May 1, 2025 • 34 mins
What if saving a home could help save the planet and a family in need?
We tear down 600 beautiful homes every year… That seems incredibly wasteful. Not just from a materials perspective. From a human one.” — Glyn Lewis
On this episode of Chatter That Matters, I sit down with Glyn Lewis, a man who’s not just talking about sustainability—he’s building it, one rescued home at a time. As founder of Renewal Development, Glyn turns wrecking balls into hope machines. Instead of demolishing homes, he relocates them—beautiful, character-filled properties—into communities that need housing now. It’s a story of purpose and possibility. Of disruption, not destruction.
And joining us is Leah Robinson, VP of Home Equity Financing at RBC, with a sharp lens on how Canada’s largest bank is reimagining the idea of home—through multigenerational financing, innovative lending models, and support for sustainable living.
Glyn Lewis, a dreamer and doer who sees our world and ask, “What if we did it differently?”
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Give you a peek behind the curtain, Chad, that matters. I do my own
research, and I really like to have directional
questions and a sense of where I want this interview to
go. Wearing my listener's shoes, I always think
about head, heart, and hands. Is this subject matter gonna be
interesting emotionally? Is it gonna touch a chord? Are
(00:26):
there some ideas and that my listener can action, that I can
action as I go about my life.
But there's times where we go completely off script.
The game plan is thrown out almost immediately. And
trying to keep my emotions in check becomes very difficult because I,
in fact, am so moved. And that's my
(00:49):
interview today with Glyn Lewis. He's the visionary behind renewal
development. So we tear down 600 really
nice homes every year. To me, that seems incredibly
wasteful. It's It's wasteful from a a material perspective. It's wasteful from
an embodied carbon perspective. It's wasteful from a housing perspective. Those are good
homes that someone could be living in. He's turning a wrecking ball
(01:11):
into a tool for sustainability. He's
saving beautiful homes that were gonna be demolished just because they're in the way of
development and repurposing them into communities that
need housing. And they don't just get affordable
housing. They get the gift of a beautiful house.
And the emotions that poured through my veins when I was talking about
(01:34):
the admiration I have for him for finding this purpose
and pursuit, the gratitude he has for his mentors,
including his younger sister, his mother, his
comprehension of what it takes to both dream and do, his
knowledge of philosophy and psychology. Being a
disruptor, being truly innovative to
(01:56):
transform something to hopefully a better place is
incredibly challenging. Well, all of that ladders into one
beautiful tale of an entrepreneur who's in
a constant conversation with both mother nature and human
nature.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter That Matters presented by
(02:19):
RBC. If you can, please subscribe to the podcast and
ratings reviews, well, they're always welcome and they're always appreciated.
And with that introduction, Glyn Lewis, I'd like to welcome you to Chatter
That Matters. Thanks for having me, Tony. So my show
is about people that overcome circumstances. They
(02:42):
chase dreams. They change their world and ours for the better.
I've walked by a house that deserves to be torn down a hundred times, and
I just see a house is about to be torn down. You saw this as
an opportunity to not only create a business, but as you call it, as a
campaign to to save the planet. So I wanna know a little bit more
about you before we get into the business. Where where did this sign of mine
(03:03):
come from? Talk to me about your, your upbringing. I think it was Shakespeare who
said the past is prologue and to understand where you're going, you really have to
understand where you've come from. I grew up here in Metro
Vancouver, went to Simon Fraser University. I signed up,
as a chemistry major. I thought I wanted to be, a
chemistry educator, actually. I had some really great teachers when I
(03:25):
was in high school, and I just thought that was gonna be my contribution, was
to kind of mentor and guide. Something interesting about the sciences that,
you know, it's a a fair amount of curiosity. You know, you're kind of trying
to understand the world, and you're trying to understand how things work and why they
work the way they do, and I think that kind of reflects a little bit
about my, you know, alternative way of looking at problems, is
(03:46):
through that lens of curiosity and what ifs. So I was at
SFU. I I watched Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore
documentary about climate change. I guess that was around 02/2005,
how unsustainable it felt to keep developing our
communities and our global economy the way that it was,
especially if you look at population growth and you look at all these different factors
(04:08):
adding up together to have this incredible impact on the Earth's
ability to sustain life. But I I kinda felt like we knew what a lot
of the problems were, and it wasn't so much about defining the problem as it
was about coming up with creative solutions. And so I ended up
actually shifting my degree to this thing called sustainable community
development. I did my, thesis with this, doctor Mark Roseland. He wrote
(04:29):
this book called Towards Sustainable Communities. It's a seminal book. It's
used around the world now. And that course was kind
of my blueprint for thinking through how do we
build our communities differently, how do we build our economies
differently, how do we plan our our neighborhoods
differently? I ended up working in politics for a while. I went down to United
(04:51):
States. I worked there for a year. I came back, and I worked in politics
here in Canada, both at the federal level, and provincial
level and local level. Ended up starting a company that built
software, to help enable political campaigns and political
movements. I was working in the nonprofit sector a bit too, and then a few
years later, what happened, Tony, was my sister was living in this really charming
(05:12):
1920, '19 '19 '30 home in Esquimalt.
