Breaking Barriers:
The System We Inherited
When people talk about the “housing crisis,” it sounds like something new — as if the system just suddenly broke down. But the truth is, the housing system was never built to serve everyone. What we inherited wasn’t designed to be fair. And we’re still living with the consequences.
We inherited zoning laws that were written to keep certain people and certain incomes out. Rules that banned smaller, modest homes because they didn’t “fit the character” of the neighborhood. Rules that prioritized property values over people.
We inherited lending practices that assumed everyone had two incomes, perfect credit, or family wealth to lean on. If you don’t fit that mold, the system doesn’t care how responsible you are — you’re shut out.
We inherited an affordability standard that pretends 30% of gross income is a reasonable housing cost, even though wages lag behind and the rest of life. Childcare, healthcare, transportation, and groceries eat away what’s left.
We inherited an industry that learned how to profit off it all — developers chasing margins, investors turning homes into commodities, policymakers looking the other way because the system ‘works’ for them.
The housing system we inherited wasn’t built for today. It was built for another time, another set of assumptions — two incomes, nuclear families, no thought for accessibility, and plenty of land to sprawl. Maybe it worked for some people then. It doesn’t work for most of us now.
The barriers we face today didn’t happen by accident. They were built, brick by brick, policy by policy, choice by choice. And if they were built, they can be unbuilt.
And yet, instead of changing it, we’ve kept carrying it forward. Zoning laws still lock out small homes. Lending practices still punish single-income households. Developers still chase size and profit margins instead of function and community. We act like this is just “how housing works” when really it’s just how we’ve chosen not to change.
At Little Haven, I’m not claiming we’ll undo decades of systemic barriers overnight. But we are refusing to keep pretending they’re normal. We’re choosing to build differently — smaller, smarter, fairer — to prove that the system doesn’t have to keep running the way it always has.
The truth is, the system we inherited is broken. We don’t get to choose the system we’re born into — but we do get to choose whether we keep it alive.
