 Too often, the media focuses exclusively on the violent and tumultuous crises occurring daily around the world. And with clickbait exploiting negative social events for the sake of increased ratings and revenue, there are few incentives for media outlets to focus on the good that is happening in the world every day. Even media channels dedicated to peacebuilding and sustainable development remain focused on the ills of corruption, war, and conflict rather than the efforts of peacebuilders within those conflicts. But peace talks too. And with this show, the voice of peace will be amplified. Mr. Rogers is often quoted in saying that, when crisis strikes, look for the helpers. This show intends to do just that. Every day, right here in Vermont and around the U.S., there are thousands of engaged citizens actively building peace. We plan to amplify their efforts and we seek to develop a platform where peacebuilders all over can connect with each other across social boundaries and industry sectors to collaborate for the benefit of our collective community. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Peace Talks. And today we are meeting with Jason Van Nest. He is an architect, a professor at New York Tech, and the founder and CEO of Build With Logic. Glad to have you on the show, Jason. It's a pleasure to join you and your audience. Thank you. No, I'm really delighted to be talking with you because I think your perspective on all of these issues of peacebuilding and development and how we engage with our communities is just squarely in line with a lot of what I think you believe in. And so I'm just excited to have you here. How about we kick it off with, tell us about yourself. Tell us what you're doing right now. Sure. So I'm a licensed architect, stay in New York, moved to Vermont almost a decade ago now. And I teach architecture, mostly architectural technologies, New York Institute of Technology, but remotely. And while I've had some extra time with my research, after practicing for a few years in the private sector, building homes in Vermont and really getting a comprehensive look at the housing crisis we face in our communities, I have struck out to Found, a modular building company based in southern Vermont. We're focusing on bringing all of the sort of manufacturing wisdom that we've developed in the say automotive or airline aerospace sector. We're bringing that into cure some of the issues that we see in construction, the inefficiencies. Yeah. So let's let out for a second. Maybe just if you could tell us like, you know, what build with logic is or logic building systems, just a little more directly, you know, is what is the primary function of the company? Well, so we've noticed that there's a lot of problem getting tradesmen onto job sites for housing, right? And so we're coming to market with modular solutions for kitchens, bathrooms and utility rooms, all the sort of complicated tech core of a home. And our solution, you can just wheel right into a job site, you know, just a man with a pallet jack. Bring it onto the first, second floor, third floor. We're aiming because we see an urgent need, we're aiming at multifamily housing and helping, helping folks either in low income housing situations or in missing middle housing situations, essentially springboard their kitchens, bathrooms and, you know, utility rooms so that they're starting almost the 50 yard line when it comes to fitting out the building. Okay. So like you basically bring completely finished kitchens or bathrooms or utility rooms right to the job site and all they have to do is connect the pieces. Do their plug and play and the technical tradesmen at the job site have to solve the problem of getting all that plug and play branch wiring and branch plumbing that's already in place stem down to the utility core of the building. And that's it. That's it. How much faster can you build a house with this kind of a process? So our focus is on multifamily housing. So you know, we estimate that we could make a 16 to 20 month single family housing construction cycle get down to 12 months, but our focus is on the 12 to 14 month cycle of multifamily housing. So this is like condos and you know, the such. And what when we're trying to get townhouses, condos and apartments to, to market usually those are in like a 12 to 14 month timeframe and we can get that down to eight to nine months. Wow. So you're three to four months. Yeah. You're taking off a considerable amount of time in the construction process. Absolutely. Well, okay. So you can, you can build these things a lot faster. Can you speak a little bit to how this will, you know, directly benefit Vermonters, you know, from, from changing to onsite construction to more of a manufactured housing module? Like what, what is, what is the real benefit here? Sure. So I just want to be careful about some, some language. Manufactured housing is a full house coming down the road. Okay. Well, we traditionally call it double wide or single wide. Yeah. We're not participating in that marketplace, but in the modular marketplace where, you know, city governments would use municipal, municipal code to dictate, you know, hey, we need to inspect your kitchen and bathroom and they can onsite. Your larger question though was, you know, what kind of influence I think are we trying to, to bring to this, not just marketplace, but community and by reducing the amount of time it takes to build multifamily housing and coming to market with a solution that doesn't require a bunch of tradesmen to coordinate, we can both come in and cost less to build the same collection in kitchen's bathrooms and take less time, which means that there are fewer resources that communities need to dedicate to realize the same amount of housing. So we're pretty excited about essentially creating more stakeholders and more community access to low and missing middle housing. If I may add, we actually consider ourselves