Floating homes are already common in parts of Europe, and Jeff Kraatz thinks North American cities could use the same idea to create entirely new neighborhoods on the water. The founder of Floating Towns explains what it actually takes to move beyond a few individual houseboats and build a community of 50 or 60 homes. The homes may float, but the harder work still happens on land: planning, approvals, infrastructure, affordability, and getting local leaders on board. With miles of waterfront sitting largely unused, Kraatz sees room for cities to grow in a direction they rarely consider.
Hello and welcome to Bottom Up Shorts. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I love connecting with people who are looking to iterate and improve upon our existing options in our communities in order to make our places stronger and more resilient over time.
Today, I'm talking with Strong Towns member Jeff Kraatz, who is the president and founder of Floating Towns. Jeff and I first connected during a new member orientation, and I was immediately interested in what he was doing because we actually have float homes in a community area near us. We live near several of them along the Fraser River, and they're places that I see regularly, whether I'm borrowing a kayak from friends or heading out fishing.
Jeff is taking the idea that's been around for a long time of living on a boat or living on a float home and taking that further to explore what floating communities could look like on both freshwater and salt water. Jeff, thanks for joining me. Tell us what Floating Towns is all about.
Thank you, Norm. I really appreciate the invitation. We're very excited to be presenting this solution. We happened upon this through our research from Europe, where floating communities are very prevalent. If people look into this, they'd find a network called Schoonschip in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and this is our model for what we want to bring to North America.
When we look at North America, we see a huge opportunity for communities and municipalities to expand their footprint into areas that they hadn't previously looked at. Our group of advisors, 30 advisors who are experts in floating, have come together to help others understand how they might do that. So we're very pleased to be here with you today.
We've seen groups of experts emerge who can help communities implement a tiny home village. We've seen others that have really leaned into modular types of housing or factory-built housing and making that available. We certainly have a lot of need for that. I've got somebody in mind who advises communities on how to have more log homes in areas where that is viable for them.
But you're trying to do that particularly for homes that float. Can you describe some of the barriers that community leaders might face when they're saying, 'Well, we like the idea in concept, or maybe we have some history of having these in our home communities, and yet we just haven't seen this developed recently'? What are some of the things that you're able to say: 'Hey, here's how we help you in that work'?
Thank you. We have found, from our group of experts and looking at other communities, that there are actually six stages, 16 phases, and 110 work steps that every municipality, every city, every marina must go through before all is said and done. So it's not just a matter of building the unit or designing a one-, two-, or three-bedroom place. It's actually going through a very deep and rigorous process, and that's what we, with Floating Towns, have come together to help our constituents do.
When you take the playbook and present it to a municipality, what it immediately does is present the opportunity for local enthusiasts to get involved and address all of the entitlement issues, affordability issues, and urban planning issues that are necessary to take that concept of what you found in the Fraser River, or what we've found in Schoonschip, or what our experts find day to day. We help local community leaders understand all the work steps that are necessary to go through.
What we've developed is a process where we take someone through the first three stages for free, and we help them understand how they can help their community leaders address the socioeconomic, affordability, sustainability, and resiliency issues that must be considered for that community to finally place its first floating home. It's not just a matter of taking it and putting it in the water. There are so many other issues that come into play, and that's what our experts have come together to help others do around the world.
One of the things that you're also passionate about really connects to my mom's story. My mom grew up in the Netherlands, and her dad was a boat captain. They would transport goods throughout the canals in the Netherlands and sometimes into Germany. Her only sister was 16 years older than her, so my mom was on her own all the time with two old people on this boat, traversing everywhere.
She always felt from the earliest years that it was kind of lonely because you're out on your own as she traversed through all these different canals. Then there would be these bright spots when they would tie up at a particular harbor and all of a sudden get to connect with other people.
You're really passionate about saying that when we bring floating homes together, we can create modular forms of homes in tandem and then create communities in that way. Do you want to share some of the vision for a good life in a floating-home community, and some of the real benefits that can come from being really close to each other and having that be a feature, not a bug?
Well, the main benefit is that you're living on the water. The town, municipality, or marina has extended its footprint and development to add these different modular units. Whether, as with your family, they had their unit and it was detached, or whether it's attached, when you finally come together, you have the opportunity to have a community.
What's very interesting is that we find nautical people and maritime people all gravitate toward each other. I would ask you the question: Did you grow up a sailor? Did you grow up a motorboater? Did you grow up on the water, or did your family grow up on the water? When you come together with other people, you immediately cut through a lot of the distractions of living in a community where you're behind a fence, behind a driveway, or behind a wall.
In this case, you step out your door and you're part of a community that might have 50 or 60 float homes. That's our sweet spot, 50 to 60 float homes. Whether they be at the low end of the spectrum to help that city, mid-priced homes, or high-priced homes, there are 50 or 60 of them, and people gravitate toward each other.
When they come out and do community events, we find that it's fascinating to see. We actually encourage it. We've built some solutions that encourage that and activate the community, and we help people in their local communities become the leaders and engage with the leadership and urban planners of their communities to not only find the solution but also build the community on the water.
I know you said there are lots of different stages, but one of the things that a lot of folks struggle with is that they might have a vision of living on a float home, but they feel like they have to just go and find a location where that already exists. There must be a new-seed process, and it's not so simple as rolling in one day with your own float home, building a dock, and going at it.
