Old achievable housing logic has collided with a new reality where scaling by standardizing product and then repeating it across markets no longer works. Previously, acheivable housing could rely on formulaic unit mixes, uniform site plans, and predictable demand patterns that made replication efficient and relatively low risk. Today, demographics are shifting, household formation looks different than it did a generation ago, migration patterns are reshaping growth corridors, and the cost structure of building and operating housing has fundamentally changed.
What once functioned as a dependable template now requires sharper local calibration and a deeper understanding of who a community is actually being built for. If affordability is treated as the only objective in housing, the result is often just building housing that people tolerate rather than housing people choose. Lasting affordability depends on livability, and livability depends on abandoning the development habit of copying yesterday’s playbook.
“When I first got into real estate, I thought that I was going to follow a traditional playbook. I’m finding that in this particular sector, there is so much need to think outside the box,” says Charles Covey, founder at LandVest Development. His answer is a more bespoke approach, one that treats community design as local, not universal. Instead of stamping the same plan across geographies, he argues for building community by community, aligning design with the nuances of a demographic and a place.
The Underestimated Constraint Is Not Politics, It Is Livability
In the workforce housing market segment, Covey sees the most underestimated constraint being the belief that livability is optional. His definition of success has evolved to focus on resident pride, long-term stability, and neighborhoods that residents actively value and protect. He is candid about the moral and market implications of the alternative. Housing that residents accept only because they have no other choice may still meet a rent target, but it will rarely produce long-term community health and stability.
“The element that is most underestimated here is creating community and livability,” he says. Too often, the logic sounds like: get the units built as cheaply as possible and consider resident satisfaction a nice-to-have. “If people like living there, that would traditionally be just a bonus,” he says. “That’s a terrible way to approach it, but unfortunately that’s just been the status quo,” he says.
Design Lever: Right-Size The Form Factor
Covey sees a broader market trend running in the opposite direction of affordable housing, where larger units and amenity-heavy designs are often treated as automatic markers of quality. The instinct to build bigger may appeal to higher-end renters, but it steadily pushes rents upward and makes true affordability harder to sustain.
At its core, his design lever is about cost discipline: every additional square foot carries a direct rent consequence, and those incremental increases compound quickly. Thoughtful planning can protect livability without inflating cost. “The form factor that we’re living in, especially the size of the form factor, and the layout, and the thoughtfulness that goes into the design of the physical spaces is really important,” he says.
He points to a clear example of the drift in the broader market. “For a lot of class A apartment complexes, the unit sizes keep getting larger and larger and larger, which automatically pushes rents higher,” he says. Larger units can feel like a premium feature, but they also hardwire higher rents into the project from day one.
For Covey, this tension is exactly why the design lever begins with disciplined decisions about size, layout, and spatial efficiency. “We need to make sure we deliver high livability and real enjoyment of the space, without overdesigning it and driving up unnecessary costs,” he says.
Partnership Lever: Land Planning For Interaction
Partnership selection matters most at the land planning stage, especially on larger sites. In subdivisions, layout decisions shape daily life, from whether residents see each other to whether a neighborhood feels like a series of driveways with no character. “Having a land planner that is forward-thinking and is identified with that vision of livability is really critical,” he says.
His view is that community is designed into circulation and shared space. Trails, playgrounds, dogs parks, green connectors, and places that pull people out of their homes can create the conditions for neighbor-to-neighbor contact. That social infrastructure supports the outcomes developers say they want: stable occupancy, pride, and lower turnover.
Operations Lever: Community-Building As The Management System
Long-term performance is ultimately determined by how a community is operated day to day. “The rent still has to get paid and the lights still have to be on and the grass still has to be mowed,” he says. His argument is that these tasks should be organized around a single principle. “Creating the community is the ultimate overarching theme,” he says.
When operations are community-centric, projects stop relying on constant marketing to backfill vacancies. “It starts to become its own engine that creates its own momentum,” he says, fueled by residents who stay longer and tell friends. This is where affordability and performance stop competing. Lower turnover and stronger retention can protect the economics of a project, while also delivering what residents experience as a sense of pride and dignity.
What Impact Will Look Like At Scale
Within three to five years, Covey believes the difference between the words of branding impact and physically delivering on it will be measurable. Scale alone will not define success. The real test will be whether demand is driven by genuine preference rather than constraint. Durable communities, he argues, are those where residents can say, “This is actually somewhere I want to be.”
AI will be part of the next chapter, but not the whole story. Covey credits it with helping the front end and back end of development: parcel identification, design and entitlement efficiency, and property management workflows such as maintenance requests. “AI can handle this interchange,” he says, describing routine ticket issues like appliance repairs. “Humans still have to get out there with machines to move dirt and frame walls – AI doesn’t replace that hard work any time soon.”
For Covey, future success in acheivable workforce housing will be to build smaller form factor units in more thoughtfully-designed neighborhoods that invite interaction, encouraging moments to slow down, enjoy welcoming spaces and connect with others. This “placemaking” results in communities with pride and a sense of belonging that will define this sector in the years to come.
Follow Charles Covey on LinkedIn or visit his website for more insights.