She took really good care of the home, and they were renovating it, and they
just it was just it's such a beautiful, charming, you know, big bay windows and
the high vaulted ceilings and all that kind of stuff. And, a
developer bought the whole city block to do what's called
a land assembly, so to add density. And we're seeing this happen
(05:33):
hundreds, if not thousands of times, all across Metro Vancouver, Greater Victoria,
and some other growing urban areas where you're seeing a lot of these single
family homes being gobbled up into land assemblies and being
slated for demolition to make space for higher density development. And so when
my sister's house was purchased in this land assembly by this developer,
Nesquimalt, she being also being a bit of environmentalist
(05:56):
herself, just thought this was a terrible idea, and she said, no. I don't I
I don't wanna let just this home go to the landfill. So she ended
up, working with a, a contractor who
lifted the home and put it on a truck and moved it, North
of Souk. And she moved it there with her partner, and then they repurposed
it. Tony, when my sister did this, it just awakened
(06:19):
in me this, like, wow, what a brilliant model. Right? It's
housing. It's more affordable housing. It's more sustainable housing, you know,
and there's all of these great homes being demolished. Why doesn't more of this happen?
I wanna unpack a lot of that. I guess the first question is you're in
this white lab coat and you're doing everything you
thought you wanted to do. You make a big course correction when you
(06:41):
start focusing on the environment. And then the next course correction is
saying, I don't want to be in this lab coat anymore. And I'm curious, was
that an individual that touched you in a certain way? Or was it just simply
the, you know, the Al Gore film and book? Or do you think this was
something that was always in you, that there was a greater calling than a classroom,
that your calling was going to be a community or broader? You know, I'm a
(07:03):
big believer that we're we have certain innate capabilities and
skills and talents. At a certain point, you might hit a
ceiling. And I think that within the lab environment,
I saw a limitation of what I'm capable of or what I'm
interested in and what I can do using this space.
And I just felt that there was more growth in an if I took a
(07:25):
different pathway. And the different pathway was to say, okay, great. We
we know what the problems are, but I I really wanna work on the solutions.
And then my second question, because when you go into politics, it
really is a profession of influence versus authority.
Going into there. Did you feel that that was also limiting in the sense
that. It was a lot of consensus and a lot of collaboration and
(07:47):
maybe a first gear where you were wired more
for saying, I want to have my hand on that stick shift and I want
to choose the gears. When I was working in politics, you
know, it's such a machine. Right? And there's
different people play different roles, and it's huge, and it can be very
bureaucratic. And you have to work really hard for a really
(08:08):
long time to build enough power internally of that structure
to really have latitude, to have a fair amount of agency.
