NeighborWorks America’s podcast, The Community Effect, dropped this week with a focus on technology and housing innovations. Ernest Coney Jr., CEO of CDC of Tampa and Nick Mitchell-Bennet, executive director of come dream, come build, join NeighborWorks President & CEO Marietta Rodriguez to take a deep dive into the issue. The podcast can be found here, and the transcript is below.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Welcome to the Community Effect, a NeighborWorks America podcast. I'm your host, Marietta Rodriguez. At NeighborWorks® America, we believe innovation isn't only about new technology. It's about solving real challenges in the places that people call home. Across the country, NeighborWorks organizations are re-imagining how affordable homes are built and who gets to build them.
In this episode, Building the Future, How Innovation is Expanding What's Possible in Affordable Housing, we explore two groundbreaking approaches that are reshaping the future of housing. Joining me today are Nick Mitchell-Bennett, executive director of Come Dream Come Build or CDCB in Brownsville, Texas, and Ernest Coney Jr., CEO of CDC of Tampa in Florida. Nick and Ernest are transforming housing in their communities, proving that affordable homes can be high quality, resilient, and built faster than ever before. Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today on the Community Effect.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Excited to be here.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Thanks, Marietta. Looking forward to it.
Marietta Rodriguez: This is going to be a great conversation. You've both dedicated your careers to creating opportunities through housing. I want to hear about what first inspired you to get into this work and what keeps you motivated? Nick, I'll start with you – your organization's name, come dream, come build, feels more like a mission statement more than a title. So what does that phrase mean to you personally? And, and how does it reflect Brownsville and what brought you to the work?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Community Development Corporation of Brownsville has, kind of been here forever – for 50 years now. And we just felt that being able to change our name to come dream come build was really what we were doing.
And we're just so proud to be able to have our mission in that name. And it's a dream about everything.
It's a dream about everything that we do. Whether it's you just need to place to rent, or you're going to go to our YouthBuild school or you want to buy a house. It's all about dreaming. That's the first step that we all take, right? And then let's build it, whether it be a financing product or a house or an education.
Marietta Rodriguez: And Nick, what brought you to this work originally?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: I graduated with a political science degree, and so I joined an organization called the Mennonite Voluntary Service, and they assigned me to Brownsville. Brownsville was at the time one of the poor cities in the United States and I got building houses in the colonias and it was probably one of the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life. I made a dollar a day. But I didn't care, you know? It was just an amazing thing to work alongside the people that I shop with, I go to church with you know, and I just couldn't get enough of it. So, I ended up staying, I've been here almost 32 years now. It's home.
Marietta Rodriguez: It's an amazing commitment to that community.
Thank you. What about you, Ernest? What brings you and fuels you?
Ernest Coney Jr.: For those who know my mother, Chloe Coney, was the founder and first CEO of the CDC of Tampa, and she used to take me around the nation to these best practices, learning things, engaging the community. And my father was the person who helped build the first inner city YMCA in Tampa.
It's one of the most productive and really strong organizations in Tampa today. So I was getting this first-class education in community and economic development while I thought I was going to build a career somewhere else. But it really helped me when I had the burden to come back to see the same things that I went through and to be able to see other people succeed in life.
And I wanted to make sure that happened: from owning your own home, going to college, having a strong career. So God would bless me with those abilities.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Such a legacy for that community you both have. Ernest, let me ask you this: CDC of Tampa's work blends affordable housing with workforce development and education.
How did that sort of holistic approach develop over time?
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, you know, we actually started with the community. So we went to them, we talked to them about what would they like to see in the community, and they came back with the top five things. And of course, workforce, entrepreneurship and education, were all components of that and affordable housing.
So that's what created us into a comprehensive community development corporation. But over time, we also come to realize that it takes more than just one single bullet, if you will, economic bullet to transform lives, you know? So by doing three or four different things, we have a 33% greater chance of success for our community.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): You know, I want to bring our listeners into each of your communities to the degree that we can. Ernest, tell us a, about what's happening in Tampa right now, that's really driving some of the work that you're doing.
Ernest Coney Jr.: So Tampa has all of a sudden, over the past five years, become like this extremely hot market with the success of the Tampa Buccaneers and the Rays and other teams.
