An Army of Normal Folks - Atticus LeBlanc: Co-Living Is The Answer (Pt 2)

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Atticus LeBlanc is the founder of PadSplit, the largest co-living marketplace in America. It’s like the Airbnb for room rentals, which both saves renters an average of $366 a month and can make property owners 2x as much money. Say hello to the solution to our affordable housing crisis that’s hiding in plain sight! Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, everybody. It's Bill Courtney with an army of normal folks, and we continue now with part two of our conversation with Atticus LeBlanc, right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion, and deception. A man of God, Marcial Massiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.

My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal hear the full story

from the woman who lived it, witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal,

the mini secrets of Marcial Masiel as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get her podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama.

where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right to the victim's family and apologize,

turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revision's History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm I'm Yvalongoria, and I'm Maitego, Mr. Hun. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite. things, food and history.

Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the Ostercon.

And because we've got a very mikasa esu-sucasa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through them The Gulf of Mexico, not the America. No, the America.

The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be forever and ever, it blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife.

Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the build-up and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole

it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Isman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really

pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer

Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Mitch and his buddy Otis, he wants to know if they can come rent rooms in my house. Now, I'm terrified because the house has been vacant for a month, and I'm waiting for the air conditioner to disappear or the copper pipes to be stolen or whatever. I'm like, yes, yes, please come come in. Let me ask something.

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have so many questions about this. So, and this is 2009 long before. Pad split. Pad split. This is really like the progenitor. No, I get it. It's why I'm so interested in, I'm trying to crawl on your brain a little bit. Sure.

If you had rented that house to a typical renting family, How much would you get and rent from that house? It had been rented previously for $850. So if Mitch and Otis move in, you're already getting $200 a month more than you would have. At $500 each? Well, the difference is you have to include utilities. So it's a wash, is it really like...

At two and a half, it's about a wash in that house. Okay. But I have four rooms I can rent in that house. And that's the next question. Yeah, and now as I look at the house, I realize, wait a second, I think someone had been, whoever had owned this house, and maybe it was the same guy who owned the house next door, like whoever had owned this house previously had clearly rented out the rooms. I mean, it had already been kind of set up for this with these four rooms.

And so I start doing the math and realizing, wait a second, if, if Mitch moves in and Otis moves in and I can get two other people, then, yeah, I can net call it $11 or $1,200, whereas I was grossing 850, 800, the old way. And it's way better for me. It's way better for Mitch. It's like far better quality of property, right? Yeah, and Otis. And the other two nameless folks. Well, well, actually, so the third person who moved in still lives there today. No way. Her name is Linda. And she was working at Wendy's at the time. And so like she still pays either $100 or $125 a week for the same room 16 years later. Okay.

For those who haven't watched black and white films or paid any attention, this concept, although sounding new today, is actually a century old. Oh, yeah. Easily. If you will think about it's a wonderful life. Exactly, yeah. Were you really thinking the same thing? Yeah, yeah.

Well, Ma Bell or whatever. Ma Bell or Bob Parker or whoever it was, but that's, it's nothing at all knew that people would have homes and rent rooms. Yeah. And it used to be that the person who had rent the room also lived in the house. And maybe it was a widow or a, you know, people whose children have moved on, but they had a four-bedroom house. And to keep their home, they would rent two or three of the rooms.

Both of my great-grandmothers on my mom's side did this. Rented rooms. Yeah. They were single at the time and rented out rooms to help just keep up the home and pay bills. There it is. Yeah. Nothing new. Went on forever and ever and ever.

And that's what. But you stumbled on to with Mitch and Otis. Exactly. This still goes on, and there's a way to do this. Well, there's a way to do it. And really, I mean, I credit Mitch. He was the one who told me, okay, here's what you have to do. Because I didn't understand what was required or what the product.

Well, you worried about you. I was getting destroyed by all these people. Not at all. Not at all. Really? Okay. So what Mitch say you had to do? Well, you had to include beds.

You had to put in the beds. You had to install washer and dryer so that they had laundry on site. And you had to cover the utilities. And then typically they were built on a weekly basis. What about kitchen and common area? So that house was four bedrooms and two baths. It was only probably 12, 1,400 square feet. It was not a big house, but had two shared bathrooms and then these four bedrooms.

And, yeah, they figured it out. It has no living room? There actually was a small living room in that house. What about a kitchen? Yeah, shared kitchen. All right, so I would assume you would actually, if you had a big living room, put a wall on a door in it and make it another bedroom. As long as there's a kitchen, a laundry room, and locks on the doors. Yeah, you absolutely could.

It depends on the layout of the house. This particular house, it just made it difficult for the living room in that case. But it was certainly an efficient layout. There's no question about it. I'm curious. What happened to the house next door at the tarp on it? Did you buy it? Eventually we did with a partnership with a partnership and then fixed it up. And then the partners who were in that house wanted to get out. And so now I think it's just a traditional owner-occupied home. But yeah, we had it for several years. I have a number of stories like that where it's just everything really comes full circle. But yeah, so it worked out well. And we did a couple more. And most of what we were doing, though, because this was just a flood of properties at that

period of time, this model was really interesting. And you could see that it earned more cash flow, but it was super operationally intensive. I would have to go physically multiple times a week to go collect money orders out of the rent box on site in 2009. And you have to make sure that somebody didn't change the third. thermostat down to 63 degrees in the summertime when you're paying utilities exactly well and and the unit would freeze up and burning up the compressor and all that sure uh and then you were uh mediating some of the well he stole my leftovers from the fridge those types of disputes and so it was just it was a lot

of bandwidth to to kind of keep it going obviously i still did since since we still own the house 16 years later but um but we just kind of shelved it right and stand Stan and I, through this company, Stryant. We were really creative. My middle name is Bryant. His name's Stan, Strion. Nice. And...

Because Atlanta Housing Fund was already taken. Exactly. Exactly. So, and Staticus was a little bit too over the top. That's it. So we were still buying, and I never got to owning 10 on my own, but through Stryant was able to get enough where I felt like, okay, we can come, we can get out of this thing. because it was really just scratch and claw.

I mean, from 2005 to 2012, really before, I mean, 2012 was really among the first times and I felt like I could finally take a breath. And to your point, like, had just come to the verge of financial collapse several times over that period, even when you knew you were, like, logically this was great and everything was going to work out. you still got to the precipice and looked into the chasm many times. I know the feeling, bro. Yeah.

So by the time things got stable, I started thinking about what was next. And I'd started a construction company in 2011 and found a guy I grew up with to kind of hand off the reins to in 2015, really. And I started thinking, okay, well, look, I've, I've. done everything that I wanted to do to just secure the financial stability for my family. At that point, I had four boys. And I wasn't worried about paying for school or just everything being okay. And started thinking through, well, how do I, how do I leave a legacy in the world for good and just make sure that my time has been worth it so that if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, that I've done something to leave the world a little bit better.

