 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is View from the North. We spend so much time thinking about the South and the East and the West. This is from the North, from Canada, and we're talking today about the housing crisis and some potential solution for some perhaps tiny homes, modular homes in lieu of tent encampments. There's so many issues, so many places where these issues are coming up. So, you know, Ken Rogers has his hands full on this one. Dr. Rogers, would you scope out our discussion? What are we going to talk about today? Well, I believe you have a variety of solutions for housing, and some of them are taking roots in lots of different places. For example, for a long period of time, mobile homes have always had a negative stigma, you know, and yet you'd have the concepts in a mobile home have gradually improved to where you have a, you know, let's call it a small model mobile home called a park model. And these have to be, in most jurisdictions, under 500 square feet. And you know, they are quite spectacular in what is included in this 500 square feet and what the cost can be. Well, over time you've also had the mobile home business incorporating things that have arisen from simple things like a camper truck, you know, where you have a pickup truck and you stick a box on the back of the pickup truck, then somebody goes out fishing or camping, and it's astonishing what you can put in that little wee space and how it works. Somebody can be out for a week or two doing their camping and live out of this camper truck, well, then you had the fancier version of people had their Winnebago's and they would drive those. Well, gradually you got Winnebago's that now have sides that come fold out or they roll out and so you have a larger space. Well, over time, then you get the mobile home manufacturers have started to incorporate all kinds of these things. I noticed not too long ago, one of the Indian bands or natives in that live in a very remote remote location had a housing problem with housing. They had not enough and they engaged one of these mobile home manufacturing companies to make a 287 square foot unit and interestingly, it was about 13 and a half feet high, so it would fit under all the, you know, highway under overpasses and but they had sleepers like an old train when you were riding in a train and you had a sleeper, you know, it kind of folded out top. Well, well, these are much like the Winnebago's and camper truck is this this 287 square foot unit essentially had, you know, two bedrooms that were both in a loft type of manner and they had a simple, you know, a ladder that instead of taking the space for a stairwell, they had a ladder that you'd see in a library somewhere, you know, where it hooked on so it was nice and safe, but you could go up at a slope rather than straight up and down and and so you had this space. Well, what I feel one of the things with the housing is honey, before you go on to that, let me let me just mention that there was a movie. Now, a couple of years ago, I think it won some awards and it was about people who live in communities of these trailers in the southwest, particularly, but in other places too, and they get together in the middle of nowhere and they gather and they all bring their trailers together and they talk to each other and it's a circuit. It's a circuit where they go from one encampment to another camp and the movie portrayed them as, you know, lower middle. They didn't have any money, most of them, but they wanted the outdoors. They wanted to get away from the manning crowd. And for that reason, they joined these communities, these encampments. It was a it was a whole broad community of encampments. They all knew each other from one encampment to another. And I mentioned this because I think that some people are going to buy the Winnebago's and go travel around the country. And it's an escape. It's a holiday. Other people are going to look for the outdoors and want the community that was in this movie. It was a good movie. And it portrayed the personality, which was the one part of our movie. But what I'm saying is that we have not focused on this movie focused on we have not focused on the fact that we have an alternative lifestyle out there, but people who don't want or cannot afford housing. And so they get these trailers. And this is the way it's going to be not for this week or for the summer, but for ever for them. Well, that exists right now at a fairly good scale in Los Angeles. You know, is that there are a lot of people living in their vehicles. And they simply move the vehicles around from place to place. Because the, you know, authorities want to shoot them out. And the neighborhood in which they choose to park, get tired of them pretty quickly or and try to get them out. For example, my oldest son, recently moved out of Los Angeles from the neighborhood where one of his concerns was the neighborhood was going downhill because it became one of the areas where these caravans of people chose to park. Yeah, so I mean, what do you have that's just another in my view, maybe not 100% but substantially. In my view, that is another expression of homelessness. A lot of them do not have the choice. And so what we have here is homelessness, houselessness, all over this country that did not exist 20 years ago, not out of these numbers. And then you look at Europe and you find the same