Important 5L’s Of Housing, Scary home prices For People Modern Rustic Homes

Welcome to the creating shelter Podcast. I’m David Grubb and I have with me today, Michael Grant, our host. And today we are talking about housing and the 5L’s, lumber, labor, land, loans, and legislation, with Michael, to give you a little background. Why are you so passionate about housing?







Why are you so passionate about housing?







Michael Grant 0:16Well, first of all, David, it’s good to see you again. And I’m glad to have this conversation. You know, my passion for housing goes way back to my childhood. My father was a homebuilder, literally, he’s the guy that swung the hammer and used the hand saw, but he was also just a splendid craftsman, and he loved doing it. And I immediately had a great appreciation for what he did. And in fact, he built a house for my mother, which my family lived in for better than 40 years.







So I got to see the results of his labor firsthand. And I’ve always appreciated that, that we had that home to live in and the fact that my dad was involved in building. But beyond that, I’ve always had a passion for the scale of housing, there’s a human scale that all housing has. And it reflects many ways how we live, there are a lot of other influences that go into how the house is designed and ultimately built.







But it just relates to how we live and whether we’re living in a particular climate, or we have a particularly given lifestyle, whatever it is that your house ultimately ends up reflecting who you are. And I’ve always appreciated that. And it’s something that has never left me, so I relate to that scale of housing quite well.







At what age did you start helping your dad and what did that look like?







David Grubb 1:40You told the story before about how you’d go around and pick up the nails. So you started at a young age actually helping your dad?







Michael Grant 1:49Yes, I was 5 years old and my job on a late afternoon is I would go to the job site when my dad and I would pick up the nails the other carpenters had thrown down. And I’d organize them put a rubber band around them and hand them to my dad. So he had a fresh supply of nails for him to use as he was framing that next day. And my reward for it was collecting the coke bottles and taking them to Piggly Wiggly and turning them in for that two-cent deposit. So that’s how I got paid.







David Grubb 2:26Good. So you’re both an entrepreneur and a helper at a young age.







Michael Grant 2:31And that has not escaped me over the years.







What are the 5 L’s and how do people perceive them?







David Grubb 2:35So you recently talked at a builder Association meeting about the five L’s. And, you know, let’s just share with our audience real quick what those are. So those are lumber, labor, lots of legislation, and loans. And but kind of tell us how that meeting went? And how that was received?







Michael Grant 2:58Well, I think, first of all, I think as I presented it to the builder Association, and it wasn’t just the builders, it was a lot of our associate members, people who are in the business of supplying either materials or services to the construction industries. So that they had ownership and the five L’s as well.







And I kind of the five bills was really kind of the genesis, the genesis of the five L’s came from an article I had read a couple of years ago, put out by the National Home Builders Association. And at the time, they called it the three L’s, and those were lumber, labor, and lots and it did not quite feel complete to me.