And I joined Rotary. We were talking about Rotary earlier. Join Rotary was just doing other civic stuff and ended up at an affordable housing ideas competition in late 2016. And I had been working on this school renovation project where we were going to, we needed to raise a lot of money to convert it to affordable units.

and it was clear at this competition, they wanted scalable solutions, not kind of this one-off, historic redevelopment deal. And so I went back to this house where I had met... Hitch and Otis and Linda. Exactly. And I was like, look, this is going to be really controversial, but if you guys really want to solve the affordable housing problem, and I've only watched this get worse from 2008 onward,

you need to go figure out how to do this at scale. and I've watched Airbnb from 2008 to 2016 get to 6 million listings, 6 million units on the platform. Which is, to me, one of the craziest thing in the world. One, that people will rent their house to somebody else to come stay in. It's crazy. Not just a rental unit, but people actually rent their own homes to do it. And two, that people are comfortable going and staying in someone else's house.

I would have never believed it, to be honest with you. I mean, maybe I've got some of your father-in-law in me, but the fact is, my kids now in their late 20s, when they travel, they think Airbnb before they think hotel. Sure. It's crazy. Yeah, I think most of us do, honestly. I still don't. I'm still old school. But the point is, I think most do.

Check your privilege, Bill. What's that? Check your privilege. Yeah, well, maybe so. But, I mean, honestly, that is... Yeah. But it's interesting because that gave you a glimpse into what could be, I think, right? Exactly.

Yeah. And it was this idea that, okay, I've watched now Atlanta and, like, the fringe areas of Atlanta had changed dramatically from 2008, 2016. And I'd watched it. I'd been a part of it. I'd seen talking about the army of normal folks. Like, it wasn't one major investment that changed Atlanta. It was thousands and thousands of individual people making decisions for their own personal well-being in most cases that changed these neighborhoods dramatically. And so I thought, okay, if you can harness that power and channel it for good, specifically to create more affordable housing,

then that would be an incredibly powerful force. And so Airbnb had kind of done the same thing, but for vacation rentals. And so I thought if you could do that and show how this rent-by-the-room model could be more profitable for an individual, but also just better for the community and society at large, and actually create opportunities for the people who needed them, whether it was Linda or Otis or Mitch or what have you, then that would be an incredibly powerful force. What you needed to figure out was how do you reduce or remove the operational complexity

that makes this business hard? We'll be right back. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcial Massiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ. My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal, hear the full story from the story from the story.

woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini secrets of Marcial Massiel as part of the My Cultura podcast network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get her podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. Thirty-five years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. Thirty-five long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did,

why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice. To the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders.

Listen to Revisionous History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and burst. of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become

and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, And a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie,

I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the Big Short now at Pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. I'm Ima Lungoria.

And I'm Maite Gomez-Guan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon, to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very Mikaasa esucasa kind of eye. on our show, friends always stop by.

Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be so forever and ever, it blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights.

Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife. Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson,

we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Doudna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Back to you going to hack, pick up money orders and subtle arguments about who stole the leftovers and all of that. Yeah, exactly. And fill rooms. Vetting would be a big deal.

Because if I'm going to buy, if I'm going to rent a room in a house because I work at Wendy's or McDonald's, and I'm working my 40 hours a week, I'm contributing to society, I'm not pulling from it, I'm working, I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Just because I'm not making a lot of money doesn't mean that I don't have the exact same wants and desires of concerns of a millionaire.

I want safety, I want happiness, and I want some solace when I get home. Say it again. I mean, like, absolutely, right? Well, that's true. So when I go to my home, even if it's a room I rent, I want to make sure the other three people rent rooms in that house are also aligned with me

in terms of what I want out of life. And I don't want that schizophrenic crazy person making my life miserable. So I would think vetting is a huge piece of the operational issues for this model. Yes. Yes. And what do you do for vetting when, like, you can't screen for a schizophrenic person, right?

Like, literally, it's legally not allowed. So how do you figure that out? It's a good question. I'm asking. Yeah. So the idea that I had was... Well, there's big operational issues. Sorry to interrupt.

But the point is the scalable part of this has a real operational component that is tough. Yep. Yeah. And absolutely true. And I knew all of this. And oh, by the way, there's also the elephant in the room, which is the regulatory piece of this in Atlanta, based on the definition of family and pretty much every other jurisdiction in America, you weren't allowed to do it because talking about the old way when it was really common a hundred years ago. The family lived in the house. Well, not even necessarily.

I mean, traditional rooming houses were around then as well, but in the 1960s onward, the American Planning Association, in their infinite wisdom, decided, oh, yeah, we should totally outlaw this as part of our standard code. Really? And that's when you really start to see this proliferation of single-use, single-family zoning, whereas if you go to historic neighborhoods, what you'll see in most cases for anything that's 100 years old, oh, well, there's a mix of housing types. There's a single-family home, and there's a duplex or a quadplex, and there's this former rooming house. That's my exact name. I live in Midtown, Memphis, and there are 10,000 square foot homes, and around the block is a duplex, and then down the next block is a three-story kind of apartment building thing. But that's just the way development was.

Exactly. Yeah. So, but you can't, under most modern zoning laws, build those neighborhoods the way that they're built. today. And the key thing came down to this definition of family. And family was actually defined at a local level, whereas person is defined on a state level. And like, why do we need to define family at a local level? Like, that's crazy. And in Atlanta, there are 83 different jurisdictions with 83 different definitions of family. Holy smokes. Yeah. So on one side of the street, it could be no more than two unrelated people are allowed to live together.

And City of Atlanta's current definition, at least right now until they change it, is up to six unrelated persons plus four borders occupying no more than two rooms. And then there's an exception for domestic servants. Any number of domestic servants may live with the family. So like these things. Domestic servants? Of course there's an earmark for them, not for them, but for the people who employ them who are also the same ones making these rules. But, I mean, like, you'll see that stuff. I was talking to somebody, I think it was Rochester, New York. And they didn't know, but they look back at their code and like, oh, gosh, like, domestic servitude is actually defined in the zoning code and allowed under definition of family.

Wow. So, yeah, a number of just enormous hurdles to get to get over before you even get to get to the logistical and operational stuff. And so I wrote this white paper and just said, okay, here's how I think you can do it. And here are the three core services that this marketplace would have to provide in order to make this work and to really scale this solution. The first is filling rooms. And it gets to some of the screening piece, to your point. And so just screening for its FCRA compliance. What's that acronym for?

Federal credit, yeah, federal credit, what is it? Federal Credit Reporting Act. Oh, Fedding, credit. So credit? Yeah, but it encompasses a lot. Okay. A lot more than that. It might be Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Anyway. I think it is fair. Yes, it is. In any case, so no felony convictions in the last seven years. Okay, so that's like screening. That's a big one. Screening area, number one. The second was, do you have an income?

Do you have an income and do you earn enough income to cover the cost of this room? Does Social Security benefit? account those income? Sure. Okay. Sure. Any income. And then the last piece is identity verification.