You know, all of the backbencher MLAs and MPs or the people who work
on campaigns, it's like you're just part of something way bigger. But if you're
someone like me who appreciates agency and having
freedom and creative control and all of these things, that that just wasn't
(08:31):
the right forum for me to be fully expressed. And
so being an entrepreneur, creating something where I can have
complete creative control and leadership and guidance
over. If I'm gonna use the best of my talents and skills and capabilities,
this was the right channel for me. What advice can you give to young people
to have the courage to look around at their circumstances
(08:54):
and go, if this is a square peg in a round hole,
it's okay to declare that and to find something else versus
a lot of people, which I think get on this escalator that they think they're
heading up, but as quickly as you did or maybe a decade later, they
realized they're really not moving. The posters behind me are from
Apple's, think different campaign. One of my favorite ads of all
(09:16):
time. So that entire the ethos that Steve Jobs brought to
Apple and what he thought what he saw and envisioned Apple's role in the
world was and which I thought was so perfectly
summarized in the think different campaign. Right? The the square
pegs and the round holes. Here's to the crazy ones, the ones who've
envisioned a different world and are willing to to fully commit themselves
(09:38):
to creating that world in in their own way differently. And we all
benefit from that through innovation and creativity, break down old
barriers and trying to force change onto industries or force change
onto established norms. And it's incredibly hard, Tony, and
I'm I'm sure from all a lot of folks that you've probably talked to in
in the work that you've done in your in your life, being a disruptor,
(10:00):
being truly innovative to transform something to
hopefully a better place is incredibly challenging. But, you know, Newton's
I think it was his first you know, being a scientist, Newton's first law of
thermodynamics, an object at rest has a tendency to remain at rest
unless acted upon by an outside force. You have to
put the force together, and that could be creative force, it could be
(10:23):
spiritual force, it could be emotional force, you know, enterprise force.
You have to amass that to try to drive change onto something that doesn't wanna
change. And inherently and and physics and and the the natural world
shows us that things don't wanna naturally change. You know, it takes a
certain amount of courage and boldness to try to envision what you want your own
life to be about, to create the role that you want to. It could be
(10:45):
in your relationships. It could be within your family. It could be within your
career. It could be within whatever domain it is. It's about just not falling
into the pattern. It's not about falling into the stream just because the stream
is moving in this direction, charting that new different course or the way that
that feels right for you and having the courage to lean into that. No.
It's funny. I always talk about it as the invisible bars at the status
(11:07):
quo, and we never realize that we're holding on to
them. I always wonder when I talk to young people, is it
a comfort level? Is it validation? Because this is what your
parents wanted you to do. Is it just, you know, I've
decided that in my life, I'm going to work to live versus
choose a path in life that, that also gives me life. So great
(11:29):
philosophy. Your sister, is she older or younger? She's two years
younger. Her desire to save this house. There
must have been an awful lot of people that said to her, you know,
this is not a smart decision. It is something I've always
known about her is that she doesn't accept the status quo.
And if she thinks something is broken, she will fight to change it.
(11:52):
And I think it's that quality that I admire, often to her own
detriment. When I saw her do this project, it just fit within
this what I knew about her to be true. She's always going to be that
person to pick the hard fight to do the right thing. Here's
to the crazy ones, the misfits,
the rebels, the troublemakers,
(12:14):
the round pegs in the square holes, the
ones who see things differently. They're not fond of
rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You talk about
here's the crazy ones. If it were if you had to pick between you and
her to be in that ad, who would just who would have deserved it more?
I think she has more vision than
(12:36):
I do. I think I have more of,
like, the strategy about what needs to happen to get to that point. While some
may see them as the crazy ones, we
see genius. I listened to one of the interviews you did, and you
talked about a teacher in your life, this Yoda that touched you
and and made you realize there was more to you
(12:58):
than you thought even met your eye. Who was that
teacher? My chemistry grade 12 teacher. A little bit bit about me
going in in high school is I wasn't a great student. In fact, I struggled
a fair bit. I think I had my own learning challenges and
motivation challenges, and I almost failed grade 11
chemistry. In the summer of grade 11 going to grade 12, I
(13:20):
kinda had to sit down with myself and I just said, you know, what is
this life gonna be about, Glyn? If you if you really wanna do something here,
you're gonna have to sit down and really apply yourself and focus. And so I
came back that September, Tony, guns a blazing,
and my teachers did not recognize me. I ended up with the second
highest grade in chemistry in grade 12 in our school. So a
(13:42):
big part of it was just that fundamental mind shift and approach that
I had to take. But also, I had a great teacher. I had this great,
mister Pong. He encouraged and he was supportive, and he was just one
of those teachers that you wanna have in your life that that someone comes along
and says, I believe in you, even when you don't might not believe in yourself.