a bit of a workforce development. Interesting. Yeah. It's something you normally hear in like housing market conversations, workforce development, but you have talked with me about it a little bit and I think you're winning me over, you know, that this is really more about workforce development than it is about housing. Can you kind of spell that out for the audience as well? Well at a sort of grand level, we're trying to push more of the sort of work that has to go on at a construction job site into a factory. So at a big level, that is developing more manufacturing in the sort of community cores of Vermont, like what we're trying to do in southern Vermont, and push more wisdom, technical ability and paychecks towards the higher manufacturing jobs that we'd all like to see in our communities. At a sort of more granular level, I think anyone who's tried to sort of get a toilet unplugged or unclogged or some extra wiring, maybe a new light installed in the last ten years, you know, a lot of the tradesman's trucks running around our cities right now have, you know, addresses for different states, Massachusetts folks are in high demand in southern Vermont, New Hampshire and New York folks in northern Vermont. So what we've unfortunately seen for a long time in our Vermont community is a bit of a brain drain, where we raise really outstanding children that realize that there are a lot more greener fields to raise money and have a career than Vermont. Yeah. And as a result, I'm really sorry to see it, because my own five-year-old is going to be facing these issues shortly. So we're really trying to address the workforce development problem. We just don't have enough tradesmen that are running around Vermont. And so by opening a manufacturing facility where tradesmen can train, hey, let's install a toilet five times this morning in five different modules, those tradesmen that don't feel like manufacturing is right for them, hopefully will have a vibrant career. Where I live in Brattleboro, the average housing stock was studied, it was 74 years old in 2021, so the average housing stock in Brattleboro today is closer to 77 years old. That's a lot of toilets that someone is going to have to renovate, unclog, and whatnot. And we'd love to be the training facility, the ideal cooperative for the trade schools in our area, so that students get that experience. Yeah. I mean, I definitely see the value in that for communities. I think that bringing trades back to Vermont and showing the respect to those types of professions that I think they deserve is really, it's important work. And on the other side, you're also talking about resolving some of these housing issues that we're having with reduced cost to housing, allowing more people to participate in what has often been considered the American dream of having your own home and being able to be involved in community in that way. So I love all of this, and I think I want to dig into some of these points a little bit further, but before we get into that, I want to understand where you started with this. What got you started on this journey, and how did you end up in the place that you're at now? Sure. In a nutshell, I tried to be an architect and I failed. The first time I tried to become an architect, I got a Bachelor of Science from Georgia Tech. Okay. I'm a senior student, and I came to New York City and didn't have enough educational background to qualify to sit for the exams. So after 18 months of trying to do the New York City lifestyle, I just actually burned out, sold all my belongings, hiked the Appalachian Trail, at least just from Atlanta back to New York. And I learned out there in the wilderness, really all the things internally that were holding me back. And then the simple act of setting up your tent every night, oh, is it going to rain? Should I put it up in this bluff of trees? I became the world's best site planning professor accidentally, right? Waking up in your wet tent, it's like, okay, figure out where the best sites are. I love that. So when I came back to New York, and then eventually went through grad school, I was certain, architecture was my path, and I was blessed to land in a class in grad school that taught programming. I didn't even qualify for the class. I was too young, so I volunteered to be the TA, just because I was so urgently needing to learn how to make the tools that designers use to design housing. What do they need at what point? Yeah, kind of designing the design process. That's exactly right. I wrote a wave, luckily and professionally, where architects had transitioned from drawing with CAD, which is kind of, I think everyone understands roughly, drawing other drawings by hand in the computer, to making a model, like a 3D model, exactly, a digital 3D model, and then having that thing draw all your drawings for you. So for 10 years, I was running with my little briefcase on the tenure track at New York Check, but also flipping architecture firms from one workflow, which is your responsible for every line, to another workflow, which is, let me show you how to make a model, think 3D, how you lay up the walls, how you lay up the modules, how you lay up everything is a preview of how this thing will be constructed, and let's think holistically together. You were really a part of that transformation of kind of trying to lead the industry into more of a 3D digital design space rather than, you know, using technology that is, you know, from the 60s and 70s, right? Exactly right. Yeah, how was that experience for you? Like, what did you get out of that? So, I mean, from a professional point of view, what I realized quickly was that we as architects are making a product model. And professionally, the folks that kept hiring me back from my consulting experience were in the modular industry. Oh, if Jace helps us build one, you know, digital model, we can make 80, right? Which is like a huge return on their investment. But