It feels like there's a push-and-pull dynamic there. If someone's a local council member, what are some good ways for them to kick-start this process and say, 'Hey, let's also address some of our housing needs by providing smaller-sized homes on the water for folks'?
Well, we're finding that communities, municipalities, and marinas are all looking to improve the lifestyle for their constituents. All the stakeholders in a community, whether they need workforce development and socioeconomic help, whether they're step-up people looking for bigger places, or whether they're looking for two- and three-bedroom homes, every stakeholder in that picture is asking, 'How do I find a place that's new, that can bring me a safe community, and can be, in this case, on the water?'
Our philosophy is that there are three and a half million miles of water just in North America that are underdeveloped. There's a shortage of 10 million homes just in North America.
To answer your question, what's the community looking for? We find that the extreme climate changes of the last few years, and those that are going to be upcoming in the next few years, actually help us because the leaders of these communities and municipalities understand that their town is going to be flooded, understand that there's waterway available, and understand that they just don't know how to go about doing this.
Here's this team called Floating Towns that has 30 advisors, experts who have done this in other places in the world, and we can help the local team address this with their leadership so that they can feel trusted and safe in terms of developing a new community on the water. That's what we're trying to help people do: safely address the 110 work steps that are necessary if they're going to look at a community on the water.
I will add one other thing, and this is important. People would say, 'Hey, but what about AI? Does AI have a place? Does technology and innovation have a place in this?' Yes, it does, because all of the people addressing the different work steps, whether it be design, building, implementing entitlements, or actually selling, every one of the software tools being used along that track is being improved with AI.
We find ourselves being pulled toward an AI future: not only having a good concept and addressing a crying need in the marketplace, helping people with Strong Towns, but also doing that from a technology and innovation standpoint. We find that all of those are coming together in a climate-impacted world, and we're very pleased to be associated with Strong Towns.
I'm fascinated. That's where the future is going, and I think there's a lot of interest there. But can you share with us: Who are you, and how did this become one of the things that you're intrigued by, but also involved in?
Well, I myself am a technologist and a quarterback, and what I've done is reach out to pull in 30 different advisors in every different ilk, whether it be environmental, architecture, engineering, design, building, or running these operations. We have a number of marina general managers, as an example, who have actually done this before many times, and so forth with all of our advisors.
Basically, I've pulled together this team and cobbled it together into a business, Floating Towns, that is designed to help constituents and stakeholders address their local communities. It's very much a local thrust, and I would say that it can't work without us addressing the local needs of the constituents. We have the experts who sit on top of the local team that works with the local municipality and the leaders, and all of that comes together into a beautiful future that we envision Floating Towns will build.
It's telling that we're doing this interview today, when I just read about Pallet, which is a company in the Seattle area that was deploying tiny-home villages. They've struggled to find a market for it, but you're working in an adjacent area, really leaning into a different type of opportunity that still provides housing in response to local need, ideally in ways that can flex and that we can build upon.
One of the neat things is that if you're using some of the waterways, you're actually able to snug in another facility right nearby. You can move everybody over just a little bit and create additional spaces. It's one of those things where you could imagine a mother-in-law suite being floated in and added to an existing home. There's really no shortage of possibilities with it, which I find fascinating.
I'd love to hear, just as we close, what's a tip or suggestion you have for someone who says, 'I want to help drive these types of changes in my community'?
Well, I would say you have to start. You have to begin the discussion. I was working with a leader of a local community, and she was saying that she was having a hard time walking into a city council meeting and getting any presence, power, or opportunity to have an impact. My comment to her was, 'We can change that. You can now walk into that meeting and be the most powerful person in the meeting because you're addressing the waterfront, which previously was a dead end.'
I reach the end of the street and there's a dead end there. Well, guess what? That dead end is an opportunity for the city planners to look up, see that their premium waterfront land is worth something, and extend the footprint of the town to improve the livelihood of the people who live in that town.
So my tip is: begin, and contact us. We'd be happy to help you and your local communities around the world. We can change the future because we're adding to the footprint of these cities socioeconomically, in living style, community resiliency, and sustainability, a checkmark to all the boxes.
I would just say begin. We can't do it without local representation and local resources. Our experts are all over the country and all over the world, and we would say, bring us into the picture. Let us go through the first three phases of this project with you for free, and we will help you elevate yourself within your local towns, and we can change the world together.
That's what I would say, because this is very much a future, and climate change is definitely impacting things and is going to continue. So let us work together. Let us join each other and make a brighter future.
Jeff, this is awesome. I really appreciate you sharing, and thanks for coming on Bottom Up Shorts today.
Thank you for the time, Norm. I appreciate it, and good luck to everybody.
I'm really glad to do it, and I just love being able to hear about ideas that are being taken seriously and then tested and trialed in various ways. I think for each of us, we can ask: What does it mean for the places that we build and inhabit to actually be further fleshed out, creating new opportunities for us as we seek to build strong communities together?
So keep an eye out for Floating Towns. You can visit their website, floatingtowns.com. Connect with Jeff there. Again, if you are interested in these ideas or something related, definitely reach out and share. I would love to hear if this is an inspiration for you as a member of our Bottom Up Shorts community.
Thanks for listening today. Have a great rest of the day. Take care, and take care of your places. This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.