So you and your sister, I have to believe you weren't the
(14:04):
easiest kids just because of your appetite for life. But how did your
parents did they encourage that? What I always say
to parents sometimes is when you have these, these people with an appetite for
life, don't starve it, feed it. A bit of
backstory is my, my dad was a sixth
generation Canadian. His his grand his mother was Russian. They were
(14:26):
Doukhobors. And my mom was Greek. And so she had this
entire different worldview than my dad did. Born in,
in Athens, and she grew up in in Europe. And I think
my mom really had this perspective of the world's your oyster
and if you work hard and if you fight for what you believe in, Glyn,
you're anything and everything is possible for us to keep leaning
(14:49):
into everything that we wanted to do. So when my sister took on the fights
that she did, when I'm trying to, you know, create build renewal
development and and do the work that we do, I I we're constantly coming up
against opposition and resistance, and you have to kinda have
this innate belief that it's possible to get through
it. Coming up
(15:10):
is much more than just my three takeaways with Glyn Lewis. We
have an honest conversation about whether his model, his
vision, of instead discarding our past because it gets in
the way of progress can in fact be repurposed so that it
helps others get on the way to their future. And then I'll
have Leah Robinson who's been on the show before. She's the VP of home equity
(15:32):
financing at RBC to talk about the work
RBC is doing to make homeownership more affordable.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman from Shatter That Matters. RBC is
offering more financing options to support Canadian homeowners
looking to maximize their property's potential. Whether you want to provide
(15:55):
supportive housing for a family member or supplement your income with a
rental, RBC's Construction Mortgage Multi Units program has
you covered. You can finance additions like laneway homes, garden
suites, modular units, or even redevelop your home into
duplexes or triplexes. Speak to an RBC mortgage specialist today to
see how this program can work for you. Maximizing the potential of your
(16:17):
home, well that matters to you, to me, and to RBC.
We are one of the only companies, if not the only company, structured the
way we are in North America. The demolition, the moving, and the repurposing all
integrated into one company. As far as I know, no other company is structured like
us. It's not only just building your own team. It's not only just being a
(16:38):
CEO and the culture and having the right people and training them up. It's
also externally how dynamic and innovative and disruptive
our business model is and how challenging it is.
Today, my special guest is Glyn Lewis. He's a
crusader. He's a change maker. He's transformative.
He believes in a better Canada, and for all the above, I believe
(17:01):
in him. So talk to
me about renewal development because this business
makes complete sense for humanity and the planet.
Mhmm. But I have to believe you must have hit so many
walls of resistance because to some,
you're a deterrent. I just want to land grab and build. I
(17:24):
just want to get on with my business. So tell me about the business
and how you fashioned it in a way that it was
worth your effort to see this thing happen? Because I gotta believe in the early
days, it wasn't easy. It's gotten easier over the years. You know, it feels like
pushing a huge boulder up a hill, and you're gonna hit these bumps and
all of a sudden, it slow down and you sometimes you feel like you had
(17:46):
a little bit of momentum and then all of a sudden, you know, you now
you feel like you're losing momentum and doors open, sometimes a lot of doors
close. I think what a huge part of the motivation for me is that I
believe in it so firmly. Right? And you kinda have to. You wouldn't
do this unless you really believed in what in in the
sustainability part of this, the the raising the consciousness part of
this, the, affordability part of this. You know, I
(18:09):
often say that renewal is a campaign disguised as a
company. So talk to me about renewal development. If I you know, the old the
classic Dragon's Den pitch, you know, that everybody's so fascinated,
like, everything everybody wants things snackable and in a sound bite. Right. The
snackable sound bite that sort of gets me excited about what you're doing.
