Stop Calling It Charity. Affordable Housing Is Infrastructure.

What if everything you think you know about homelessness is wrong?

Forty to fifty percent of people experiencing homelessness in America are employed. They're working. They're contributing. And they still can't afford a place to live. That single fact dismantles most of the narratives we tell ourselves about who this crisis affects — and who's responsible for solving it.

Jarrod Sanderson is the Executive Director of The Way Home, a Kansas City-based organization working at the connective layer between developers, funders, city systems, and community — not to run programs, but to redesign the conditions that keep affordable housing stuck in small-ball thinking.

 

In this episode, Jarrod challenges the framing that has quietly defined this issue for decades: that affordable housing is a charitable cause. His argument is more urgent and more disruptive — it's economic infrastructure. And until we treat it that way, the people who actually make cities function — teachers, nurses, city workers, first responders — will keep getting priced out of the places they serve.

This is a conversation about systems, capital, coordination, and what it actually takes to build a city that works for everyone — not just the people who can already afford it.