So housing is incredibly expensive. And of course, we're still in the south, so incomes are low, but the price of housing is really high. So people want to live in Tampa, and what we're trying to do is make sure that the residents who were born here have an opportunity to have a rising tide and it doesn't become a flood.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): That's really helpful. One of the things I hope people know about NeighborWorks organizations is you're deeply rooted in your communities. Nick, tell me about Brownsville. I know it's a very special community. What's going on there that's driving your work?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Yeah, so for years it was just being, really low income and poor. We're on the U.S. Mexico border. So if you stood on the, the roof of my building, you could see right into downtown Matamoros, Mexico. But over the last 10 years it's been growing substantially. And then, five years or so ago, Elon Musk decided to move his shot to Mars to Brownsville.
So we're now launching the largest rocket in the world from here. And we're also building one of the world's largest liquid natural gas offloading ports here in Brownsville. And so, what was really just a small metro market with a lot of rural area around it we're now growing into a big city.
But like Ernest said we're in the south. I mean, we're further south than the south. One third of the country of Mexico is north of us. And incomes are not growing as fast as we'd like to see them growing. Housing prices have gone up 60% since COVID and but incomes have only raised maybe seven to 8%.
Buying a house or renting a house has become incredibly difficult if you're not a rocket scientist or geologist, which are where the high incomes are at. So it's not that we're opposed to any of this investment; it's a good thing in most cases.
But like Ernest said, for those who lived here forever and are from here it's a bit difficult. I would say it's really difficult. And so, there are a lot of good a lot of fantastic people -- the people are wonderful. It's actually one of the safest cities in the United States. And because of that, it's really getting the attention from folks up north and, and people moving in here.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): I think you both done a great job of painting the picture of the economic climate in each of your cities.
I want to add one more dimension. When you think about the people that your organization serves every day, what have they taught you about the role housing plays in their lives for stability and opportunity? We'll ask Ernest to reflect on that and then Nick.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, I think housing is really central.
So especially in East Tampa, even though we are a low -income community, we have a very high homeownership rate compared to other low income communities that are more transient, over 35% home ownership rate. So homeownership has been a critical component in East Tampa. And, you know, we've had incidents from, seniors who thought they were going to lose their home and said, “You know, my greatest concern was who was going to teach my grandson how to say Grace over Sunday dinner.”
Having neighborhoods where neighbors grow up together, right? Literally going to the same schools, the fabric of America. So home ownership has been the central part of it. And of course, we all know that most times home ownership is the greatest asset that a person has in their life. So, making sure that we have more of that here in East Tampa is going to be critical.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): What about for you, Nick?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Yeah, so, you know, in our industry we talk a lot about this intergenerational transfer of wealth. And I don't know if any of my clients know what that means, like if they would ever know what if they read that word, but they do know exactly what it means. If you ask any of our clients, a hundred percent of them will tell you, “I'm buying this house for my kids.”
And historically their kids probably would've moved into that house. You know, that's probably changing now, but leaving that asset, leaving that wealth that they've created, that they've earned to their children is a hundred percent.
Even when our buyer's age has gone from 28 years of age up to 38 this last year, they're still buying it for their kids. And so to be a part of that, oh my gosh. You know, that's, that's an honor that we cherish, that we make sure that we hold onto because it is that intergenerational transfer of wealth that is alive and well.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): And in communities like Tampa and like Brownsville, you both are sort of on the front lines of changing people's lives through. Home ownership. It's really incredible. Let's dig a little bit deeper on the different ways that you're both sort of making that happen. Nick, I'm going to start with you about the work you're doing in Brownsville, your team at come dream, come build recently launched Dream Build. As I understand it, it’s a modular housing program, five years or, or more in the making. I want you to tell us about it and tell us the approach, what challenges you were trying to solve when this model was created.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: So Dream Build was created literally out of our response to a disaster. Hurricane Dolly came through here some time ago and we were given a grant by the state to come up with, build a new mousetrap, right? How do we return people to their neighborhoods after a hurricane? The result got national exposure. We were at the Smithsonian, the Cooper Hewitt in New York and had a stage at UN Habitat Three in Keto Ecuador.
