Turning housing into a tech product promised speed and scale. What it delivered instead were broken homes, frustrated tenants, and a widening gap between the people who own property and the people who live in it.

After the 2008 crash, federal policies fueled the financialization of housing, transforming it from shelter into an investment vehicle. The result: a new breed of landlords and investors moving into markets once dominated by local ownership.

A new wave of investors is targeting struggling cities, betting they can profit regardless of local conditions. This episode explores how financial incentives keep the model alive—and what that means for communities trying to resist.

How can communities rebuild stability in a system designed for speculation? This episode highlights bottom-up efforts where neighbors, small developers, and local leaders are charting a different path.

South Bend spent decades defined by what it lost: a factory, a workforce, a future. But instead of trying to resurrect a past that wasn’t coming back, it chose incremental, local repair. This episode explores how a city long in decline wrote a new story on its own terms.