from a sort of social point of view, I was lucky enough to have the privilege of sort of saying the same thing over and over again and realizing that we are moving from a representational technology where you have an idea and you draw the idea and that thing is the medium where you communicate it. Sure, yeah, you get to kind of share it with people on paper. Right, and how good a drawer you are. It's like how well you can communicate your idea. Exactly, and what we're transitioning still in the field of architecture is from representation to simulation. Interesting. So here's a 3D model. I can even time how it sort of appears, and that'll be a simulacrum or a simulation of how it's constructed. Interesting. And if we move this, we can get immediate feedback, right? So we can figure out, oh, the volume of the building changed, the heat loads changed, oh, we can move some windows and now the cooling requirements have changed in this room. That's fascinating. So you can really figure out all of those core issues that contractors and construction folks are trying to deal with on the ground in real time, like in a virtual space. And nine months before they tackle it. Yeah, yeah, so that they're not having to try and solve these problems on site. Right. Once the plans have already been laid and they're supposed to follow the roadmap. And the materials are ordered. Yeah. And you can't change this trust because it's coming down Route 9 tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, so we moved into, I mean, architect's drawings are always called plans, but the practitioners that really understood the power of this realized that we became fortune tellers, right? Not just people who plan, but people who know, oh, there's a clash here. And if we don't solve it in time, you guys are gonna have a terrible problem in a few months. Yeah, no, I actually am getting into GIS and like geospatial architecture design in general, just more for development, you know, of larger community spaces. And I see a lot of parallels in the same kinds of opportunities that I'm trying to identify and explore, right? You know, because it's really difficult to do effective planning in development spaces in general without some kind of visual representation that can help you to suss out those more critical questions. This is excellent. Yeah, if you can't see a problem, then you can't solve that problem, right? And so, you know, I remember in Fast Food Nation, the author writes about how the McDonald's corporation would buy flyover imagery from, you know, planes in the 70s. They were trying to do GIS. Yeah, right? And they were like planning, okay, well, in 20 years, this is gonna clearly be the area of growth. Let's start buying real estate now. And we all now have that power with simple GIS. Yeah. And just for the audience's sake, GIS is a global imaging system. If you look at a Google map, you're using GIS. That's the free tool that we're all very familiar with. GPS is based on GIS technologies. And the advancements in that field is allowing us to do a lot of what Jason is talking about in a much more granular way, which I think is fascinating. It really helps us to save resources and resolve issues. Way before we start construction. And become astronauts, right? Like the common theme of astronauts that go to space, see the pale blue dot and come back, is that, oh, we're all in this together with that kind of holistic view that we get in these platforms. We really don't see the boundaries between communities. We see the communities. Yeah. Yeah. Wow, that's fantastic. So you really fell into this space of creating these 3D modules and using that new technology to advance the field of architecture. How did that get you to your company now? Where was that aha moment? Was it back on the trails of the Appalachian? Somewhere in between, how did you get here? I think we're still a step behind that. Yeah, well, there's a book that really details it that I admit is only about one third done. But, you know, why does anyone sit down to write a book? Because they're trying to find the words to describe something really important, right? And what I found myself doing with architects time and time again, and then in the studios that I teach at New York Tech, was saying, what are the kind of buildings that are now accessible to us now that we can simulate building growth, that we didn't have access to? Now, there's some answers out there that I think we've all seen with the buildings with potato chip roofs and the swoopy this and the glossy that. And that's a real impressive and important part of the architectural discourse. But it's really the concentration of capital for showing off. OK. And that's exciting to me, I must admit. But the other kind of buildings that are accessible to us, because we have this technology, are less expensive, but they're the same building because we can find it. And they're higher quality, because now we can simulate the issues that this building will face in 10, 20, 30. Not intuit them, because, you know, there's some gray haired architect in the back looking over plans, interpreting them. It has the experience and kind of like this background knowledge of like, hey, I've ran into problems X, Y and Z and these types of issues. And so we need to plan for that. Now it's like, actually, let's simulate this. Exactly. Let's see it in real time. And you probably know as well as anyone that experience is invaluable, but it's also sometimes our biggest impediment in that, you know, the assumptions we bring to a problem sometimes blind us to solutions that aren't available. Absolutely. So having that sort of external dialogue with the simulation, I expect this to be 127 play. Oh, it's 133, right? Like where were my assumptions wrong and is the tool wrong? And then once we've got those two things figured out, what new knowledge do I have to bring, you know, a new kind of building to the table? Yeah, it's, you