You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Bloomberg Quick Takes Tim Stinovic on Bloomberg Radio. Well, for years, Bloomberg News has been reporting on housing an equality Fannie May is highlighted as well. They recently noted that how over the years, the inventory of affordable US homes has declined sharply as home prices have dramatically risen, and as
housing has become increasingly unaffordable. The shortage of safe and affordable homes is affecting more and more prospective home buyers every day. People keep getting squeezed out. Yeah. One company trying to do what it can do to help fix that is Trident Builders. We got the company's president with us, Brendan McCluskey. He's the president Trident Builders, joining us on zoom from Baltimore. Bloomberg Philanthropies we should notice providing support
for Trident's efforts. Bloomberg Philanthropies is the philanthropic arm of Bloomberg LP and the parent company of Bloomberg Radio. Brendan, it's great to have you. How are you. Yeah, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. Okay, so you create homes that are energy efficient but also affordable. How do you do it in a face like Baltimore. Yeah, well,
so it's it's it's interesting. So right now we're actually building a project for the Smithsonian Institute that is passive House certified, So basically you've got highly energy efficient homes that, with the addition of solar, are actually a net benefits of the climate that they actually produce more energy over the course of the year than um they actually consume. And um our ambitions in Baltimore is to remove really the the very worst of housing stock in these urban centers,
these vacant properties that you know, we're falling apart. They're just laden with lead and asbestos and all sorts of other harmful chemicals and basically just wipe that stuff out and build new housing stock for the twenty one century and to focus on the communities that need the most bright and I love what you said about, you know, focusing on how to build housing for the century. We have to rethink the model that currently exists that really kind of um puts home ownership out of the range
of so many Americans. Yeah. Absolutely, and that's what our missions are Athletes. So the program that we're looking to employ is something that was actually perfected over the last
four decades in Cleveland. It's called the Cleveland Housing Network, and we're able to leverage, you know, the four percent lie Tech UH tax credit basically put these people into a fifteen year program where they get the peripheral supports from the Bloomberg philanthropies and the living classrooms, all these great philanthropic organizations that kind of round out the soft skills and to help stabilize these communities and the challenges
that they have. And what we do is we find a market driven solution, like a market solution for the housing problem. Um. You know that itself is stabilized, but then, like you we lean on philanthropic organizations to kind of round out the balance of workforce development, food security, housing, um. You know, like trauma and therapy, mental health, all all the various things that are that are afflicting these challenge communities.
You mentioned lie tech and for those not familiar with that acronym, it's the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, And so we're talking about how that subsidizes right acquisition, construction, and rehabilitation of affordable renting housing, especially for I guess lower income individuals. What what is the smart public private partnership in terms of tackling what is really a pandemic, if you will, are endemic part of our society When it comes to again going back to housing not being
affordable for so many, Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, like there's you know, there's fourteen million people living in poverty. They don't have access to affordable housing. I mean that's bigger than the population of forty six out of fifty states. You know that there's a lot of Americans that just
don't have access to housing. And I think the best benefit is for you know, states municipalities that have all this you know, decrepit housing stock to turn it over to you know, private sector developers, nimble entrepreneurs like myself, um, and allow us to you know, lock into and commit to low income housing for the long term. You know, what we really like about our model is that the
idea is to graduate these people out of the cycle poverty, right. Um. You know, people aren't supposed to be in public assistance and for housing forever. And I think what we're endeavoring to do is to close the wealth gap within these communities that you know, people are able to capture the rise and equity of the property values over a fifteen year period, and by doing it at large enough scale, you know, um, it's not like a drop of not
like a rain drop on the ocean. You know, by knocking out a hundred and fifty to two hundred fifty of these units at a time, were transforming entire neighborhoods and so that entire neighborhood will be poised for great growth and stability for the next decade and a half. And you know, the fact of the matter is, you know, these houses were built a hundred years ago and they don't have any installation in them. I mean, these things
are not built for climate change. And you know, you know, so we're more or less you know, basically we're given the best of the people that are the worst off. Brendan, how do you balance this type of work with the other work that you do at Tried and Builders, Because you guys also work on spaces like you know, the Ritz Carlton for example, commercial and private residences and rous Chris stake House as well. Yeah. Yeah, so like we we tend to faston ourselves as like a best in
class service provider. So you know, we don't. We don't do hotels we do with Carlson. We don't do restaurants, we do Ruth Crest. Um. You know, we do some work with the federal government. It's like for the the likes of the Smithsonian, right. Um, we really enjoy having smart sophisticated clients because frankly they get it. Um. You know, like sometimes our commitment to quality and customer service con suf used by the ones that don't necessarily understand the
difference and the value add that we're bringing. Um. This does require me to wear a different hat though, UM, But I still believe that the same sort of tenacity and entrepreneurial spirit that we bring to bear for like our you know, high end customers, I think requires the same level sophistication to really think through some of these like more embedded challenges. But it is it a model that can can exist on its own without subsidies, without
outside support right now? The model shows that yeah. Um. And in fact, we're trying to work with Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State UM, which is a great HCBU here in Baltimore for them to build. Let's develop a Harvard Business School like case study. So not only can this be studied, they can be replicated and and basically
exported throughout the region. UM. Important to note we're going off to the four percent, not the competitive nine percent, so we don't necessarily need to have friends in the state house where you can actually just go right for the four percenters and it balances out. You know. It's it's it's we can make good money by doing well. I love it. I love it. It's certainly something we talked about a lot here, and it's not always so
easy to do, but it sounds like you are. Um, Brendan, come back and let us know how things are progressing. Brendan McCluskey. He is president of Tried and Builders. Joining us via zoom from Baltimore. As we mentioned, Bloomberg Philanthropies is providing support for Trident efforts. Bloomberg Philanthropies, of course, the philanthropic arm of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg Radio. Bloomberg broadcast in Bloomberg LP