thing. I don't think it exists so much in Asia because the government's an editor, you know, that I can permit that. But what we have is, we do have a lot of people in Hawaii houses. And, you know, I'm thinking that it's not just that we have failed to do these, you know, cosmetic changes, or give them money, or buy houses or rent houses to them, or establish, you know, real house communities is that we have an economic problem. You're into economics. There's something wrong here. How would you cast this from an economist's point of view? Well, I would think that the young generations in the United States and Canada expect too much. I'll use an example. One of the major areas in the city of Calgary, the northeast area, started off at a, you know, modest cost area compared to other areas of the city. Well, Canada's had in Calgary in particular, has had a huge amount of immigration from Asia, particularly the Middle East and India, Pakistan. And the housing in this area has gone at a bit of a premium. You know, and I was curious, what was this premium or how did that arise? And what it is is these Asian groups, particularly ones from the Middle East, they buy a house and will will pay more for it than than anybody else. But you get 10 of them or 12 of them living in the house. You know, they and and I when I thought about it, one of the interesting things in the Okanagan was a similar phenomenon is is when the people move from the Punjab into the Okanagan, and they were really good at farming, and that they would buy an orchard, but they would have, you know, a dozen people living in the house, all contributing income. And pretty soon, you know, when you have a household that with a lot of people all producing something, it's not too long before you can afford to buy the piece of land next door and repeat the process. And where a typical Canadian would say, Well, gee, you can't possibly have, you know, a seven year old daughter and a six year old son sharing the same bedroom. You know, like that, you know, and I think of when I grew up on what I call the the tougher side of the tracks, I can remember that my two sisters and my brother and I all shared a bedroom which had two, two bunk beds, one against each side of the room. And the aisle between the two bunk beds was was skinnier than the width of the bed. You know, so it was really about an eight foot wide room with, you know, two or three foot bunk beds and about two feet in between. But the length of the room was was only about a foot longer than the bunk beds. You know, and, and we thought when we moved to a house, the first time I'd ever lived in it in a single family home was 699 square feet. And we thought it was paradise. You know, and my brother had a 699 square feet with a with a full basement. Now, the basement was empty other than with the furnace. And, you know, my brother and I had a bed in the basement floor till, you know, took a year or two for my father built a bedroom there. So there's really a question of the standard that people are expecting. You know, the, you know, you know, this my example of this earlier, the native band buying the whole bunch of these mobile homes that were 287 square feet with the with the lofts. You know, they had a version that was, you know, three bedroom and it wasn't much bigger. But these were, you know, in US dollars, it'd be like $50,000. And you can you can go on Amazon and and you can buy a house using the technology that the Winnebago, the rich Winnebago is created where the house you can it comes by freight or by, you know, 18 wheeler and and yet it's like, you know, eight or 10 feet wide, but the house folds out. Now, that takes that takes us to this whole movement. I'll call it a movement because I think it's all over. First, the first thing we saw was tiny houses, where architects and contractors where designing houses really, really, really small. And the notion was it would be really, really cheap. And you could, you know, build a lot of them for not too much money and you could use them for on lists or you know, people who wanted who wanted to find a house that was small, they figured they could live in a small house. That was the first time it popped up. More recently, you know, she was Elon Musk designed a house that he could ship to your lot. And it was a sort of a prefabricated fold out kind of house. It wasn't it wasn't that that small, but it was still small. And in a day, you could set it up and it would be a pretty workable house. And it has a price on it. I don't remember the price. But the price was like $10,000, I think, not very expensive. And it was all set up and all you had to do is connect the plumbing, electricity, and so forth. And he had plenty of press on that. I don't know where that went or what you know, what which part of his empire he was using to design in and and manufacture it and distribute it. Now more recently, and this is really a surprise, somebody sent me an email with a page out of Amazon. And my goodness gracious, here's a house on Amazon, you can buy house on Amazon. And this house is going to cost you somewhere between 10,000 and 12 or 13,000. You know, like 10,000 is a simple version. And you want the premium version is going to cost you two or $3,000. Quite amazing. And this house comes to you. And I'm not kidding. In a cardboard box with a swoosh on the side, Amazon logo on the side, and it's delivered to your