know, this makes me think about, you know, just the kind of revolution, you know, that we're really taking a look at here. You know, like when we're talking about changing from paper to virtual and then transitioning from that virtual space back into the physical, you know, that that's a really powerful concept to be able to, it's kind of a learning tool, right? It's an opportunity to just have continuous learning and more of an entrepreneurial mindset about how you're building things, which I really love. And it makes me think about this gentleman, Jeremy Rifkin, who talks about the Third Industrial Revolution and how those things change over. He, you know, it's, and I think he explores the idea of zero marginal cost societies, where, you know, he identifies that as we've transitioned more into the digital space, a lot of industries have had to reinvent themselves because they're seeing their marginal costs come almost to zero, right? You know, we look at Napster and the music industry and like, you know, we're not selling CDs anymore. You can replicate that song a million times over for almost no money, right? You're kind of talking about a similar principle with your idea in the architecture space, where you can literally replicate both circumstances for different modular parts of a home for almost zero marginal cost. Is that fair to say? Excuse me. Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of overlap here in Rifkin's thinking. There's some places where we'd like to think differently, but excuse me, there's places we'd like to benefit from this. What you're talking about with marginal costs, I think rear them, it becomes a carrying cost in the design industry because risk is what we're always abetting. The way that the design industry has sort of codified itself in the last 100 years is to identify folks that have passed some sort of professional licensure, and they're the ones that are authorized to kind of, with their license, weigh all these... All the risk. Yeah, all these influences and then say, this is the amount of risk we should take, you know, for simple things like fire code, like, hey, we need another exit here. And what clients actually are interested in, which is like, you know, how can I make sure I don't go over budget? What decisions can I make to make sure that in 15 years, my energy bill isn't crazy? Yeah. So the design trades are trying to reduce their marginal cost, mainly by hedging risk. And when you literally have a crystal ball sitting on your desk, you have this simulation of how this is all going to fold out. You're able to take more confident and specific risks because you can see how it's going to play out in many ways, and you have almost in many ways an unfair advantage in the playing field. Yeah. Because the contractor is trying to realize something that's never been seen before, that building. Yeah. But you've seen it before. Yeah. It's been sitting in your computer for six months. For six months? Well, it totally, it fundamentally changes the conversations that we have about development and about building things, I feel, right? You know, because we're able to reduce those risks and lower the marginal cost, we can have more informed conversations before buildings start going up that can assuage or address the needs within a community more effectively, right? I think it's a tool that allows us to bring in that community insight in a much more direct way and say, well, this is what the community is saying they need. People are saying they're concerned about, let's put it in the model and see if it works. This is great. I think that what you're saying happens two different ways. So if it's 1982, and we're thinking about putting 16 units of housing somewhere, well, the organization that's putting up that money, a million dollars to build this housing, is pretty much going to want to hedge as much risk as possible by reducing the number of stakeholders, right? Well, I have a design team, and I have the government overview, and that's all I want. Yeah, because anything more is just time and money. Right, and who knows if we have hearings on this, what the community will ask for critique or demand. Now, when you have a crystal ball sitting here, you say, OK, well, why not widen out the stakeholders, the circle of stakeholders? We can still manage with what we've got and the limited resources we can bring to this to entertain more stakeholder viewpoints and possibly make new sources of revenue, new sources of income, or simply be a better community partner for the next developments coming down the line. So by reducing the risk of increasing the tributary of stakeholders, what we're really doing is empowering more voices and at the same time, assuaging fears of all the folks involved. Well, and I think it also creates a level of transparency that is often considered too risky when you've invested millions of dollars into a development project and you're like, wow, the money's already spent, we're shovel ready, we're starting to break ground. The last thing you want is to have issues come up that extend that timeline. But at the same time, from a community perspective, that's often when communities get involved, right? That's often when communities are all of a sudden aware of the fact that a new building is coming up, right? So, but like with this kind of crystal ball, which is a GIS or three-dimensional model of a building site, you can have those conversations well in advance with the community and that incorporates the needs of the community that provides space for the community to say, yeah, this is how we can benefit from these types of development projects and that creates, to me, community wealth, right? That allows the stakeholders not just to participate but to be engaged in a process that allows them to build wealth in their community and be more active participants in the development process without limiting or obstructing those plans moving