When that was all over, the dust settled and we were sitting around thinking like how do we get this off the shelf? Why are we waiting for another disaster? We already have one in housing.
Why don't we try to do this as an off-the-shelf product. And so I went away for a bit and Benje Feehan from a Building community workshop, our partner, nonprofit design firm, we went away and came back with this concept of dream build. It was originally called Mi Casita, my little house, and it's a volumetric modular housing product that can grow. And so we build five different boxes or modules that are 288 square feet a piece. And one's a “wet box,” a kitchen, bathroom, laundry services, and then a “dry box,” a bedroom and a living room, a “kid box,” two small bedrooms, a bedroom, suite, a bathroom and a big bedroom, and then a flex box, just a wide open, 288 square feet. And so clients can pick from one or all five of them taking the house from 288 square feet all the way up to a hundred to 1,440 square feet. Um, depending on what they want and what they can afford the house grows. So you can start with just two boxes, and then two years later come back and add another box or two more boxes depending on your finances and depending on the size of your family.
So it's really us trying to give families what they want when they want it, and help them meet that, meet that need. And we build it all here in Brownsville.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): And because it emerged out of a disaster response this product is now providing shelter is it are not an option for non-disaster customers, correct?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Oh, yeah. No, that's exactly what it is. It's somebody who may not have been hit by a hurricane, but somebody who's hit by poverty, it's a disaster in their life. So yes it is. We're now building, I think we're doing a 60-unit order right now for 60 different families that will be buying one of these houses.
It's one of the options that families have, that they can buy from us. Whether they own their own lot and want to put a house on it, whether they're buying a lot from us in one of our subdivisions you know, we can service that need.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): You call them boxes these boxes, these, segments, they're permanently affixed to a foundation. They're not mobile, in other words.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: No, it’s not. It's not built to HUD code. It's built to IRC and when it's done, it looks exactly like any house that would be site-built, stick-built, except we're building it at the farm, our manufacturing plant in Los Fresno, Texas, a small town north of us.
And we call it the farm because that's where houses grow. And so once it's moved to the site, it's a fixed to the ground like any other house would be, and actually can withstand up to 150-mile-an-hour winds. And it’s built to energy Star and the Green Energy Standards.
And most people are kind of like, ‘Wait, this is built off site?’ No, it's not a mobile home. It’s not a manufactured home. It's actually an IRC, volumetric modular housing is the technical term.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): That's really, really helpful. I want to ask you about the farm.
I think it's a really unique approach and I'm assuming by building them all on the farm that helps you manage cost and quality.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Yeah, so manufacturing is a completely different way to put a house together. And so we're not just building a house under a roof. What we were trying to do here was to actually build a house that's less expensive, that's just as high as quality, but less expensive for the buyer. And then a way to do that was to move into a manufacturing frame of mind, in a manufacturing system. Tom Manning Bevan from Frontier Housing, he likes to say we're wringing out the excess costs and you know, when we’re doing it at the farm. And so, all the materials, we're buying those in bulk. You know, we're pushing somewhere near, near 300,000 to $500,000 a month in product through the farms. And then all the labor is there.
And so you have a technician, or framer. All you're doing is you're framing the wet box. That's all you do. And so they're able to build faster and on and move things much quicker. So in the farm, we can actually build a house in about 25 days. And then have it installed in another 25 days.
So a total of 50 days, the house is complete on its site and on its foundation and, and ready to go. But it's changing, it's turning the knob a little bit. Which becomes a little difficult to get an old school contractor now working for us full-time. It's kind of like,’ well that's not how I do it.’
This is how you do it now. And so that's kind of been the struggle a little bit, but it's again, wringing those extra costs out of the cost of the house.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Definitely. Flipping the script there, it's so compelling the timeframe and you're able to wring those costs out.
Having, many years ago, been a housing counselor for people wanting to buy a home we really tried not to have them go talk to a realtor first but to come talk to us so they don’t fall in love with a home that they can't necessarily afford. But this is a really interesting model because families could start with a smaller, more affordable home and then add rooms as they need and as the size of the family grows. How has that flexibility played out in real life?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: So we've only grown the house once. We're actually in the process now. I think we're able to ring out so many costs that a lot of those clients who maybe only been able to do a two-bedroom, one-bath, are actually now able to do a three-bedroom, two-bath.