And are you the person who's actually applying? Because in apartments, that's a huge issue where somebody will apply and a different person will move in. So those are like the three things on screening off the cuff. But more importantly, how do you actually create a demand generation engine so that you can, when Mitch or Otis has a housing need, they know that this place exists and they can come to it and they can figure it out easily and move in. So that was

probably the biggest piece of the whole thing. The second piece was payments where we were handling all the collections. We would want to handle all the collections because most, really every property management software

was not set up to take payments on a weekly basis. And it's way more effective and way easier to budget on a weekly basis than it is on a monthly basis. Especially when you live week to week. Exactly. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck, one all-inclusive bill, far easier to budget around than monthly and non-inclusive. Ie. the utilities included, which I'm just trying to teach you or Mitch or somebody. Yes. Yes. Okay. And then the third piece was, well, what do you do in the,

I have a schizophrenic in my house who's screaming at two o'clock in the morning. or somebody steals my peanut butter. Yeah, exactly. And what do you do in those situations? And so going back to this Airbnb example with six million listings, I wasn't confident, and I'm still not, by the way, that you can like match people on the front end

because everyone says they're clean, nobody's going to admit that they have schizophrenia, right? Even if you could legally screen for that, which you can't anyway. So instead, what you can do as a reactive measure is to say you have the ability to transfer to any home on the entire platform. So if you think about those six million Airbnb listings, imagine if you show up to one and you didn't like it or something was wrong

and you have the ability to move to any of the others and one might be across a street or across town or wherever. So those were like the key pillars. So it offers the tenants' mobility if they feel they need it. Yeah, so even if you're making $730 a month, you have economic mobility. I'm curious. Uber, the rating, the five-star ratings for both the Uber, what am I called when I get an Uber? I guess I'm a runner. A rider. Thank you. A rider gets rated as well as the driver does.

Yep. And I think that is an ingenious part of Uber, because whenever I see an Uber driver's got five-star, and a thousand good reviews. Sure. I'm feeling pretty good about him. And same for me. If I tip well and don't act like an asshole in the back of somebody's car, he's probably getting me five stars. So an Uber, if I call one at 2.30 in the morning at a sketchy area,

if I'm a five or a fringe area or downtown or something on a weekend where people get drunk and you can end up picking up jerks, if I've got a five star, that Uber driver's going like, yeah, I'll pick him up. He seems like an okay guy. Yeah. I think it's brilliant. Same thing. Wouldn't it be the exact same thing for this?

It is. I mean, because I could, if I'm renting this house and Otis is in it and Otis is a five-star tenant, then that's not a bad guy to stay with. And if these people with this house are 4.3-star renter people, homeowners, then it's probably a decent place to stay. And it goes a step farther in our business where residents have the ability to rate each other. as well. So there's like this host, and we refer to residence as members. So you have hosts and you have members. Okay, hosts are the property owners and members are the people who are living in the rooms. Correct. And sometimes a host is an owner occupant. More often than

not, it's an investor, but increasingly we're seeing more owner occupants now. But so you have this rating relationship between hosts and members that's bilateral. They can rate and communicate both ways. And then you have member to member ratings as well. So that if you've got somebody who's really disruptive in your home, you can rate that person. And when their score falls below a certain amount, they risk their membership termination, which is pad split speak for they lose their ability to access the platform. Did you just say pad speak? You now have your own vocabulary. Okay, so we've stepped ahead. You write this white paper. I'm sorry, I've got to get us back. You write the white paper, you got A and B, 2016 or something, and then what, the Jewish people with Senegal say, 16% will back you.

No. How'd that work? So, excuse me, what happened was this was J.P. Morgan Chase Foundation sponsored this competition. The winner would get $70,000, but each of the finals would get $10. And to my own shock and surprise, we were one of the finalists. So we got $10,000. The first thing I did was hire an attorney to figure out how do you legally figure out this family issue? And then as a finalist, you have to go to the next stage and figure out, like, how do you create a prototype for whatever your idea happens to be?

and one of my three houses had recently become vacant. It was a really terrible situation with a previous tenant where they had stolen the appliances and they were just terrorized in the neighborhood and when they moved out, they broke all the windows and I had like a $46,000 insurance claim on that house. Oh, wow. Right at the same time I was writing this white paper.

And so I thought, okay, well, like this can be the first prototype. I got to rebuild the damn thing anyway. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So I converted it, and what I'd learned over the last seven years also was that the extent to damage, to your point earlier around, are you worried about damage in these rooming houses? I had seen that it was much lower risk in these rooming houses than it was when I was renting an entire property. Is that because you're mitigating your risk among four people rather than one family? So if one person does damage, only damaging their room rather than the whole house? I'd say it's multifaceted.

So one... I wouldn't have thought what you just said. I found that really interesting. Most people would not. Most people would... And I would not have thought that were true either before I experienced it. So one, you have different sources of income. And you have whatever, four or six or seven different people that are now all providing a portion of the rent.

And so when you have a vacancy or when one person has a job loss and can't pay, you have one of four, five, or six, or seven versus the entirety. Makes sense. The second thing is— The risk is spread out. Yeah. Well, and you noted this earlier, when you are in those jobs, you want just safe, clean, quiet place to stay. And when someone is disrupting that, you are very quick to report that issue. whereas if I'm running an entire house or an entire apartment to someone and there may be all sorts of things happening behind that front door but in a domestic violence situation or even roommate squabble or whatever it happens to be the likelihood that one of those people is going to go to their property manager or their landlord to report it is almost none right it just doesn't happen so that's like the reportability and willingness to report I think happens

much more. And then the extent to which they can actually create damage is also much lower where they have one room as their own space and they're sharing the kitchen. They're sharing the bathrooms. And so... Yeah, if I live in that house, I'm not letting you tear up my kitchen. Exactly. You can tear up your room. Yes. But not my kitchen. And so your capacity for early intervention as an owner is much, much greater in a shared housing model. Which means that your turn costs, meaning the cost that you spend in between... vacancies is also much, much lower. It's like under $100 on average for rooms, yeah.

Whereas in a house, it could be easily in the tens of thousands. We'll be right back. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Secret Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcial Masiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose

within the Legion of Christ. My name is Elena Sada and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal

hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light.

Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini secrets of Marcial Masiel as part of the My Cultura podcast network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get her podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988

to a town in northwest Alabama. where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse.

He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm I'm Yvesa and I'm Maitego, Mr. Juan. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite.

things, food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way.

Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very mikasa esu-sucasa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the The Gulf of Mexico, not the America.

No, of America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue to be forever and ever. It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment. They had land reform, they had labor rights, they had education rights. Mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife.

Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman.

We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics.

Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter We're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner, Jennifer Doudna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Doudna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so you turn this torn up $46,000 insurance claim house into your prototype, your test model, I guess.

Yeah, and then filled it up. How long? Yeah. Probably three months. It was really pretty easy. That house was already a five-bedroom, two and a half bath. So the only thing I did for construction to modify the house was the living room had two case openings for like double doors where you can picture these old houses that had the glass, the glass doors. So those had probably been there at some point in time. And I just put regular double privacy doors. and so I had six bedrooms, two and a half baths. We redid the floors and put it up for rent on Craigslist and said, hey, we have rooms available for rent. Here's the deal. I'm pretty sure it was called Pad Split at that time and how I was advertising it. But that was the first one and I had it filled within two weeks. And it was exactly the types of folks that the city through this program and competition had wanted to house. There was a, a bus driver for the local public transit authority. There was a technician for Comcasts at the time, now X-Finity. There was a yoga instructor, a graduate student, a contract painter, and a security guard. And, I mean, I knew all of them, personally.