lot. And with a box cutter, you can take take the cardboard off. And with a screwdriver, you can take all those, you know, the sides and put them together again. And like the Elon Musk house, you got to connect it with, you know, plumbing, electricity and what have you. And then presto for roughly $10,000, you can have a, you know, a workable house. This is not a trailer. This is not a truck. This is not movable. But it is cheap. Okay, and, and I think that that's where we're going at. Let me add one other possibility. A few years ago, all the rage, and it began in Russia, my unfavorite country, with some kind of concrete mix. And it was a, it was a printed house, a printed house, so that at a given spot, right in the center, where this house was going to be, there would be a concrete pipe, and the pipe would be directed by a computer program. And it would drop concrete in certain places. And, and you just let it go, just let it do its thing. And 24 hours later, you had a concrete house. And this was actually being done. I think this is being done in Europe. And it's another possibility for a modular house that's cheap. And it doesn't require labor or union labor, except to hook it up. So I say movement, because I take all these things are really part of a movement. Do you agree that this movement has legs? Is this going somewhere? Not quickly. But yes, eventually, like one of the key problems is, is all of the regulations regarding housing, and the general concept of the public not in my backyard. For example, a mobile home park, a normal mobile home park where there's, you know, fairly good size mobile homes roll in, you know, and a lot of them even double wide. The technology is there to get those and deliver them at a pretty good price. But, but nobody wants a mobile home park in their neighborhood. And you have major problems with city zoning. They don't allow them. Well, one of the things that this new premier in British Columbia is as brought in is is how about every everybody in all of these new old neighborhoods, why not have changed the zoning so that you can have up to four, in some cases, and six in others, dwelling units on an individual lot. You know, well, the simplest idea was, was these pre manufactured units that somebody would call, you know, we don't want a mobile home. But if you dress it up a little bit, and it's not much bigger than a single car garage, you know, and you stick that in your backyard, and you can rent it for $1,000 a month, and it costs you, you know, less than $50,000. Well, that's pretty good rate of return. If you're renting it, you know, and, and so the activity in example, the city I live in with these, you know, second and third extra dwelling unit on a single lot. And in many cases, and knocked down the 1950 standard subdivision house that might have been, you know, below what young couples think is is a reasonable size house note is, you know, which I think is one of the key problems is, is they got to, you know, come around to the economic reality. But these, you know, knock down a 900 square foot bungalow and put, you know, four to six dwelling units on that unit on that piece of land, you know, if it's corner lot, it's kind of easy to put about about six dwelling units on it, all of which are fully separate, just like a row hoax. You know, this all reminds me of Singapore. In Singapore, if you emigrate to Singapore, A, you got to have a job, and they'll give you a job. They'll find something for you. And B, you got to have a house. And they will take part of your pay from the job. And you can actually buy the house you're invested in a house the day you arrive. It's really remarkable. Furthermore, in Singapore, if you have an old building, that's, you know, getting rotten, you have to tear it down. And you have to rebuild it. I don't know the, you know, entrepreneurial aspect to that. But the fact is, there are no real old buildings. Unless you've had some kind of license from the government to keep it as a historic building, you've got to tear it down. You can't keep it forever. And this is good. It's renewable. It's like the cars in Singapore. If your car is more than x years old, you can't use it anymore license, you've got to get a newer car. So it's this whole notion of renewal, renewable, renewable housing. And I think that feeds into a solution. Now you mentioned, Ken, that you know, the government was involved. And I feel that, you know, this is a huge social problem. My own theory about it is that the economies of the countries where you find homeless don't work. The cost of occupancy, the cost of land is too expensive. And nobody's regulate the cost of occupancy and the cost of New York used to have New York used to have rent control item. I'm not sure that it still does. So so that you landlord so you wouldn't be able to take advantage for old buildings. Suffice to say that if you have a social problem, that is systemic in a province, a state, in a city, in a country, you've got to get the government involved. It's not an endubri. It's not a matter of capital capitalism, solving the problem for the disadvantage. The government must be involved as a matter of humanity as a matter of equity. What do you think? Well, that's correct. Singapore has a great advantage. It only has one level of government. You know, you don't have, you know, a city government, a metropolitan area, you know, metro government, then