So we've been really lucky. But it can grow and it does grow and we are growing them. So in this one case, the family came back and they had always intended from the very beginning. To add a new bedroom. Actually two bedrooms. And so they came and they bought just a two box model, which is 576 square feet, and now they need to add two more bedrooms.
We build that at the farm. The site is ready to accept that it's all been designed and engineered in order for us to just plug it in, very much like, like Legos. My communications team doesn't like it when I refer to them as Legos but we plug them in just like Legos and you I mean, a window is now a door into this new bedroom, so that just pops right out and we're able to plug it in. It's all ready to go. And so we may pour a new foundation and just drop it on there and slide it over and it's pretty cool to watch them come in together and have the family standing there watching you as you're delivering their house on the back of a truck.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): And with this model, families obviously are choosing the size of the boxes that they're buying and what that home's going to look like. They also get to choose their finishes, I'm assuming? Is that right?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Oh, they get to choose Marietta.
They could choose anything they want. So if you go to Dreambuild.org and you just put in your name and address and all that kind of stuff, then you actually drop right into our online design system called Choice and Power. And then you have, I think it's 27, 29 different selections that you get to make so that from the foundation, to the type of front doors you want to the window types that you want to the color of the house. Do you want brick? Do you want siding? What color of flooring do you want? What color of paint do you want? What color of cabinets do you want? What kind of toilet? There's two different choices, the toilets. Do you want brass finish?
Do you want chrome finish? What kind of finish do you want? Matte black finishes? Do you want a front porch? Do you want a back porch? You know, we have 22 different styles of porches. They're not all on the website yet because we haven't built them all and tested them all out. But we actually have these that we can we eventually have them all on there.
I think right now there's like four or five. We like to say if you ever saw the movie Ford versus Ferrari and they go to the scene, they go into a Ferrari factory and it's this one guy building this one car for this one guy, you know, and it's like the seat don't move because it's your car.
The mirrors don't move because it's your car. And it's, it's the car made for you. And the next scene in that movie, they switch over to the Ford factory and they're just churning out a hundred cars every minute. Dream Build is building Fords, but the client really believes they're getting a Ferrari.
Because of that community input, I mean even down to our name. With Mi Casita, the first buyer said to us, I don’t want a little house. I want a big house. And after thousands of dollars spent on marketing material and on, on swag, we literally went back and said oh, I screwed that one up.
Let's change the name. So we changed the name to Dream Build. It's all about listening to clients and what they want. You know, business school, I paid thousands of dollars to go to business school and I could have learned, you know, the two things. You can't sell something people don't want. And so asking them what they want is the best business plan you can have.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): There's a lot in what you said, but I want to tease out one thing in that the mindset of affordable housing being generic and having to deliver something at cost because it's affordable. You've sort of blown that up. I mean, the thought of people choosing finishes and, and having a big house and it feels very much like a custom build, but you're delivering it in an affordable way.
It's super mind blowing in some ways for those of us that have been in affordable housing development for a long time. It's really incredible. And I know that you have shared this model. Are there other organizations that are taking advantage of this? I think you may have mentioned something in Kentucky, but tell us a little bit more about that.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: So really the way we wanted to do this for our clients and obviously in the Rio Grande Valley we thought: if it's worthwhile, why not share it? And so we actually decided to start a process where we were and I'm going to use the word franchise. It's not the legal term, but what we did is we wanted to share this model with other people and actually then share resources among each other.
So right now we are working with Tom at Frontier Housing in Kentucky. He's got, just 50,000 square feet of manufacturing space and he's ready to start rolling these things out. And then Codney Washington up in Pine Bluff, Arkansas with We Build is also doing the same model. And so we worked with them for a year to get designs right and the house quality right. We don't have snow in Brownsville, but they do in Kentucky so we had to change some of the engineering on it that way. And then our partner Building Community Workshop, Benje Feehan and his group, they're opening a site in Dallas in the next two months.
So the idea is really to have little Dream Build factories every 300 to 400 miles all over this country, right. To get folks to do this. Because it's not only a housing product, it's also a way to put people to work. We have 50 technicians working for us now. And you know, there those are 50 people who have a salary and have health, healthcare and have a job they can go to every single day.
