If you’ve been around here for a minute, you already know this is not my first time talking about the fact that real estate is political.
I wrote about that pretty directly in Why I Talk About Politics (Even In Real Estate), because I do not believe housing exists in some neat little vacuum where we get to discuss square footage and interest rates while ignoring who has historically been shut out, displaced, underprotected, or priced out. I’ve also written about the work of Taking Ownership and why it matters so much here in Portland. It is part of how I think about this work, this city, and the kind of business I want to run.
So when Lachandra B. Baker and Brian J. Baker invited me onto their podcast, Everything’s Not Black & White, it felt like a very natural fit. Their show is built around something I care deeply about: making room for the lived experiences, histories, and backstories that shape how people see the world, and asking better questions so we can talk about hard things without flattening them into talking points. That kind of conversation is rare, and honestly, necessary.
Listen to the episode here: Everything’s Not Black & White: Housing Is A Right
THIS IS ABOUT MORE THAN BUYING A HOUSE
One of the things I talked about on the podcast is that buying a home is never just a financial decision.
Yes, of course there are spreadsheets and pre-approvals and terrifying numbers and all the practical parts. But there is also fear. Family history. Relationship dynamics. Past instability. Hopes people barely know how to say out loud. A whole lot of “what if this goes wrong?” mixed with “what if this changes everything?”
That’s why I joke that I’m part therapist, part hype squad, part witch with WiFi. But that’s only partly a joke. Because this work has always been about more than houses to me. The house matters, obviously. But what’s really happening is that people are trying to make a massive decision while carrying their past and their future at the same time.
And when you really do this job well, you cannot ignore that.
REAL ESTATE HAS NEVER BEEN NEUTRAL
This is another thing I have said before and will continue saying until I’m blue in the face: housing is not neutral.
It wasn’t neutral when policies like redlining and restrictive covenants kept Black families and other marginalized communities from owning property and building wealth. It wasn’t neutral when women were shut out of financial independence and mortgage access for generations. And it is not neutral now, when affordability, displacement, and investor-driven nonsense keep widening the gap between who gets stability and who doesn’t.
Homeownership has long been treated as one of the clearest pathways to generational wealth in this country. So when access to that pathway has been intentionally restricted, especially along racial lines, we cannot talk about the present-day market like it emerged from nowhere. The inequity is not accidental. The outcomes are not random
That doesn’t mean every conversation about real estate has to become a lecture. But it does mean honesty matters. It also means paying attention to the organizations and community efforts doing the real, unglamorous work of helping people stay in the homes they already fought hard to keep. I’ve written before about Taking Ownership and why their work matters so much here in Portland. To me, that work is part of the same larger conversation, not separate from it.
If we care about housing justice, we have to care not just about access to homeownership, but about what it takes for people, especially Black & Brown homeowners, to remain in their homes, preserve equity, and avoid being pushed out by systems that were never designed with them in mind.
ETHICAL REAL ESTATE REQUIRES A BACKBONE
Lachandra and Brian’s show is called Everything’s Not Black & White, and I appreciated that framing because yes, life is full of complexity. People come to beliefs through experience, survival, family, grief, culture, and all kinds of lived context. But I also think some things are actually pretty clear.
Silence is not neutral. “I don’t want to get into politics” is often just a prettier way of saying “I don’t want to risk discomfort” or “this doesn’t directly affect me.” And in real estate, especially, where people love to pretend professionalism means being vague and palatable, that can become its own kind of harm.Ethical real estate, to me, is not just about filling out paperwork correctly or being nice in a transaction. It is about understanding the systems you work inside of and deciding whether you are willing to speak honestly about them. It is about value alignment. It is about community. It is about asking who benefits, who gets left out, and what kind of Portland we are helping create every time we do this work. That has been true in my business for a long time.
WE NEED MORE IMAGINATION ABOUT HOW PEOPLE LIVE
One part of this conversation that really stayed with me was when Lachandra and Brian started talking about their kids and what housing even looks like for the next generation. They were talking about raising queer kids, making decisions through the lens of protection, and watching their oldest get closer to the age where buying a home becomes a real question. Even in Columbus, they were saying starter homes are landing around $350,000. I remember laughing and saying that in Portland, a house at that price would probably be haunted and falling down, which is funny, but also NOT really a joke.
That moment got at something I keep circling back to: the old housing model is not working for a lot of people. We are still acting like the default is one nuclear household in one increasingly expensive house, and then acting shocked when that stops being realistic.
Meanwhile, real life looks a lot messier and a lot more communal than that. Adult kids staying closer to home longer. Older parents needing support. Queer chosen family. Friends pooling resources. Single parents who would actually be better off sharing care and housing with someone they trust.
IF YOU WANT THE FULL CONVERSATION, GO LISTEN
I’m grateful to Lachandra & Brian for having me on their show and for creating the kind of space where these conversations can be honest, layered, and human.
We talked about the emotional reality of buying a home, the long shadow of housing injustice, the violence of pretending real estate is apolitical, the role of private equity and displacement, what ethical real estate actually looks like, and why community-based models like Taking Ownership matter so much.This episode is another chapter in a conversation I’ve already been having here: about politics, housing, repair, responsibility, and what it means to do this work with integrity. If you want to hear the full conversation, listen to my episode of Everything’s Not Black & White: Housing Is A Right with Lachandra B. Baker and Brian J. Baker!