But the story of the security guard was really the one that changed my outlook. And I think my passion, really, she, her name was Tiffany, and she was, she had been living in an extended stay motel east of town and then well past the fringe, really, really sketchy area. And she'd been paying $1,200 a month to rent this motel room on a, and she, in her own words, was dodging drug dealers and prostitutes to get to the bus stop to go to her job as a night shift security guard at a local film studio. And she told me, she said, I've never lived in a situation like this before,

but this is the nicest house I've ever seen. And she moves in. Nicest house she'd ever seen. Yep. And so she moves in right away. She starts, she's paying $5.50 a month with all utilities,

beautiful furniture. Saving $700 a month. $750. Yeah. So she started, well, $6.50. $6.50. So she starts, storing $600 in cash under her mattress,

which I tease is it's not a recommended strategy, but it worked for her. And three months later, she's able to buy her own used little smart car, you know those little kind of European-looking cars. She buys her own used car so that she can drive to and from her job as a night shift security guard.

And three months later, she has enough for a deposit on her own apartment. And so she moves out in six months. And she has changed her life, like but for this opportunity she would still be living in that in that motel room and i was really conflicted when she when she moved out because i was like well one i'm thrilled for you but and i'm excited that we've been able to help facilitate this this outcome for you but like this was not charity by any stretch right i mean i increased my income

in creating this opportunity, which really just makes you feel like, why is this not a thing? Why is everyone not doing this? Why can't this be a win-win for literally everyone? Exactly. And it's much cheaper, more accessible for Tiffany or anyone in her similar situation. It's more profitable for the owner. Everyone should be doing this.

And I've been at this point in the affordable housing space for 10 years, and no one's even talking about it. And on the contrary, they were mostly talking negatively about it or had a negative idea about it. And so that's when I thought, okay, well, I'm just going to keep telling these stories over and over, and I'm going to bring anyone who will listen through this house, including city officials, real estate investors, funders,

literally anybody. And finally convinced one of those folks who was a real estate investor in 2018 to bring on her first house and that was that was the first third party host February of 2018 and just like these stories these personal stories like you just you start accumulating them over time

and it affects you so when did pad split officially become a thing yeah yeah so So, yeah, officially is an interesting way to describe it. So, like, that first house that I did, I define, okay, that's official. Like, Pad Split, LLC became the thing. I made the little kind of campaign signs and would stick them out in corners and tell people

to call my phone number. But I got into, I knew this needed to be a technology company. I didn't know anything about technology. So I thought, okay, well, I should go figure out how does one actually start? something like Airbnb, and was just introducing myself to different groups around town, made my way to a group called TechStars, which is now international program out of Boulder, Colorado, and they run these incubators, where for three months you are intensely involved in how to build a startup. And so that was now started in June of 2018,

And we were admitted to that program and started. I recruited my brother-in-law, my sister's husband, to be kind of the operational co-founder. And this other guy got introduced to John O'Brien to be the technical co-founder. And he was really the one who knew everything tech. I still don't. I mean, I'm much better than I was, but hardly technical by any stretch. And, yeah, the official official start was truly like June of 2018. and we just threw ourselves into the program 120% and yeah it it I mean it seems like it went

quickly in hindsight but but it was just it was a slog for a long time and super super gradual but and many other near-death moments where we were looking over the precipice but But yeah. We'll talk about where it is now, but I want to tell you something. My son, one of my sons, my older son, my third kid, Will, went to the University of Mississippi and studied public policy at the Trunk Lot School of Public Policy and Leadership, and he's now working on the hill. I will never forget two things that he shared with me when he came home from school.

And rarely do your kids in college come home from school excited about something they want to tell you about. The first was, I'm going to butcher it, but it's about a Mississippi guy who during Prohibition had a great speech about where he stood on the on the on the issue of prohibition and he wrote a eloquent speech about why if we're talking about the bourbon

that seizes the old man makes that makes Christmas a better day that he goes on and on and on about that he said I am absolutely for it But if you're talking about the same salve that makes alcoholics of husbands and beaters of children and goes through and uses a selican, he said, I am absolutely against it. So at this point, I stand here absolutely steadfast on my approach to prohibition, which meant, I don't know, right? It's a great thing. Do you know what I'm talking about?

You should look it up. It's a great speech. The second. I hate prohibition, though, so I don't agree with them. Yeah. The second was when he brought home that still hangs in his house today, the man in the arena. Oh, yes. And the reason I'm saying that is because I read what you said, and I'm going to read it. Because when I read it, I sent to my children.

The guy I'm interviewing today summed up my life, and this is what you said. Everybody says, oh, man, that's a great idea. I wish I should have done that if I had a dollar. For every time I've heard that, the reality is that it's just a lot of pain and a lot of sleepless nights. And, I mean, I've been served with an innumerable number of lawsuits at various times, and we got left at the altar by our Series A funder. And then we've had a couple layoffs, and that stuff's hard, man. I mean, the Teddy Root-Rosevelt poem about the man in the arena,

and it's like you just got to be willing to put up with a tremendous amount of pain. And the reality is there just aren't many people out there that are willing to put up with the amount of pain and risk that's required to make a business successful, particularly one that's like we have. When I read that, I'm like, Atticus and I have lived the same life. just in different worlds. So when we hear this cool story, I think it's before we go to where you are now,

I think it's very important for you to make sure our listeners understand. Business, philanthropy, anytime you are creative and engage in something that is a little bit uncommon, and any time you venture out, it's never easy. But when it wins, the payoff is just catastrophic. And I don't mean personal payoff in your pocket, but the change you make for our society. But it sounds good.

And the rest that we're going to hear is going to sound extraordinary. But I think it's really important for people to understand nothing beats hard work and nothing replaces sleepless nights, time away from your wife, time away from your kids, the risk, the days you look in the mirror and feel like, am I going to puke, die, or what's going to happen in the next 30 months of my life? When your head's pounding so hard, your ears ringing, and your eyes are bloodshot, and you not even see what you're looking at in a mirror some days, I know you've experienced it. Oh, no doubt. Yeah. Yeah, I remember saying that. Who did you say that to, by the way?

I can't recall. Was it an interview? Yeah, it was an interview. All right, well, Alex picked it up somewhere. When I read it in the prep, I was just like, holy crap, this guy does feel it. Yeah, no, I mean, and it's been, it's been consistent. Consistent misery? I'm just kidding.

Well, I mean, like, listen, you, and you know this. you you build armor. I mean, it is a muscle that you build in just confronting failure and I mean, in some cases,

it's not just antagonism, it's hatred in some cases, and you know that they're, whether it's failure or actual opponents and every day you make a decision about what's, what are you going to do moving forward?