We look for homes slated for demolition. And
(18:32):
every year, there's about 3,000 single family homes slated for
demolition across Metro Vancouver every year, 3,000. And
that's as a result of all of this push for density. It's all of this
push for for more housing. You know, we hear it from the provincial government, the
federal government, the local government. We don't have enough housing. We don't have enough affordable
housing. And so a huge part of the solution that's being promoted
(18:54):
is just to build more housing. Now in a landlocked
area, like Metro Vancouver or Greater Victoria, you know, you're only
gonna be able to scroll out so far. And so now
the push is to to build upwards, to densify.
So to densify, these developers are buying up all of these single
family homes to do land assemblies. What I do is I
(19:17):
try to find the good ones. You know, they could be mid century homes, they
could be character homes, they could be homes built in the last five or ten
years. Twenty percent of the 3,000 homes torn
down every year are actually really nice, good condition, high
value homes. So we tear down 600
really nice homes every year. To me, that seems
(19:38):
incredibly wasteful. It's wasteful from a a material perspective. It's
wasteful from an embodied carbon perspective. It's wasteful from a housing
perspective. Those are good homes that someone could be living in. And on the flip
side, we have a housing crisis in so many of these non urban
communities. We essentially provide, a demolition
service, a sustainable demolition service to these developers. We
(20:00):
lift them, we put them on trucks often, we put them on barges, we take
them to non urban communities, and then we repurpose them. So I'm
essentially a general contractor, but instead of going down to Home Depot and
buying all the the lumber new and all of the copper new and all of
that stuff, I'm trying to maximize what already exists. You
describe when people are trying to challenge your vision,
(20:23):
sort of a dragon, the dragons that are in the way. So tell
the audience what kind of dragons are sort of breathing fire
on what I love is this approach is the ultimate
recycling, the three r's, but you're happy to be doing it with 2,000 or
3,000 square feet versus a Pepsi can. And
it's interesting the metaphor of a dragon because it's very literal and you can see
(20:44):
it, and some of them are much more subtle than something that's trying to
literally fight you from getting through the passage. The demolition industry.
So I'm currently trying to bring a paradigm shift
into an industry that's been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, which is
you've got something, you don't want it there, you smash it up, and you send
it into a landfill. They own excavators,
(21:07):
and they own a lot of the trucks to haul the materials, and sometimes they
even they own the transfer stations. So they've got these entire
business models built around demolition. So
I come along and I say I think there's a more responsible way to do
this, and that is to recycle the good homes and then to
recycle the materials that we can't, demolish. And so I am actively
(21:29):
they're kind of a dragon. I I try not to see them as such
fierce competitors. In some ways, we could probably work together. In some ways, I hope
that they amend their business model, but I think that
we're going to force change on that industry. The other challenge and resistance
points that we have in front of us are just developers who aren't familiar with
this model. Those developers know demolition. So now I come
(21:50):
along, I meet them in their boardroom, we'll demolish and recycle the homes that we
can't move, but I'm gonna move a couple of the home the good homes. In
of itself, that new model, that new process
can put fear into people. It it's that change
because they're often so risk averse. They're just gonna fall back to the
thing that they know how to do, which is smash the building up and get
(22:12):
going because they just all they really care about is building their their
project and selling their units and then moving on to their next project. Right?
So it's a mind shift change. When do you know
you're that chemistry teacher that impacted you when you finally connect with
a developer who not only feels, I'll give you a chance,
but this is the right thing to do, that they change their whole mindset, that
(22:35):
they realize that demolition matters
because it's not only what you take down, but what you do with it. I
had a great project with West Group. They're a huge developer here in Vancouver.
I walked into their boardroom. I said, listen, you're doing a 66 home
land assembly in Port Moody. We've driven through there. We think there's at least 10
really nice homes in there. This is the model. And to their
(22:57):
credit, they're a big developer. It was a big project. They said, yeah.