It's just my job to make sure that they have work to do. And so it's, again, not just the house, but it's also bringing those jobs, it's bringing stability to families that typically were chasing contracts if they were doing floors or sheet rockers, and now they can come to work every day.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Yeah, it's really amazing. It's such a fascinating model. We will talk a little bit more about it, but I want to pivot over to Ernest. Your organization is also tackling affordability and housing supply issues, but from another angle I believe that you developed and delivered the first 3D printed housing project in East Tampa, and I'd love to hear more about what inspired you to bring that online in your community.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, so we’re building the first home currently, right? So it's an exciting time. We as mankind been building houses the same way since the dawn of man, right? Two good hands and go find some materials, right? And you know, we're really waiting on what would be the greatest upside and can we bring technology to help us.
You know, Nick kind of mentioned the manufacturing process and how that helped to really move innovation from every other standpoint, from car development to everything else we can think of, but we never had brought that technology to housing. So the 3D printer is one that brings that to housing, where we literally have a 3D printer and we chose a robotic arm to do the printing.
And it builds by layers, right? It goes around by layers. So you feed it the design that you want and it, and then it goes and it feeds those layers to build up the home. And the great thing, you can design any home any way you want with the 3D printer. So it's a really exciting time. So during COVID, we also realized the price of construction was almost tripling, you know, so we also knew that people were going to be priced out of homes in Florida.
So we also were looking for a technology or a process that can help drive down the cost of the homes. So the 3D printed homes are right now about 30 to 40% cheaper. And we're hoping that as the technology gets better it'll help to drive that cost down even more. So we're really excited about not only is it something that can help create something that's individualized, but helping to drive down the cost.
And as Nick mentioned, it also has that workforce component as well.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): So your team preps the pad or the foundation and then the printer. For those of us who have not seen it in action walk us through what, what we might see right now happening in, in the first house being built.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, so for this first home, we actually are laying the foundation ourselves, and then we go up with the 3D printer.
But the 3D printer can't actually do the foundation and the footwork as well, so it can do almost all of the home and the technology is getting such that it can even do roofs now. So eventually you'll be able to have a 100% concrete home, including your cabinetry. But for right now, we are doing the ground up from the foundation so that the robotic arms will then sit on the foundation and we program it and it has specific sites where it gets positioned and it'll go around and start building those layers of the home.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): And you were able to deliver a home, I think you said, was it 40% cheaper than a traditionally built home?
Ernest Coney Jr.: About 40% cheaper because some of the trades you don't have to have as many people. And then the waste, right? So if you've ever gone to a traditional housing you got drywall sitting there, you got lumber sitting there, you got broken bricks sitting there.
You got all this wasted material. With the 3D printer, you're very precise and it only uses the amount of material that it needs and very little waste on the site.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): What about the quality? I can hear listeners saying, but you know, it's Tampa, you get hurricanes.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah. So, you know, as we're thinking about what really worked, this is even a greater option for us, right?
Especially with the amount of hurricanes and wind damage. So we have a lot of hurricanes, and you think about, you know. Everyone builds to, to Miami's codes, right? So the 3D printed home is stronger or better than the codes that are coming out of Miami. So we definitely can tolerate any wind damage that persists.
But we're also in the subtropics, right? You think about termites, you think about like all these different things that eat up wood. We also have the ability to (prevent) that. And then of course, we're surrounded by water. All around, we're a peninsula as well. So flooding is, is very prominent as well.
And you know, you just have a small pool for a little while it floods. Nothing happens with cement, you know, just let it dry out and you're right back at it. You know, when we think about sustainability, it helps with the wind, it helps with termites and it also helps with flooding.
So the three major things that we have in Florida, this helps to present those.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Ernest, both you and Nick mentioned this. I'm want to ask you: Both of these innovations are addressing housing supply, affordability and speed bringing product to market quickly. But you also mentioned that it's an economic engine because it's bringing jobs. How are you using this innovation to create workforce training and career pathways to your community or for your, the residents of your community?
Ernest Coney Jr.: And this is part of the reason why we wanted to adopt the technology ear early. As I said, we're one of the very first to use it in Hillsborough County.