And what's the next step that you're going to take? Yeah, and anybody that thinks you're going to venture off into the unknown and something that's uncommon and also work and serve in the fringe areas that thinks it's just going to be easy, peaches and cream, wake up. Yeah. And I don't know how many people, or at least I don't know that I believe many people think it's going to be easy, but I'm not sure that most folks realize what they're going to have to do.

I'll tell you, though, for me, when I decided, I mean, because I had been through the ringer in the early years, my entrepreneurial career. Yeah, you made $10,000 in 2006 with the newborn. Really, 2009 was the hardest where, like, I was literally, like, crying, collapsed on the floor of this rental house because I thought I was just going to lose everything.

But in, when I started passing, split. I, and I took a deep breath to just say, okay, I'm going to do this. I was super clear on what I was willing to risk and what I was not willing to risk. And what I was not willing to risk was my family, right? I had seen far too many entrepreneurs and we've seen, I mean, there are books written about all these people, right, who have become incredibly successful in some way, shape, perform and have now been divorced many times over and estranged from their kids and so forth and so on. And their kids are not in great shape. Exactly. Yeah. And I said from the very early States, that is not something I will sacrifice. I will not give up my family and that will always be

the first priority and that this thing that I'm creating that I want to be a legacy for good in the world, can only ever be second to that. Because first and foremost, I want to be a father and husband. But, yeah, I mean, there's just the persistence of the pain. And it's just like, it's like a constant drip. And I think that's really what requires the muscle building is just understanding that this is not going to be done in a year or two years or five years. Like this is going to be almost every day in some cases for much, much longer than you ever anticipated. It will be. And long after you think you have proved to the world that this works, you're still going to have the majority of the population who absolutely refuses to believe it and will be opposed to you

at every turn. I got to believe the same thing happened with the Airbnb guy, whoever that is. Yeah, Brian Chesky. Oh, yeah, I guess you wouldn't know their name probably since you. Yeah, I'm sure. Well, and actually, I bar a quote. It's not his directly, but I heard him say it, from Picasso. And the quote is, the older I get, the stronger the wind blows, and it's always in my face.

I love it. And it's totally true. But what's missing from that quote is the older you get, the more accustomed you get to the wind blowing. stronger and stronger, which is a pro and a con in that, one, I journal every day. And I look back at my journal entries from five years ago. And they just look like simple tribulations, even though I knew they were existential crises at the time. Now it's just like, oh, whatever. It's just another day at the office. But the problem, I think, where you really need to be. conscious is how do you still refill your cup and how do you not just become I don't know

immune to feeling in some ways and make sure that even if as you built this armor because you're accustomed to confronting difficulty how do you still retain compassion and empathy and be a human in in a lot of ways that is really profound because I have had to work on that. Yeah. You know, dealing with bankers crawling down your neck and employees needing stuff and having to lay them off and the guilt you fill and fighting customers and vendors and we do business in 42 countries, so fighting all that.

And you can imagine what our current trade war is to my business when, you know, and all of that, and this shell, this armor, this stuff, since you got to have to make things go for everybody. And then when you leave that world and you walk through the front door, your home to your beautiful wife and your family, you have to be able to disrobe from that armor to recapture the essence of who you are as a person. And who you want to be. And who you want to be. Yeah. It's a challenge sometimes. Most of the time. Most of the time. But the point is, whether you're doing pad split or you're starting some organization to serve homeless or whatever, it's all the same process, really.

Which is why when you pull it off, it is so unbelievably, undeniably rewarding. And not just yourself, but to those around you. We'll be right back. At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcial Massiel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ. My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. story of how I learned to hide, to cry, to survive, and eventually how I got out.

This season on Sacred Scandal hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Sacred Scandal, the mini secrets of Marcial Masiel as part of the My Cultura podcast network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get her podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here. This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988, to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of

control. Thirty-five years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. Thirty-five long years. I want to figure out why this case went on for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse. He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize,

turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he would have this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the build-up and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman.

We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short's story, what it means when people start betting against the market,

and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, It is relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at Pushkin.fm.fm. slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. I'm I'm Ida Goliangorja. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things. Food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells, and they called these Ostercon to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way.

Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very Mikasa is Suu Kasa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, of America. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico Continuano

forever and ever It blows me away how progressive Mexico was in this moment They had land reform They had labor rights They had education rights Mustard seeds were so valuable

To the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife Listen to Hungry for History As part of the My Cultura Podcast Network Available on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts

Or wherever you get your podcasts When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment. It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you can your podcasts So 2019, 18, when's Patslet

become official? Yeah, 2018. 2018, I'd say it's official official. So tell me what Patslet looks like today, bro. Yeah. So we are, we just crossed 25,000 units. Unbelievable. thousand of these things spread out all over the country all over the country yeah we're um in at least

26 states now you're not in Memphis um we we can be though we're gonna be all right oh we're gonna be this is look I look around my town and I see what you saw in Atlanta 20 years ago today and there are literally hundreds of neighborhoods with the exact house of you're talking about, the 1920s to 30s, cool-looking little bungalows that are historical in nature and complete neighborhoods inside our loop, which is 240. Yep. Okay, you said, what was Atlanta? 285.

Okay, ours is 240. Same exact, exact demographic, same exact everything. And neighborhoods with all these houses built from 1945 to 1960 that are the ranch style coming home from the military type things. Sure. Yep. Things. And there are good neighbors in all of these places that are simply seeking the same basics that we talked

about, almost the Maslov hierarchy of needs for home. Exactly. Yeah, I quote it all the time. Do you really? I do. Well, there you go. Same thing. And there is nothing like this.

And Memphis is full, full of servers. oriented people experiencing, I call it home insecurity. And I think there are cities just like ours that are like this. That's why I loved it. So 25,000, but give me more demographics. Yeah. Lots of, give me the numbers. Give me what you know now that you felt in 2018 that have now come to fruition,

that make this the deal. Yeah, well, two things I'll say that. One, I'm happy to give you the number. So we also just crossed $200 million saved for the residents who have moved into these. You keep up with that metric. We do. 200 million saved.

Yeah, relative to what they were doing before. If you compare it to market rent, it's probably like $500 million. That's half a billion dollars. Yeah, it's, I mean... That's weird numbers. That's, like, hard to file them numbers. And that's what I'm saying.

I mean, I know these numbers off the top of my head, Ed, it's like $7 billion relative to what would have been required if you use traditional subsidized housing programs to go create a similar number of units. So like taxpayer dollars that otherwise would have been necessary to create 25,000 units is about $7 billion. We, our median income is $27,000 a year for our residents. Yep, of our residents. we know that 8% of our residents moved directly from unsheltered homelessness in spite of having full-time employment.

That's the thing. I got to tell you something else about Memphis. There's a thing here called Church Health, a guy named Scott Morris, who's been a guest, but before that, was a buddy of mine. He's got his degree from Yale in Divinity. Okay. And he's got his, he's a medical doctor from, I think, Emory in Atlanta. Wow, that's weird. And he grew up in Atlanta.