forward. Yeah, this is exciting. I'd like to expand exactly what you said with another dimension. A mentor once handed me a coin, right? And this mentor said, on one side of the coin is trust. On the other side of the coin is control. They're really the same thing. And any situation you're in, if you don't trust the situation, you're gonna strive for more control over the situation. And if you do trust the situation, that's the circumstances you're gonna be able to release control. Since we're both parents, I think we understand the whole spectrum of parenthood is this. Now, the reason I bring it up is because the actual wealth within a community, I believe, is trust, right? And when you establish as a developer a track record of being someone who responds on the third, fourth, and fifth project to community needs, you're not making just a bank of housing or a real estate portfolio. You're making a relationship. It's a relationship founded on trust. The grist of that relationship is communication, open communication. And the wealth that we all share is the ability to not have to control everything and to be able to focus on what we want because we trust what else is going on in the community. Yeah, well, yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself. Trust, for me, that translates to social capital. Exactly. That translates to, can we work together for mutual benefit, right? Like taking that right down to that question. If you could answer yes to that question, then there's enough trust to start developing some kind of culture around that, right? And through that process, then when we get into things like, how do we utilize our natural capital or our natural resources in industrial ways? What you're talking about today is really industrial capital. Like, how can we use that trust and the social and cultural capital we've developed to inform the ways that we build out our industrial capital? The ways that we use the resources we can generate to really facilitate a process for community wealth, a process where, you know, businesses, nonprofits, governments, community citizens can all be a part of that conversation in dialogue to build something that they all care about. You know, I think that that really kind of brings down to the ground exactly the kinds of ideas that will help many communities that are struggling move forward. And that's why I'm so excited about what you're doing with Build With Logic. Thanks, yeah. Yeah, we're beyond excited. Can't sleep at night. So tell me, like, you know, this is, I think we've landed, this is how you got here, right? You know, like, what are you doing in the community right now? Like, what does this look like right now in the moment for you? So you had mentioned both social capital and cultural capital. So right now we're in the founding stage and we're finding capital, now financial capital, in order to complete the buildup of this factory in southern Vermont and simultaneously identify the multifamily housing projects that we will begin to contribute to. And what's kind of beautiful about what you said is that it's really a cycle. Yeah. We're finalizing our outreach to investors. We'll be establishing the last details of the plant ideally in this calendar year. And then beginning the relationships we just talked about just, you know, four minutes ago in order to build more social capital, in order to build more cultural capital to expand the plant. Yeah. You know, our idea of success is not simply how many kitchens, bathrooms and utility rooms that we're serving but we have a metric in our own documents for how many interns we've taken from the local area of trade schools and for us that would be River Valley Tech, right? And the trade school attached to the Brattleboro High School. So if we're not training up the next generation then what are we doing here, right? Exactly. This has got to be an educational facility as quickly as it is going to be an industrial one. Well, I really love that approach to business development in general. You know, building connections with institutions and, you know, organizations that are already doing this kind of work, that are already trying to facilitate workforce development that are already interested in trying to solve the housing crisis or bring the cost of housing down so that it's more equitable for a diverse set of populations. Like finding ways to connect with those organizations and those institutions as a business owner is important. And I think that that creates a level of sustainability that transcends like some kind of, like your standard business cycle. That's where we see that cyclical process of, you know, some people would call this a virtuous cycle of development. Other, you know, I look at it more like a cyclical wealth, you know, because you're building a business that is generating new capital in a way that other organizations can participate in. And it's that collective participation that creates impact and shared value that wasn't there before. Brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, we agree and interpret that three different ways in our own formation. The first is that, you know, we're not interested in being a dyed-in-the-wool kind of the manufacturing that left America's shores in the 70s and 80s. And so in our founding documents, we're looking at an ESOP model, right? We're employee ownership. What's ESOP? Yeah, can you? What's the acronym? Well, just to make it easier than the acronym, it's a way that the employees can both, of any business, right? Can essentially be the directors of that business. I see. And the owners and profit share that business. So they have ownership over the profits involved. Exactly, yeah. And so this ESOP model I think is highly appropriate because that is what helps businesses survive the business cycle, right? When everybody's in for the sacrifices that have to be made and people just don't seemingly get randomly laid off. Well, and