I think there's only been one one other permanent home in Florida, so we have a vocational school as well. So we're leveraging our vocational school to begin to train residents on the technology. So from the technology side, you have a computer science type of skillset, right? Where you're learning how to program the design, learning how to feed the computer system.
You can even use your cell phone to program it and do the design. And then you also have some folks who are actually doing some of the physical work, right? So you're making sure the mix is right in the machine. You're going around the machine making sure that it's, that it's producing right and working right? So for every home you have about three people that can really build that home. And with the scale that we're talking about it's really exciting opportunity so people don't have to be in a labor pool for 50 years, literally breaking their back.
Now you can use the technology and use your mind more to help develop the home and develop the skills that you can use that are transferable. You may start off with a 3D printer and then go somewhere else in manufacturing because some of the principles that you're learning in manufacturing are the exact same that other people use as well.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): That's great. I want to ask you both this question I'll ask Nick to respond, and then Ernest: What has been the reaction from the community seeing these homes take shape? Is there bias? Are they excited, are they skeptical?
Nick, what about in Brownsville?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: At first there was a little bit of skepticism, mainly this goes to asking people what they want, right? We were putting these on pier and beam foundations. And we were putting these on the border, and Latinos are like: I was poor when I grew up and I had a pier and beam foundation. I'm not now about to buy a new house that's on a pier and beam foundation. Just not doing it. It's just not going to happen. And our first house that we did was on a pier and beam foundation, still not sold. So we had to go back and figure out, well, how do we put this on what was called a stem wall? Same kind of technology, but it doesn't look like a pier and beam foundation.
So the dogs and the cats and anything else can't get underneath the house, right? And so, the minute we did that, the skepticism went away. People walked in and were like: This is just a normal house. But it was, again, listening to what people say and not trying to force the point.
Because if they're not going to buy it, you're not going to buy it. There was a bit of skepticism, but we met that head on, fixed it and now we're trucking along.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): What about you, Ernest? How have folks embraced this? I realize you're working on your first house, but still.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, so I think when the technology first came out, there was a two part response. One is not everyone liked it because the way the 3D printer printed, it sometimes gave a bubble effect. So some people didn't like that look, but then the other hand, it was used for people with ways and means. So people who are very wealthy love this technology, right?
So they were building homes because you can build walls with curves and not just have your traditional rectangular or boxes. You can have all types of amazing features to your home. Curved walls, curved roofs so people with a lot of money begin using the technology. Today the technology is caught up with the tools, right?
So you can have very smooth walls if you want a smooth wall or very fine thin kind of wrinkled effect to give, kind of give it like that industrial look where some people like brick looks. It gives it this industrial, really nice look. So people are really taking to it now. The energy efficiencies are there, so people are really excited about that technology.
So now people are really embracing that technology.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): I love it. That's fantastic. How are you both measuring success of both of these models? I think it's more than just the number of homes built, but lives touched, opportunities created. Nick, how are you, how do you tell the story of success?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Well, one, it's just one, it's obviously the number of houses that we can build in 12 months, right? So that's there, that's always there. That's always going to be what we need to do. But Ernest had said: the waste, how much, how much waste are we reducing? What's the time spent on each house?
We also run a YouthBuild program, so we're being able to hire students into our workforce, right? Straight out of YouthBuild. And then it's just the financial, the financial investment that's been made into our community for this is right now where it probably just, the investment alone is $6 million and just getting the thing up and going and running properly.
And now all the staff that we have hired and the people who have healthcare and who have insurance and who have a job and who are making more than $7.25 an hour, Because that's the minimum wage here. We're paying over twice that to start with us. And then it's just the equity that's being earned by each of the families.
We're actually able to do these also with our 9% tax credit deals, so we can, we can actually build these for apartments as well. And so, how are we able to do that cheaper and be able to get more built with the investment from the 9% and, from whatever debt we're taking on.
There's always something to count. We have a manufacturing engineer that works for us, and she's coming up with new things. I'm like, why are we counting that? And then she can tell me why, so there's just there's just a plethora of things that we can count and show that we're improving lives of people in our community.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Fantastic. Ernest, what about you?