We should meet. You really should meet because he started church health for the working poor. He said you should not work 32 hours a week or more and not have top health care. And it is now the largest, what is it, Alex? It's the largest. Yeah, there is a title for it. But they got 60, they're the primary doctor for 60,000 underinsured people in Memphis. Yeah, and we're talking a YMCA rehabilitation center, a full dental, full vision, full medical, all the way to if you need a heart transplant taken care of for the very tight people that need a place to live in, like what you're providing.

He provides for those very people, the working poor, better health care than I can. Yeah. And the point is that you just said, the reason I brought it up is you're absolutely right. Tiffany, the security guard, should not be working 40 hours a week in this country, paying her taxes, paying her Social Security, doing what she's supposed to do, and have to step over drug dealers and hookers to pay $1,200 to live in fear. Yes. That is not an America that I believe in. That is not a culture that that woman should have to put up with when she is doing what the world told her to do, which is get a job and you'll be fine. And this thing is an answer for some of those folks. It is. It is. And I mean, for those of you listening, too, I mean, the other part of that equation, though, is do you believe that people like Tiffany should have an opportunity to live in our communities, which they serve?

literally, right? I mean, she was a security guard. The example I often use in one of my speeches is a woman named Keosha who was an in-home health aid. And go ahead and look up, like I challenge anybody who's listening, go on Indeed.com and look up what a home health aid gets paid. Like the same people who are going to be caring for your loved one when they are on their deathbed. And it's nine and a quarter. Or 10, 15 an hour. It's nothing. It's, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. matter what city you're in, it's always less than $40,000 a year, and then go look at what that income actually qualifies them to rent. And what you see is there's just enormous disparity. And so do those types of people deserve an opportunity to live in those communities?

But what that also means is that for people who have lived in traditional neighborhoods for a long time, like something has to give, right? And you have to be able to have to have. the people like Tiffany or the home health aid like Keosha in those communities, because if a small company like ours has been able to save $7 billion in taxpayer funding that would be required to create this type of housing, and you know that money doesn't exist, it's like $4 trillion total that would be needed just to build the houses, much less actually operate them at a price that could be afforded by those workers. Meanwhile, there's a solution.

Yeah, meanwhile, yeah, there are empty bedrooms. You have 32 million empty unused bedrooms in United States compared to a housing need for those types of people around 7 million. So we have a surplus. That's easy math, right? We actually have more housing supply on a square footage basis today than we've ever had in United States history. So people talk about the shortage of housing.

Well, it's kind of true, but it's only true because we have a lot of one and two-person households who are living in larger homes. And a lot of people like the Tiffany's and Keosha's in the world get left out because they don't have access to those rooms. And so, like, do we as Americans who believe that you should be able to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps or you should at least have an opportunity, if you're working and you're doing the right thing, you should be able to have a safe place to call home. do we also believe that, you know what? Like, I'm going to be a part of that solution.

And that's ultimately why I created this company as a marketplace is so that anyone anywhere who is compelled to take action has the ability to do it. And they can do it anywhere in America right now on the platform. You have an extra room in your apartment or your house. If you want to go become a housing provider and investor, like I did, like there are multiple paths. You can go do this in a financially sustainable way.

If you have an Airbnb? You can convert it? Yes, absolutely. And you're probably going to make more money? Yeah, in a lot of cases, you will. And so to that point, it's not even a sacrifice, right? But I think what's powerful and still resonates with me about this model is literally anyone can be a part of that solution. It's just a question of, are we willing to take that principled stand and take the next step towards action? About Pad Splits members, 90% would

recommend Pad Split to a friend, which you can't get 90% of people to agree to anything, so that's a huge number. $27,000 is the median annual income for members. residents. Fifty-four percent report improved job stability. Primarily, my guess would be because they have somewhere to go that's quiet and healthy and safe, which allows them to be better at their job. 80 percent are employed of those 77 percent commute to their jobs. 50 percent of the members are able to pay off debt. Average monthly saved each month by residents or members, members are 366 bucks, 75% of members are persons of color, 9.3 months average is the length of stay. Median age is interesting to me, 36 years old. 5.49 million saved per month

across active members, 19.9 plus million historical savings, 56,500 members housed off your idea, bro. Fifty-six thousand. And here's the big one, zero dollars in taxpayer bucks. No money. No money from the public coffers to do this. The economic impact, we've created more than 22,500 units for our residents. Two hundred and fifty thousand is average cost for government subsidized affordable housing U.S., which equals $5.6 billion. that PADSplett has saved taxpayers in addition to the money it makes for its homeowners and the money in savings

and the increase in lifestyle provides for its members. It is a triple win. That's the idea. Phenomenal. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we are a little out of date on the website, but we're growing pretty quickly, too. So is Pat split it out?

Is that what it ends up being? How does Mitch find out? And if Linda moves into this house and doesn't like this dude and has that mobility piece, is it on a computer? Is it on a phone app? I mean, how does Pad Split operationally work? And, you know, when I want to become a member, how do I apply who is vetting me? Give me the operational background behind that.

Yeah, so they can find us on the web or on the app. Let's assume they've never heard a pad split and they just go look for a room for rent. We're usually one of the first sites that pops up. You've got the smart guys making sure you're number one on the web. Yeah, I mean, not necessarily number one, but a lot of those sites that list are listing our units as well. So we're posted on pretty much anybody who lists rooms and most departments.

But yeah, they would just search for, they want a room for rent, and that will navigate them to the site. They come on and they apply. They're usually screened within just a couple of minutes where we're looking at, again, that criminal background screening, their income verification, and then they have identity verification where you take a picture of yourself holding your ID, and so there's a biometric scan that takes place to make sure you are who you say you are. they go to book a room, which they'll see on the site or in the app, they click on that room. In some cases... Is there a picture of a room? Yeah. Picture a lot of times there's like what's called a Matterport or kind of a 3D plan of a home. It'll give profiles of the other residents who are renting in that room.

No kidding. So you actually know who you're going to have a room next to you. Yes. That is so cool. Keep going. And then, so they'll book that room. In some cases, hosts will all. auto-approved. So as soon as you book, you will be given an access code to get into that property.

So there are no showings up front. And that's important because it makes the process just go so much faster. But in some cases, the host. And it's a week. If you don't like it, you can move. Yeah. Well, they can move right away. If they move in. If they move in and they, like, let's say the photos on the site don't look like the house or it's dirty or something, they'll get an free transfer right away to book any other room on the platform, which is huge because it's economic mobility even for folks that are making 15 grand a year. But some hosts will have additional screening where, like if someone moves into your house, you want to make sure that you're compatible with that individual. So sometimes they'll do like an interview or they'll

run additional screening on their own. So hosts have that choice if they want to check that box to run additional screening. But the end process is still the same for when they go to move in. They have through the app the ability to submit maintenance tickets or communicate with their hosts, communicate with other members of the home, just say, hi, my name's Jeannie. I'm coming in and here's who I am. So like some houses like organically will kind of build their own little communities. Others are just, each room is like its own apartment. And there's, they want safe, clean, quiet, and the house is dead quiet, right? Because everybody's just kind of in their room as it's their own little home. When they go to apply, they pay $19 for the application fee.

