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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.

Michael Grant 0:00Who’s the villain in the homeowner’s story? Well, it’s many. The first one is the lack of affordable housing. Secondly, restrictive zoning prevents a variety of housing types. restored or just restrictive zoning. Okay, we talked about that.







David Grubb 0:25Industry Professionals, no training.







Michael Grant 0:28Well, that is a problem. Lack of, of construction labor, of lack of trained or quality construction labor, to say you got codes as it relates to land use, I’m not talking about that I’m talking about codes as it relates to building system fordable pricing, qualifying for a house loan qualification to be able to create a mortgage. Proximity to work is an issue.







David Grubb 1:02Well, maybe the internet will take care of some of that, but







Michael Grant 1:05Well, it has taken care of a good bit of it. Another problem that directly impacts. Homeownership is the inability to qualify for a loan. And when you have too many roadblocks, you can often give up so makes them feel frustrated, feel and defeated. That is totally unnecessary. The globalist movement to have everyone. There’s a global smoothing that says you will own nothing, and nothing and you will be happy. I think that’s bullshit.







Okay, the great wealth created in the United States was hugely the consequence of stability, stability within our family structure, and stability for our basic needs for shelter, food, and safety, those things. And that was, housing was a huge part of that story.







That’s why when the GI bill was introduced to help these men and women returning from World War Two, to get into the housing that they could afford, was a huge benefit term to our overall GDP and financial growth of our country. There are lots of things that went on there.







Those look at when it’s we started to see a decline. The decline started in the 60s when our federal policies and legislation began to destroy the family as a consequence of entitlement programs, when the father was was the family was incentivized for the father to leave shirt when a woman could make more money or get more money from the government because she didn’t have a man of the house.







Therefore, he was not around. When I was with the big brother program, I had a little brother named Stevie, and Stevie’s mother Stevie’s dad was not present and his life for that reason they lived in government housing. And if she worked in an effort to better herself and her inner children, then her subsidies would be cut out.







So when she what she did to work was under the table she did worse rest, waitress work, cleaning houses doing things that were she wasn’t reporting and taxes and also plan. And then Stevie had brothers and sisters with different dads. And so no man was a permanent fixture in his life. As far as the parchment involved with the big brother program.







David Grubb 4:26One thing is the American dream, don’t have your own home. You know, so does that diminish the American Dream that future Americans may not be able to afford or get or have?







Michael Grant 4:42Well, you’re, you either are an owner or you’re a renter. And when you are a renter, the benefit of that is the owner is responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of that of your house and Unless, of course, you’re responsible for its destruction.







And at that point, you know that the need can get yourself in trouble. But your landlord wants you there because he’s making money off of you. Now, if you buy your own house, and you pay for it in a timely fashion,