Ernest Coney Jr.: Initially for us, it's really about affordability and access, right? So our major goal is to get to a place where we can build a home and sell it for less than $200,000, and accessory dwelling units, less than $100,000. And once we get to that place, affordability is for everyone, no matter where you're at in life.
That's our goal. And then of course, you know, living in Florida, you want something that's sustainable and resilient. And that's the next phase. you know, making sure that no matter what storms come our folks and our residents are safe in their home.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): One of the things that I think you both -- and you're sort of in different phases of your innovation here -- but I think you're both illustrating how innovation and connection to community are intertwined and can coexist and that technology doesn't have to replace community connection.
That's fantastic. One mechanical question I have as you're talking about it: Did either community have any issues with zoning or any sort of opposition from your county or city?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: We are state licensed. We're a state licensed manufacturing company. And so we really don't, once you get your state license, both for the site as well as the product, which we have both, then we really don't have to go through county inspections. We don't have to go through city inspections because it's all TA, taken care of by the city.
However, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, manufactured housing was not allowed. And so Codney really figured out what he was going to do and he is kind of doing the frog in the boiling water process. So what he's doing, he is doing wall segments at his farm location. And he is slowly over the next two years, going to build his units to be fully manufactured.
But right now they're just piece at a time so that he can kind of prove to the community: The, this rule is kind of stupid and so let's get rid of it. But he needed to do that. So, we were able to work around it and make it happen. But otherwise, now no zoning problems, no size or anything like that, it's more of making sure the clients are happy.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Ernest, anything on your end from a zoning perspective?
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yes. Because the technology is so new, it literally was. In the Florida code, 3D printed homes are in appendix. So when you go to get your permit, no one's ever done this before. So we literally had to be the first ones to go through the permitting process to really train our municipalities on what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish.
So permitting was a major challenge. We're getting to the point now where we're having drawings on file so we can scale and move very quickly. But each municipality, it is a lesson that we have to go through and teach each one of them.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Appendix. Wow. That's a great lesson. One of the things that I'm reflecting on with both of your organizations is not only both of your leadership being open to new things, but oftentimes we find community organizations are so busy just responding to the frontline issues of the day, and it's hard to step back and make enough space for innovation and strategy development.
What enabled each of your organizations to innovate in place the way you have? You needed to create room for that. What were the ingredients that created the environment for you to do that?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Desperation.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Out of need?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Out of need. It was a straight up thing is we just, we were losing com complete control of the whole system.
The financing groups had all the control, the material had all the control. The contractors had all the control. The cities had all the control. And the buyers had none. And we had none. And it was like we were trying to operate at this thing that we didn't have any control of. And people who know me know that I'm a control freak.
And the way to own this was we had to do it. So it was out of desperation and we had to make time, but it was also finding the right people who knew how to do this. I knew where I wanted to go and I knew where I'm at. I could read all the books, but bringing in the right people gave me the time to do this.
In the beginning it was just like, we either do this or we die. Because we can't continue on as we were.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Ernest, what about for you?
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, I definitely agree. Necessity is a mother of invention, right? And once general contractors came back to us and said: Hey, to build this home, just to build the home, the shell $288,000. Without the land, that's without, you know, all the other components. There is no longer affordability for those who are in the greatest need.
We have to do something different. Homelessness has been growing. When I grew up, I didn't see that many homeless people. Now it's an everyday occurrence. You know, necessity really mandated that we have to think differently and deliver something in a different, different manner as well.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): I need to ask you, beyond just preparing and building the homes for your clients and customers, there's also a fair amount of support that you give them once they're in the houseI know that you both integrate financial education and counseling into your programs. How important do you think that is for long-term stability of homeowners?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: CDCB is not producing a house, right? We're producing a system. So we're a mortgage company, we're housing counseling agency, we do post counseling. People know they can come to us if they have a problem.
We service most of our loans, even if we're selling them to Freddie and Fannie, which we do, we service those loans. We've only foreclosed on two people in the last 35 years. Not that we couldn't have. But hey, you're in trouble, let's figure out where, why you're in trouble and let's work you through this.
And so we've had home buyers come to us who want their kid in YouthBuild, right? Or we've had YouthBuild students who graduated, who are now buying a house from us you know, or people who are renting in our rental portfolio coming here. We want to be that for everybody.