a state or provincial government and then a federal government. And the Singapore housing to the first item was that new immigrant into Singapore, get with the job and the housing has a zero down payment. Well, it's illegal in Canada in the US to have zero down payment. You know, capitalism couldn't do it if they wanted to, you know, you're, you know, the all of the banks have regulations as to, you know, you shall have no mortgage that's greater than 75% of the value of the housing, unless it's a guaranteed mortgage, and then it still might only be 85 or 90%. And, and, and really, your point of having the governments work together and do the things properly, you do need the ability to solve down payments young people have pretty good incomes. They can make monthly payments, but they sure can't dig up the down payment. That's where, you know, all the baby boomers and people you and I that were born during the war, the late part of the depression. You know, what, what's the standard first thing in family conversations? How much did each of your kids need in subsidy to help them get their first housing? You know, and even when they're, they're upgrading, they're still having trouble with the down payments. So, so that, you know, that's a first area of solution is is really the financing. Well, you know, some of the housing stuff is a is a tougher crisis like the city I live in has has a project right now, I went and tried to take some photos of it, where it was starting to replace the one of the 10 cities, like we have these, you know, 10 encampments. And, you know, the weather here is not too terrific in the winter for somebody living in a tent. You know, it's almost inhumane that, that you'd have that. And so that the city by itself took a piece of land that it owned in the middle of an industrial area, and bought these little units, which were, let's see, they have a, a bathroom and a, and sleeping accommodation and a little bit of room, think of about 70 square feet, you know, like, think of an eight by eight room, or, you know, a 10 by six room kind of thing, or 10 by seven. And that's it. Well, these things were just pre manufactured, they rolled them out and stuck them on a property where they had another building in which, you know, there was common, common things, you know, that other things that they could go, almost like it was, you know, you know, a, you know, better, like a retirement home, a senior facility, community, community. Yeah, but it was, it was an effort to, to reduce the, you know, tent encampments, especially anyone near any businesses, you know, Well, I think I think you've hit on a really important point. If you can get people, and to go into a facility like that, then there are rules, and there are benefits in being there. And there, there's a community that will enforce the rules and provide the benefits. And it's like, and it's, it's, it's social benefits as well as, you know, economic benefits. So that's what we're missing. We don't have that anymore. When, when you have all these homeless people, they're not connected to anybody, anything. On the other hand, let me say that we're developing an alternative society of people in the trailers, people on the streets, people for years and years and years, find a way to live without homes, without housing. And this is a problem because it's hard to wean them off the street, they may not like the idea of being subject to rules, and being part of a community, and, you know, being cared for and taking care of others, being a neighbor, if you will. And so I think the longer we let people live on the streets, the more difficult it is to bring them in to bring them back. And, and for that reason, I think the government must act in broad strokes. And the government, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a carrot stick thing. A, you can't be on the street, like in so many places in Asia. And B, will make it worthwhile for you to come in, and be part of this community, and take one of the properties that we, you know, we use to create an arguably a home for you. But the government's not doing that. A lot of what the government does is, you know, A, it's, it's inefficient, that goes without saying. But but B, it's cosmetic. And it doesn't really reach the problem. To me, the problem is always an economic problem, if you have disparity this way. So if the government is going to do something, it has to act in large, in large statements. And that means for Canada, I think it should be federal. And for the US, I think it should be federal. I think there should be a consistency. So you don't have one city way better than the other city, and one set of rules that are way different. And I think there are common denominator solutions that could apply across the board. But we don't do that. And the reason is that almost people, they don't vote so much. And they don't make campaign contributions. And nobody cares about that really. And as well as this humane thing, where the legislature or the governor is trying to make it less of an eyesore for the others, for the middle class and the upper middle class, nobody wants a blue tent on his backyard. And so the board on its main street. Yeah, right. So I mean, and that's not much of a motivation, honestly, you have got to actually put the money in. We're going to solve this problem until we do systemic reform on the price of occupancy and