil Levin from Live Near Friends, and if you did, please give it a thumbs up. Leave a comment down below and share it with a friend. And if you haven't done so already, be honored to have you subscribed to the channel. Just click on that subscription button down below and bring the notifications bell.
00:50:31:07 - 00:50:48:18
John Simmerman
And if you're enjoying this content I'm creating here on the Active Towns podcast, please consider supporting my efforts by becoming an Active Towns Ambassador. It's easy to do. Just head on over to the website Active Towns Dawg and click on the support button. Again, thank you so much for tuning in. It really means so much to me.
00:50:48:21 - 00:51:12:08
John Simmerman
And until next time, this is John signing off by wishing you much activity, health and happiness. Cheers! And again, sending a huge thank you out to all my Active Towns Ambassadors supporting the channel on Patreon. Buy me a coffee YouTube. Super! Thanks! As well as making contributions to the nonprofit and purchasing things from the Active Town Store, every little bit adds up and it's much appreciated.
00:51:12:11 - 00:51:13:18
John Simmerman
Thank you all so much!