I mean, we even have an alternative to payday lending product that we've franchised across the country, you know, so if people need cash, they can, they can come to us as well. So, you know, not that we can do everything but on the financial and home buying side, we think that we can -- and the rental side -- be there for them.
And, and if we're able to, to meet that need, doing what we can to do. I had a mom who really took care of me and I could go to her and ask her what I needed. A lot of folks don't have that financial backing.
If they need it and we, we try to be there for them.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, definitely. And I think that being a CDC or a place-based strategist really helps make that part of it very simple and very easy as part of our fabric, right? So when we put a person into a home, we want to make sure that intergenerationally everyone in that home is going to be successful.
Is a child able to reach the educational levels that they want to? Is college an option for them? If something happens, we want to be there. So financial literacy, financial capabilities, credit repair. Right now we're also are doing more programs to make sure that we can transfer that generational wealth to the next generation.
We're doing wills and trust, right? To make sure that literally the next generation doesn't have to start from ground zero. So like during the great recession we had all this great work. We created all these homeowners and the great recession happened and we were like, oh my gosh. But it was, you know, through NeighborWorks and groups like that really helped us to prepare to become specialists, to help keep people in their homes.
We were already doing the workforce so we can upskill people, right? But it was just a tremendous opportunity to have that kind of wraparound services to make sure that families are served in a holistic manner, because we know the more services that you get, the more successful that you can be.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): You both are NeighborWorks organizations and have been NeighborWorks organizations for many years.
What does that mean and how is that helpful to be part of a national network?
Ernest Coney Jr.: Yeah, I think it's just an amazing opportunity. One, you don't have to learn everything from scratch. Like, I've gone to visit Nick, right? And I took down my notes. I'm like: We're going to implement that, right? Then you have other groups that you can learn from across the nation that are doing some amazing things.
Be it workforce, be it housing, be it counseling, be it lending, right? Groups are doing innovative approaches, and NeighborWorks has the ability to help us package those things and help to teach it to us so we don't have to learn from ground zero.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Yeah, I have to agree that's, that's the number one thing for me as well, that you're part of a cohort of, you know, [250] or so groups that are the best at what they do.
And then when it comes to telling that story, it’s things like this, right? Um, you know, I'm down here in the middle of nowhere, I mean, and nobody knows nor do they care what's coming out of South Texas in a lot of cases, unless it's a rocket. And, and so being able to hitch my wagon to Ernest here and say: Hey, I'm part of him and he's part of me and we're trying to do the same thing -- maybe a little bit different but learning from each other.
And then knowing that the staff at NeighborWorks America has their back. And it's going to, be able to help us in times of conversation with political folks, with business folks, with investors. That's always, always been the draw for us that it's, we're part of a bigger family and we know it.
And having new staff come on, it's like I got three new people who are like going to go to, to Chicago here for the NTI, you know? Because I'm like, well, I'm not going to teach you. Let them do it. They can do it better than I can.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): I appreciate that very much. We're going to wrap with a little bit of a lightning round if you'll indulge me for a little bit longer.
What's the first thing that comes to mind? One word to describe innovation.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Change. Hard. Difficult.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): What's one thing [people misunderstand about affordable housing?
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: That we all live in affordable housing. It's not just for low income people.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): We all have to afford, right? Finish the sentence for me. The future of housing is:
Ernest Coney Jr.: It’s getting brighter.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Modular.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): Nick and Ernest, thank you for sharing your work and for showing us what's possible when creativity and community come together.
From modular homes in Brownsville to 3D printed homes in Tampa, you're proving that the future of affordable housing is already here, and it's being built by people who care deeply about the communities they serve.
Nick Mitchell-Bennett: Thank you.
Ernest Coney Jr.: Thank you.
Marietta Rodriguez (President & CEO): To our listeners, you can learn more about how NeighborWorks organizations are driving innovation nationwide by visiting neighborworks.org.
To explore these projects, visit cdcb.org to learn more about the Dream Build Modular housing program and CDCofTampa.org to see how 3D printed homes are transforming East Tampa. And to find a NeighborWorks organization near you, visit neighborworks.org. I'm Marietta Rodriguez. Thank you for joining us on the Community Effect where we share stories of hope, transformation, and the power of place.
