Keith Rand of Mill Creek Residential | The Future of Housing In America
The Future of Housing In America
What does the housing crisis actually entail? To wrap up Season 3 of American Building, I’m joined by Keith Rand, Vice President at Mill Creek Residential, to discuss the main housing production issues Americans face today and different solutions to address them. We look at limitations with local and state government policy and unpack the proposed housing supply plan from the White House.
In our conversation, Keith explains the root cause of the supply and demand imbalance in New York City. Between the exorbitant cost of land, insurance, and property taxes, the city that more than 8 million people call home is increasingly unaffordable and unsustainable. Keith breaks down a potential rezoning approach called “Own Your Air,” which promotes diverse housing stock and reinvestment into underserved neighborhoods.
Keith shares his perspective on the most pressing issues we need to tackle when it comes to housing production and affordability, namely starting with local and state government policy. He highlights inefficiencies in large-scale tax credit programs and suggests ways to improve them. We also reflect on inspiring progress we've seen in state legislatures across the country, including California, Colorado, and Texas.
“Even though the federal government still has a relatively large footprint in how we finance housing in terms of government block grants, on a day to day basis, the largest impediment for building more housing in this country is local and state government policy. What we saw was a valiant attempt by the Hochul administration to build a really great housing platform that would ensure significant improvements and affordability. But the challenges that she had this most recent year are very reflective of the challenges that we have from the private side. It gets to the core value of creating incentive alignment between the communities where we’re developing and the developer.”
Courtesy of Mill Creek Residential
About Keith Rand
Keith Rand is Vice President at Mill Creek Residential, the 3rd largest residential rental development company in the country. Previously, he worked in senior roles at Stonehenge and Greystar. He began his career at Silverstein Properties and JP Morgan Chase. Keith is a graduate of Duke University, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Kennedy School at Harvard.
Episode Timestamps
3:53 – What does home mean to you, Keith?
5:06 – Tell me about how your upbringing in West Virginia plays into your personal conception of what home means to you?
7:45 – Walk us through the different projects or initiatives that you're particularly proud of over the course of your career.
9:57 – As you think of the issues and the opportunities in housing, how do you break them down in a way that makes sense for you?
18:51 – What are some of the housing issues that you think are the most important for us to tackle in terms of being able to address housing production?
24:22 – When you start contextualizing the housing challenge amongst other issues, which are the ones that you feel are the most pressing?
35:27 – Help our listeners understand about the costs associated with the ongoing maintenance of buildings and why that is a potential area of opportunity.
36:18 – Do you think that tax credits would encourage more housing production across the country?
42:19 – Give me a perspective on how you think that President Biden’s housing proposal or other methods could be used to increase the percentage of the amount of homeownership in the United States?
44:12 – Are there certain things that you are expecting or looking forward to when it comes to housing in our country over the next couple of years?
Connect with Keith Rand:
About your host:
Atif Qadir is the Founder & CEO of Commonplace, a technology company making it easy for commercial real estate professionals to find and use the $100B of real estate incentives given out every year in the US.
His work has been covered by Technology Review, The Real Deal, Commercial Observer, and Propmodo. He’s also a frequent speaker on the future of buildings and cities on popular industry podcasts and at conferences, including this past year at the Commercial Observer National DEI Conference, Yale AREA Conference, Columbia Real Estate Symposium, Open Data Week NYC and Austin Design Week.
About Commonplace
Commonplace is a founding sponsor of American Building. It is a 100% minority-owned, real estate technology company founded in 2020 to make financing social impact development projects across the US easier. It is funded by venture capital investors Hometeam Ventures, Park West Asset Management, New York Ventures and Shadow Ventures.
About Michael Graves
The world-famous design firm Michael Graves is also a founding sponsor of American Building. Its namesake, the iconoclastic designer Michael Graves, FAIA was a fierce advocate for people-centric design. His work defines a generation of American architecture and includes the Portland Building, the Humana Building and the Denver Public Library. The 1st season of American Building was filmed live at The Warehouse, his historic home in Princeton, New Jersey:
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