it's rooted in the community, you know? Exactly. When you have that kind of model in place, you're not gonna pick up and move to China, right? Right, right, right. You're there for the long haul and it becomes a community institution. It becomes something that the community can utilize to reinvent themselves if necessary or to have that sustainable growth over the long term. And I love that. And it really speaks to the fact that this is not just about raising money and putting a plant on the map, right? It's really about creating a space where everyone is receiving value from the operation. Right, right. So it's not about, if you will, financial capital, right? And that being the driver but about being and building social capital and about being and building cultural capital in that this is a learning institution, this is a research institute at some level like how can we improve ourselves, right? And then how can the relationships we build with the trade schools, with the tradesmen in the community and with the needs that our communities have for housing be synthesized into one focal point of mutual benefit. Yeah, yeah, I love it. And it, I think that we've talked a little bit about John Abrams and how that's kind of tied in to this concept that you're reflecting on here. You mentioned to me in earlier conversations, John Abrams quote, what kind of cathedral are we building? Right, right. What does that mean to you? So that is a wonderful, the companies we keep is the book that's really helped us form our idea of this ESOP model. And then I think it's chapter eight, is the- Is the title? Yeah. And the challenge is how can this be a, not just a business, but a long serving focal point in the community for how social capital, how all kinds of capital are focused and then mutually shared. Yeah. The other really exciting part of the book for us is where he tackles the problem of craft. So the industrial, from an architectural perspective, the industrial revolution explodes and there are these writers in the 1880s like John Ruskin because sitting saying, what does this tin that we just keep stamping and then putting up on our ceilings and roofs that has no soul, how is this a challenge to architecture? And the truth is, I don't think it was, it was a challenge to craft. Meaning simply, if we endeavor in manufacturing pursuits where the same sad widgets are made over and over again, how are we growing, how are we not just manipulating each other and benefiting from the labor of others? And the challenge in this book is really to imbue and infuse in an ESOP model the decentralized ability for each stakeholder in the company to seek a higher level of craft and what they're doing, what they want to contribute to. Fascinating. So from picking a project and saying, do you want to work on this project? And what do you want to improve about what we did about it last time? And then how can we empower you to make those improvements? And how can we help you highlight the improvements you made and profit from those improvements you made? It's not just pulling the handle over and over and over again or installing the same widget over and over and over again. It's about being better thinkers. It's about being craftsmen, not just of the process, but of the product. Yeah, and it really brings that dignity and respect back to the trades that we were talking about earlier. It really kind of, it makes me think about Mike Rowe who did dirty jobs. There you go, yeah, yeah. He did this phenomenal TED talk where he talks about his aha moment. He'd been doing these dirty jobs for like 200 episodes and he finally had this transition of thinking about, how do we actually think about these dirty jobs? How do we look at the trades and the types of work that is essential for our communities in a way where it can be presented with dignity, where we can have that quality of craftsmanship brought back to the workforce in a genuine way. Right. To me that's really important because I think a lot of what people are feeling is an alienation from their work, an alienation from the things they create, right? I totally agree. I think the middle place where craftsmanship is lost is in a product. So 100 years ago, 200 years ago, if you and I need a pair of shoes, we would hire a tradesman or a craftsman, named a cobbler, that was his or her profession, and they would make a pair of shoes and we would judge them and their abilities with the quality of our shoes. Today that's not how we buy shoes. No. We buy products or like footwear products and we identify our values not with that person or their abilities, but with a brand and those brand values. I buy Patagonia X or I buy Walmart Y or whatever it is. That sort of transition from trade to product meant that we started identifying some jobs, a micro called dirty jobs, as just these things that created these products that were detached from our consumer experience and thus lost their dignity. We just fail to appreciate all these huge septic systems and sewer systems that make our lives healthy and easy. And infinitely more convenient, right? Because we can't see them and we can't see the product of their labor. Yeah. And so I'm very sensitive, I think, to that maintaining and highlighting that continuity from the tradesmen through, in our case a product, a kitchen, a bathroom or utility closet, all the way to the end user's consumer experience because if that isn't telegraphed, then we lose our identity in the process and in doing so we lose pieces or spokes of the wheel of our own community. Yeah. Yeah. Well said. Well said. I couldn't agree more. And I think we've already answered this question in part, but I always like to land on this. How are you building peace in your community right now? Yeah, I think we're tackling two dimensions of that head-on, which is when housing is scarce and when we see in the headlines there's a housing crisis, then there will be strife around a scarce