Move and fees range between $0 to about $200. The average is around 81. And that covers the cost of turning that room from whoever the last person was that occupied. There are no deposits. There are no minimum credit scores. They move into this room. It's fully furnished. All utilities are included. We provide access to telemedicine as well,

talking about the importance of just the availability of medical care. So that if they end up in the ER for some reason, we know that that has a significant impact on their ability to stay and pay rent and remain employed. So access to telemedicine is one of the benefits. And then they can stay for as long as they want. So minimum contract term is 12 weeks. They can pay 175 if they need more flexibility. But they have the ability to transfer for free the first time to any unit on the platform.

And after that, it's an average of $81 to transfer, whether it's across town or across the country. They pay when they get paid in most cases. So weekly, or if you get paid every second Tuesday. So as I mentioned, it's just far easier to remember that today is Tuesday than it is, like, what day of the week is November 1st? So people can budget much easier. And yeah, in most cases, people are just trying to save for their next thing, right? Sometimes it's starting a business. Sometimes it's an apartment.

Sometimes it's a car or buying a house. But you have about 15 to 25% of people, like Linda, who I mentioned earlier, who just will stay forever and they're not necessarily going to make a lot of money later in their lives and they're kind of capped on income and this is this is just a respectable place for for them to to be for as long as as they want to stay there I love it we'll be right back At 19, Elena Sada believed she had found her calling. In the new season of Sacred Scandal, we pulled back the curtain on a life built on devotion and deception. A man of God, Marcial Masciel, looked Elena in the eye and promised her a life of purpose within the Legion of Christ.

My name is Elena Sada, and this is my story. It's a story of how I learned to hide, to cry. to survive and eventually how I got out. This season on Sacred Scandal hear the full story from the woman who lived it. Witness the journey from devout follower to determine survivor as Elena exposes the man behind the cloth

and the system that protected him. Even the darkest secrets eventually find their way to the light. Listen to Secret Scandal, the mini secrets of Marcial Massiel as part of the MyCultura podcast network on the IHeard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here.

This season on Revisionous History, we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama, where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control. 35 years. That's how long Elizabeth's and its family waited for justice to occur. 35 long years. I want to figure out why this case went on. for as long as it did, why it took so many bizarre and unsettling turns along the way, and why, despite our best efforts to resolve suffering, we all too often make suffering worse.

He would say to himself, turn to the right, to the victim's family, and apologize, turn to the left, tell my family I love him. So he had this little practice, to the right, I'm sorry, to the left, I love you. From Revisionous History, this is The Alabama Murders. Listen to Revisionist History, The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book The Big Short tells the story of the buildup and burst of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception.

It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. we fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time.

The Big Short story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, it is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the big short now at pushkin.fm.fm. or wherever audiobooks are sold. I'm I'm Ida Goliangorja.

And I'm Maite Gomezrejoin. And on our podcast, Hungry for History, we mix two of our favorite things. Food and history. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells and they called these Ostercon to vote politicians into exile. So our word

ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the Ostercon. And because we've got a very My Casa is Su Casa kind of vibe on our show, friends always stop by. Pretty much every entry into this side of the planet

was through the Gulf of Mexico. No, of America. No, the America. The Gulf of Mexico, continue forever and ever it blows me away how progressive Mexico

was in this moment they had land reform they had labor rights they had education rights mustard seeds were so valuable to the ancient Egyptians that they used to place them in their tombs for the afterlife

listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura Podcast Network available on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first

personalized gene editing treatment. It represented a milestone for both researchers and patients, but there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity. Listen to Aunt Crisper, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I thought it was in the prep, but I think I looked it up. But it was where the city's pad split is now in and only five or six years.

And oh, there it is. Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Jackson, Kansas City, Vegas, L.A., Miami, New Orleans, Orlando, Philly, Phoenix, Riley, Raleigh, Richmond, Tampa, Washington. You're going to read in a while. Yeah, and it just says, find a room. And then you click on it, and Washington, D.C., 177 bucks a week. Trust me, you ain't found nothing in Washington, D.C. for anywhere close to that. My kids, two of my kids live there, and it's ridiculous. And I look at these, and some of these are really, really nice.

Yeah. I mean, that's nice. Yeah. And so we're not talking about. And that's the idea. And that's it. And I mean, the bedrooms are nice, and it's so cool. Well, thank you.

So do you pinch yourself a little bit? It's kind of a big deal. No. I mean, it's, in hindsight, you think, man, like 25,000 is pretty cool. Like, we added 1,700 units last month. Holy smokes. Yeah, I'd say more that speech. because it took us almost two years to get to 1,000 units.

And so it's more that, like, we added 560 in a week. Like, that's the kind of stuff that you pinch yourself about a little bit. How many do you think you'll get to? I'm planning on millions, right? I mean, if you want... You really think there'll be millions? I do. I do. Yeah. And...

What will the money be saved on that number? I haven't done that math. It's a bunch. It's a lot. But, I mean, to your point, about like just the scale of the numbers, it's hard to feel the numbers. It's really important for me personally to go out and engage with members and hosts on a regular basis, because that's where you feel it, right? Like, I still remember the stories of Linda or Otis and Mitch

and Tiffany, I mean, I've got 30 others that I know off the top of my head and many that I still engage with today. But, like, that's what makes it real, right? You don't, you don't feel any different at 25,000 versus a thousand, right? Because you don't, you can't touch all of those. You don't know or have a human connection to those. But you absolutely feel it when I read some of the reviews that are like, thank you, I'd left a domestic violence situation, and this absolutely changed my life.

or I was living in my car one of my favorite stories is this woman Amber who her she was living with her grandfather and he passed away and they lost the house so she was living under her car

when she took a shower at a friend's place who told her about pad split she moves into a pad split that week from staying in her car starts cleaning the property the host notices

and hires her to clean the property and then hires her to clean the rest of her properties Amber builds her own cleaning business over the next four years now has a place of her own and her dream is to own a pad split those are the kind of things

that make you pinch yourself That gives me chills I mean it's amazing She was literally homeless Right And it doesn't mean She was a failure Because she was homeless

It means she ran out of options Absolutely Yeah I mean one of the things that I heard from a very early employee, this guy, Joanne, told me, no one wants your pity. They want a shot. And, I mean, that just hit me like a ton of bricks, where I think it's easy to kind of fall into this trap of feeling sorry for yourself or for other people. But for, I mean, I think if we all kind of dig deep within ourselves, what you realize is you just want to create a better

life for yourself. Like you have some goal. And if you know that there's a path towards that goal, it makes it a lot easier to deal with all of the struggles and just junk that you've got to put up with. And I feel privileged in that I've had enough of the, the struggles to know like you can create your own path and that you can visualize success however you define it and just scratch and claw your way to get there if you refuse to quit what happens if we have millions of people with access to that path engaging in that path engaging in their communities across our country you win you win we do win we do win we do win um And that's the whole idea behind the show you're on now, is that whole approach and idea.

Listen, man, I know there's going to be people that want to hear more and possibly people that want to talk with you more. And most of our guests leave a way to find. So how do we find you? Where do we find you? What do we do? Yeah, a couple ways. One, I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. LinkedIn. So that's an easy way to at least follow.