carrot stick on the on the method of getting people back into the community. Yeah, if they're if they're living on the street, they're probably not working. And if they're not working, they're at best a drag on the economy and at worst, you know, a negative feature in the economy and in the society. I mean, this is really a serious problem. You know, in writing up the show, you call it a crisis. Well, it certainly is a crisis. And it's all this is likely to get worse. Until somebody steps it. And so many of the steps taken, including year away, are purely cosmetic. Let's throw a little money in this. Well, it's not going to solve it. If you were going to be heavy handed, you could solve certain things pretty quickly. In terms of the homeless on the street is you've got the drugs, and let's call it drug addiction, alcohol addiction or a combination and mental illness. Well, if you have government funded facilities to handle each of those, you know, you have a, you know, let's call it a not a mental hospital, but a mental home. And you build a special purpose facility, you got to have all the government financing to put it together, you got to have the government financing the people that run it. Well, then you're going to have to be heavy handed and pick up the people on the street, you know, when they, you know, say, we won't let you have your tent here, we won't let you have it there, we won't let you have it anywhere. But here's a room you can have it in this facility. You know, at some point, you got to get gathered them up, whether it's against their will or not. For the general public good and for actually the good of the person involved, you've gotten off a lot of entities like the Salvation Army that stand on their head to help people. You know, they have these shelters where they come in only at night to sleep. But you know, and they also have ones where they serve meals. But how do you get government financing to facilitate so the Sally Ann can do twice as much? Well, you know, I'm Sally Ann, that's cute. Now, it seems to me that I don't want projects, as you know, the Chicago Projects are no place anybody wants to live. I would like to set up a system where entrepreneurs, investors are, you know, they're encouraged, they're incentivized to build these projects you're talking about. And so likewise, that likewise, nonprofits, not profits, could also be incentivized. Well, that Lane housing or backyard housing project or system in British Columbia is exactly that, you know, but instead of being, you know, your super entrepreneur like an Elon Musk, or, you know, lesser scale versions of, you know, major real estate developers or something, just this is Joe Schmoe with his single family house that's, you know, at retirement age and could use the extra income or is not doesn't have a garden as big as the size of the backyard as kids are gone. And they could use the income. You know, the that it's a real use of that. But I agree with you exactly is, is capitalism is a is a magic method of accomplishing things as long as the rules steer it in the right way. Yes. Pam, you know, let me add true that the government has to be involved in getting them out of this house. You know, we talk and governments usually talk in terms of we're going to get them in the housing, and we're going to let them stay, we're going to encourage them to stay forever. No, it shouldn't be forever. It should be a bridge to somewhere else. It'd be a bridge for you know, you have the people go out and get good jobs, and then they can afford their own house and so forth. So you have to provide this alone the whole spectrum of housing. So so the next level, if you will, after the tiny house after the project house is available. And it's not that expensive. And they could become middle class. And they can live in a middle class neighborhood. So the idea of just building housing, putting them in the housing, and letting them stay there forever, bad idea. There has to be a dynamic for this. Don't you think? Yes. I agree with you fully. I was expecting you to continue for this. Oh, wow, there, but well, I think this is this could be done by incentivization tax incentivization with entrepreneurial urge and somebody would have to sit in a room and figure out how we're going to solve the crisis because crises have a way of perpetuating themselves. And in this case, the crisis crisis, it's so broad, and so deep, and so related to, you know, essential elements of our economy, our system, if you will, that that we really must end to it. I don't think the government will, for that matter, people who vote in governments and participate as government officials, you know, understand how corrosive this is. Let me pass to one other thing that's kind of related. And that is here in Hawaii, if you want to get a permit on a new house, takes you years. There's no bloody reason for that, except, you know, they don't want to work. The guys in the planning and permitting department, they don't want to work. Or maybe they want to have special, special rates, you know, if you want an expedited treatment of the permit, you know, you could pay extra. What is that about? Why should it be expedited rates? What's that for? Who's benefiting? Who's who's has to pay this? If you're not rich, you can have an expedited rate. That's ridiculous. And then to find that planning and permitting, they're taking cash in envelopes in