resource. Yeah. And so the sooner we tackle this housing crisis as a community and that solution isn't coming from beyond Vermont's boundaries. There's no one that's gonna come over here and build housing for us. No. Because they have to build housing for their jobs and their communities. The sooner we address the intractable seeming issues surrounding the housing crisis, I think the more we can concentrate on the more rewarding parts of our community experience. So we're really trying to tackle the housing crisis. The other thing is we've outsourced so much of manufacturing overseas. Yeah. And we're really excited about bringing manufacturing back to our communities, giving it the dignity it requires and helping the entire community benefit from that. Yeah. I think those two legs are critically important for our efforts. Yeah, absolutely. And just to kind of maybe push that one step further here, speaking of the housing crisis in the United States and the acute housing crisis that we're dealing with here in Vermont, there is a lot of conversation going on right now about housing in Vermont. And I think there's a lot of very strongly held differing opinions regarding housing in Vermont and how development occurs. To mention some of the more poignant topics that I've been listening to in different spaces is the subject of Act 250 and S100. So Act 250, I think most viewers of this channel are very familiar with that act. And S100 is an approach to overhauling some of that Act 250 to allow for new housing development. That can be a really divisive space. How are you serving as a peace builder in that kind of conversation with this type of approach to housing? Well, in our municipal government, and Pradabra, I'm trying to participate in ways that are responsible and constructive. I also support our senators, Nader Hashim and Wendy Harrison, as they try and sculpt S100 to be the legislation that will help us concentrate housing into our community centers, where it will contribute to transportation networks, where it will contribute to the food deserts, right? Ameliorate some of the food deserts we have here in Vermont. And so I'm trying to offer any expertise and support I can from an architectural perspective to help us chase and attract multifamily housing that will solve the missing middle and the low income housing needs in our community. And I feel like changes to Act 250 in those directions like S100 are steps in the right direction for bringing, towns like Pradabra have these old wood carvings, like an image of what Pradabra was 150 years ago. And it's all multifamily housing, right? It's 1845, everyone's huddled around to stay warm and to be close to the general store. And you drive around a lot of Pradabra today and it's not. I think every community in Vermont has an experience like that. Interesting. And so I'd love to see more multifamily housing in our communities to help folks just starting a family and just starting a career, have that step up. But if I may, I wanna kind of push that a little bit further based on our whole conversation today as we kind of wrap up. From what I have learned to understand about the development process and the innovations you're bringing to architectural design and the way that homes are built, it brings me back to that fundamental aspect of bringing the whole community into that development process, right? Great. It really, I feel like that is a process of peace building. A process of peace building. Oh yeah. And I feel like, you know, that is where a lot of the conversations break down. There's this fundamental concern over control and trust when it comes to new developments and how it gets played out in our communities, right? But if we could create a culture of development that involves the whole community, I think there's a lot more space for trust. There's a lot more opportunity for people to work together to meet all of our needs because there are critical needs that I think that are present in Vermont as well as many other places in the United States right now, particularly in terms of housing, that this type of business design, this type of architectural innovation really helps to resolve. And that goes well beyond, you know, participating in local politics, which I very much advocate for, but I think this is a practice of peace. I agree completely. Yeah. Yeah, we're definitely striving to create a view of the continuum of how we train the next generation of tradesmen. Uh-huh. You know, concentrate, you know, not only their labor, but our intelligence into a place of production. Yeah. And then responsibly use that concentration to build less expensive, ideally multifamily housing in the places where it's welcome in our communities. Every step of that involves community involvement, you know, stakeholder voices, and, you know, tacit approval. Yeah. And it would be a pleasure, honor, and in many ways, you know, sign of success. The more stakeholders we can accommodate and the more housing we can bring to our communities. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show today. What a pleasure. It's been my pleasure as well. I love what you're doing. I think that as a peace builder, you're right there on the front lines and I applaud those efforts. What we're here to do is to talk about the ways that we can build community wealth that's brought to you by Community Wealth Development. Coming up in our next episode, we're hoping to focus more on natural capital and looking at how energy is a part of our communities and the way that we can build into more renewable and efficient forms of energy development. And we hope to have Jason, as well as all of our previous guests, back on the show to have a collective conversation about how we can build community wealth development together in January. No, in June. In June. In June. Not January, but June. Marker calendars. So cheers. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, everybody. Bye.