Just Atticus LeBlanc, LinkedIn. That's it. Got it. Everybody, it's L-L-E, capital B-L-A-N-C. Got to be French. Cajun, yes. Cajun. That's right, New Orleans, of course, duh. Yeah, for sure. And then if you want to become a host, go to padsplit.com slash hosts. That's the fastest, easiest way.

And then if you want to talk to me personally about anything, you can reach me through LinkedIn or just email me at Atticus at padsplit.com. Lovely. And if you're listening to us and you want to be a member. Yeah, just go to padspit.com. It's easy. And we try to make that part as easy as possible. If you're a security guard sitting around listening and tired of living in a rent

by the weekly motel thing like Crystal, no, what was her name, Tiffany? Tiffany. Like Tiffany, you can go do it. it right now. Thanks for sharing that. You know, earlier, we were talking about Airbnb and all of that. Do you know how many of those things are there in the United States? Airbnb's? Properties. Do you know? No, I think the number is like 2 million, give or take. I think that's right. I think it's up there. It's a big number. And you can't help but wonder if the markets getting saturated there.

And, I mean, if I had an Airbnb, if it was the right area, neighborhood and the laws and all that, I would absolutely be thinking about converting those properties to pad splits. And you have people doing that now? Yeah. Yeah, we have a lot, actually. You know, we're never going to compete on, like, beachfront property on Gulf Coast. Of course not. But if you're in Atlanta or just in town and in most metro areas, it can absolutely be an option.

Or if you're in a beach town like Destin, but you're not on the beach, you can absolutely have scenarios where you're making more net operating income through a pad split model than through... Have you interacted with owners that have become hosts? Oh, yes. Yeah, many. I mean, it's one of our major channels of growth right now is people who are converting from short-term rentals to this month. model, in part because of regulation, and in part because, to your point around just market saturation generally, and also because people realize that this has become a full-time job for them. And they're spending a lot more time than they thought they would. With their B&B. Yeah, with short-term rentals where they have to go clean the rooms or change

the betting or whatever every two or three days, which is way more intensive. And I'd say Pad Split, like from a work standpoint, sits somewhere between a single-family rental, which you probably almost never go to, versus a short-term rental where you're there very, very regularly. But yeah, we have folks who've absolutely converted. Well, pragmatically, the numbers seem to make better sense at PadSplit for an owner of a property than does. so imagine a lot of people were just doing it because the money's better.

No question. Yeah, I mean, and it was true in my own life, right? I mean, where I think first, as you look at the scale and scope of mom and pop real estate investors, and that's almost entirely who we're talking about. You know, folks talk about like the big private equity institutional buyers, like we don't have any of those people, right? Because this is too far-flung for those groups.

And it's the same reason they don't invest in Airbnbs in most cases. But what those people are looking for, and what I imagine all your listeners are looking for is like financial stability. And for me, when I started in this world as an entrepreneur, like I was trying to provide for my family. Like that was first, foremost, my priority. Now, I absolutely became much more passionate after I felt like I had my bases covered for caring for my family

and I could see the impact that I could have on people's lives like a Tiffany or a Mitch or a lender or whomever. And I see that same conversion, and that's something else I get really excited about, is our hosts absolutely, they are drawn because of the financial potential of this model and their ability to build passive income for themselves, whether it's because they want to leave their job or they want to retire or pay for their kids' college or whatever. they come for the income, but they stay for the impact because as soon as they have experienced changing someone's life like Amber, where she was homeless and now she's a business owner who's doing this on her own, that is something that is highly addictive. And it's something that, that's the kind of addiction that I want to see spread throughout the United States. Right. If you can get a taste of changing someone's life for the better, then that's something that we should absolutely try to spread. Love it. Atticus LeBlanc, founder and CEO of Pad Splett

from Atlanta, Georgia, and just one of the coolest story. You didn't disappoint. I told you I was really excited about this one. Well, it was worth it. And, dude, thanks for for flying over and visiting with us and sharing the story with our listeners. I know that people are going to be jazzed up about this when they hear it. I'm jazzed up about it. I really do want to talk to you offline a little bit about, you know, there's time and bandwidth in one man's life, but I know people in the real estate business,

and I've got to get them engaged in this thing, because I think this could help a lot of folks in my hometown. I hope so, and I believe it, But really appreciate the opportunity. It's been an honor to be here. And, yeah, I'm a firm believer in the army of normal folks. And just everyone has the capacity to be the change. Can be.

Thanks for being with us. Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you for joining us this week. If Atticus LeBlanc has inspired you in general or better yet to take action by renting from Pad Split, listing your property on there, sharing this episodes with friends who have extra bedrooms or investment properties that could find their model of interest, or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd really like to hear about it. You can write me anytime at Bill

at normalfokes. Us. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends on on social. Subscribe to the podcast. Rate it, review it. Join the Army at normalfokes.us. All of these things. that can help us grow an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, do it you can. years, Elena Sata was a nun for the Legion of Christ. This season, she's telling her story. When I first joined the Legion of Christ, I felt chosen. I was 19 years old when Marcia and said, the leader of the Legionaries, look me in the eye and told me I had a calling.

Surviving meant hiding. Escaping took courage, risking everything to tell her truth. Listen to sacred scandal, the many secrets of Marcial Maciel on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Malcolm Gladwell here this season on Revisionous History we're going back to the spring of 1988 to a town in northwest Alabama where a man committed a crime that would spiral out of control

and he said I've been in prison 24, 25 years that's probably not long enough and I didn't kill him from Revisionous History this is The Alabama Murders Listen to Revisionous History The Alabama Murders on the IHeart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts

I'm Ima Lungoria. And I'm Maite Gomez-Guan, and this week on our podcast, Hungry for History, we talk oysters, plus the Mianbi chief stops by. If you're not an oyster lover, don't even talk to me. Ancient Athenians used to scratch names onto oyster shells to vote politicians into exile. So our word ostracize is related to the word oyster. No way. Bring back the OsterCon. Listen to Hungry for History on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast.

or wherever you get your podcasts. The internet is something we make, not just something that happens to us. I'm Richard Todd, host of the Tech and Culture podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet. In our new season, I'm talking to people like Aneal Dash, an OG entrepreneur and writer who refuses to be cynical about the Internet.

I love tech. You know, I've been a nerd my whole life, but it does have to be for something. Like, it's not just for its own sake. It's an inspiring story that focuses on people as the core building blocks of the Internet. Listen to There Are No Girls on the Internet on the IHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. When news broke earlier this year that baby KJ, a newborn in Philadelphia, had successfully received the world's first personalized gene editing treatment, it represented a milestone for both researchers and patients. But there's a gripping tale of discovery behind this accomplishment, and its creators. I'm Evan Ratliff, and together with biographer Walter Isaacson, we're delving into the story of Nobel Prize winner Jennifer Dowdna, the woman who's helped change the trajectory of humanity.

Listen to Aunt CRISPR, the story of Jennifer Dowdna with Walter Isaacson, on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.