the way of bribes. That is outrageous. So you'll have the delay of the permitting. You have the inequity of special rates. And, and then you have bribery on top of all of that. How can you build a community for homeless people for anybody with that? You know, I don't think they let that happen in Singapore. I think the penalties would be really, really, really stiff. But we don't do that. Well, I thought Hawaii had talented lawyers. I know I say that facetiously, since I know you're a lawyer, and there you were at one time, practiced a lot of law. But I think, you know, the best example in the United States of giving free enterprise a hand is is Nevada. You know, Nevada has less rules and less problems. Now, Nevada is not without, you know, some corrupt things. But generally, you know, free enterprise is pretty freewheeling there. And, and in my mind, there's, there's almost no industry, certainly not with the number that the real estate development and your industry has is is entrepreneurial skill. You know, if you give, you know, carrots and sticks really, really will work for anything to do with housing and development. Well, you've got to get your planning authorities out of the way. Well, this is this new premier in British Columbia, he's basically, you know, stomping on on all of the municipal planning and subdivision authorities is just, you know, this provincial program will only work if you in these cities. And you say, Well, why didn't you come my city? Well, we don't like how long it takes you to get a building permit. Fair enough. Or, you know, it's really just just pretty strong will provincial government, they're doing it without much help from the feds. You know, they keep trying to get federal help. But of course, it's a different party, you know, it's like the, you know, the state being a Republican in the Fed being a Democrat, you know, or the equivalent. And they don't want to cooperate too much because there might be another election somewhere. Well, speaking of politics, you have to factor in the unions, because the unions have political moments here, lots of influence. The unions want to build it slowly, tediously using old systems. The unions don't want to accept new technologies. I'm sure the unions are not happy about tiny houses or modular housing, or houses that come in a box from Amazon. They want to take their time. They don't want to use the technology. But I think technologies, you know, in this governmental effort we talk about, and this immersion to the effort, one of the things is to respect, identify and deploy the newest technology. For example, in Hawaii, we have a thousand people from the fire in Maui, there's still a no-tell rooms and it's a temporary situation, but it's been a while. And at the same time, we have a thousand units out there that are not, they're not being rented to them. So for whatever reason, whether it's vacation rentals or people asking for too much money for, you know, taking advantage of the situation, bottom line is that we have to have technology that matches the supply and the demand. So if I need a house or should need a house, I should be able to go on a website and have any number of choices of houses. And if I'm a landlord and I want to rent the house, I shouldn't have a website that will, you know, reach out into the marketplace and help me select tenants, good tenants, not tenants from hell, but good tenants. And so I don't think we're using that. I don't think we're using the modular technology. I think the unions are standing in the way and government, government has a problem understanding technology. It has got to adopt every kind of technology, you know, in terms of rentals and construction. You know, the federal government in this country is not so limited, that they have to abide by local politics so much, or abide by local unions. And they and they have better, better results, better techniques and construction, better equipment. And so that's, we've got to get on that. And we've got to make sure that politics and the anti technology influence doesn't get in the way. I don't see that same problem with unions in British Columbia and we have a pretty unionized province. And I question your idea of technology and where technology can come into the housing area. You know, one example where I think technology is important is the evolution of heat pumps. You know, so you can have a pretty simple heat pump that, you know, an air, air heat pump or air intake heat pump where it does both the heating and the air conditioning and you don't need any ducts in the house. Now there's a major, major cost saving in terms of the capital cost and the operating cost. Now tell me other technology that you're going to apply to the housing that a 21 year old new housewife would consider, you know, part of her house. Well, in Hawaii, you have, you know, it gets hot. Okay. And you have to have building materials that will ameliorate that you have to have architectural designs that will let the air flow through and new housing, you know, often the architects will adopt these systems, but sometimes not. And in the sky, you know, the big, big skyscraper condo buildings, which should be used like they are in Singapore, you know, for homeless people, for people who can afford real expensive housing, they should be there. And if you talk to an architect who studies engineering and who cares about this, you will find a certain level of frustration, because these systems are not being adopted. But let me say that the material science is very valuable. Architectural designs for air flow, very valuable. And you can take a house that is would be very hot using traditional message, and you can make it much cooler. That's correct. But you didn't answer by question, you, you know, strongly said, you know, there ought to be more technology applied to solve the housing problem. And I would say, what are you talking about? There's there's no technology out there that isn't being applied. Housing is a very, very difficult thing to bring technology to bear on. I mean, the if you're building something in a factory, it's more efficient than if you're building it out on the street, you know, to some extent. But if you took a simple row house project, if it's large enough, it's basically like inside a factory anyhow. And housing, if you think of the mechanical parts of a housing unit, you know, you can't have a ordinary wall and say, well, everybody can have a simple wall. Well, how do you get the electric wiring there? And how do you get plumbing? Like if you build the wall as a separate piece? Well, how do you connect, you know, the water pipe or the sewer pipe or the electric wiring to that wall? And gee, it's got to connect to a floor and it's got a ceiling light. And so you've got a process. Now, the government requires that to put in electrical, you need to have an electrical certification. And you need a plumbing certification, and you need a heating certification. You know, and when you get certifications, you get unions, you know, and unions, I think unions are great things. Well, why don't you use, why don't you use common plans? Why don't you have it, you know, this community is going to have this kind of house and here's the common denominators, and it's all pre certified, it's all pre approved. Why do you have to go house by house months at a time just getting approval? If you can say, here, we have 100 houses, it's all going to be the same and, you know, plumbing electrical, whatever, it's going to be the same. So how about put a stamp on it? And we don't do that. We go nice by house. What do you mean? My brother and I did that 40 years ago. But we, you know, we built the same unit probably, you know, 500 times, you know, and, you know, you'd, you know, you may do them in projects, you know, but we started with little we projects, you know, like five or six units and then eight units or 10 units, but, you know, and, you know, you put it, pass it through the city hall and, you know, that it's the same unit with the same plan, the same, you know, you don't need to get a whole bunch of re certifications of things, you've already got them. And, like the development industry can adapt to whatever the rules are, just give them a bloody chance and they will perform. Give them a chance. Take the obstacles away. Take people who don't want to use the technology away. People who take bribes, you want them away. And ultimately, and I don't know, this probably doesn't exist in, you know, in Chicago, you know, the land, the land is simply too expensive. And that, and the cost of the land is passed on right down to the rent. And so you're going to find a way to do land reform if you want people in the city to be able to afford reasonable housing. And reasonable housing is like, it's like the framework of their lives. It's like the framework of the economy, you know, they used to say, you know, so, so as, as Detroit goes, as General Motors goes, so goes the nation. And then they used to say, well, as cheap energy, you know, renewable energy goes, so goes the nation. And now I would say, as the cost of housing goes, so goes the nation. You could quote me, Ken. Well, you have to slow down your immigration. You know, and U.S. immigration is, is way, way less proportionally than, than Canada has. And that's a major problem with our housing. You know, it also, in particular students, you know, they come with a, you know, you seem to be able to get into Canada or the United States on a student visa pretty easily. You know, well then, you know, in Canada, we've recently found that, gee, they come on a student visa and they're only taking one course. You know, and they've got a job and, you know, five years later somebody says, gee, they're still on a student visa or they get about it and they never follow up. However, the housing crisis doesn't stand alone. You have to solve the mental illness, the drug stuff for at the lowest end. And you also have to have a way of solving the down payments for, for young people. And I think Singapore's example is a great one. You know, like you get, you know, you pick college graduates, start with them because they're the most capable and probably smart enough to understand it. We'll let you get a zero down payment house if you have a job out of university and, and A, B, C, D or whatever. You know, oh, you got to connect all the dots and I totally agree with you about that. We got to go now, Ken, we're, we're, we're at a time. But let's continue this. Let's, I would like to discuss with you our relative immigration rules and regulations at some point in time and I'm looking forward to that. Dr. Ken Rogers, retired businessman, entrepreneur in a Kelowna, British Columbia, joins us to discuss the view from the north. Thank you so much, Ken. Aloha from Canada.