Okay. Let's do it. It generated so much media interest because I
ended up we ended up Renewal ended up moving the 10 homes from Port Moody
to the Sunshine Coast in partnership with the Sechelt First
Nation. So the nation received the 10 homes. My company
general contracted the whole thing. We did some fix ups. We did some renovations. We
(23:20):
added basement suites. And so it's gonna end up being 17 units of
of below market rental housing for nation members. It
generated a lot of interest. Well, first of all, West Group got a lot
of great publicity and and recognition, which I I think they honestly
deserved. The nation did too for doing something so innovative
and sustainable and and a housing solution. But what it also
(23:42):
did is it it kind of prompted all of these other developers to kind of
perk their ears up and say, wait a second. That's interesting. And so we ended
up getting a whole bunch of phone calls after that. So I think these things
do snowball a lot. And like I was I was mentioning that pushing the ball
the the boulder up the mountain is, like, you do it a few times, you
prove that it works, you iron out the kinks, and it does in theory
(24:02):
get easier. When do you get bored of this and do something else? And
I I don't mean this disrespectfully, but as you start pushing these boulders
up, does this ever start feeling like you're wearing a lab coat? I've figured
out this model much like your software company, and now I I need to find
a new tight rope to walk on? Or do you think that this is your
calling and there's just gonna be, you know, the boulders will get
(24:23):
bigger and the grade gonna get steeper and that's what's gonna
keep you inspired and motivated? You know, in politics, because
I worked in The United States and I worked in Canada, people decide to run,
you know, maybe they've worked been working towards it, and maybe they start off at
a local level, and then they go up to a state level or a provincial
level, and every one of those rungs tests
you. You're up against five or 10 or different people, and it's gonna
(24:47):
be hard, and it's gonna be sometimes cutthroat and
and challenging. And I've watched this with peak candidates who run for elected
office. I've now experienced this building, like, a really challenging business model,
is that the fight and the challenge, if you can get through it and if
you can survive, it strengthens your resolve.
You get more locked in, and you get more committed,
(25:09):
and you get stronger. And I've kind of felt that evolution in me
over the last five years. You know, you hit some huge roadblock.
Someone says no to you. You can't move a home through there. And you say,
well, that doesn't make any sense. And then you fight to overcome that
challenge. You fight to get through that that dragon. And then on
the on the flip side of it, you come out
(25:31):
stronger. You come out more confident. And this has happened to me probably at
least 10 times already, Tony. I think it kind of
strengthens you to take on bigger and bigger challenges and
to take on bigger and bigger projects. It actually, I think, also
carves a path for people behind you, myself and other people who are
in this these kind of leading circular economy industries.
(25:54):
We're leading paths for others to follow in our footsteps. So when do
I get bored of this? I mean, my one of my dreams is to create
a whole community of of relocated, repurposed homes somewhere here in
Coastal British Columbia. I'd love to do that. 75
to a 50 homes. Master planet, think about
sustainability, think about community, rescue these homes. I think it'd be
(26:16):
such a great thing. And I think after something like that, Tony, which might be
five, ten years away from actually realizing it and completing it, and there's gonna be
a bunch of stepping stones along the way. I think after that, something like
that, I'll feel really good about what I've accomplished here, and
hopefully we've shifted mindsets and we've shifted policy and we've
shifted ways of thinking and ways of looking at a lot of these, these
(26:38):
things about demolition and construction. Then I think I'll be ready
for another challenge. I probably will need a break because this is
exhausting. I love what we do for now. And I think I can see myself
being in this for at least the next five to ten years. You know, I
always end my interviews with my three takeaways and this
interview went in such an extraordinary places, but this Newton
(26:59):
law of, the sense of inertia, unless there's external
forces to me is such a powerful metaphor of
how life can just suddenly Bring us into the
status quo. And it's whether it was your chemistry teacher or in
your case now, Glyn walking into a boardroom and saying there's a different way that
when you put this external force on, especially one with such
(27:21):
positivity and possibility, magic can happen. The
second one is the way you, you described your mom as this
sort of, I almost saw her as this twenties movie star, this
coming from Greece and then Europe, and then ending up in Canada,
which I gotta believe must have been such a change for her.
You could take her out of the world, but you couldn't take the world out
(27:43):
of her. And she blessed you with that. I think that is so wonderful
that this world is your oyster, I think was her way of
saying that's part of me and I'll never lose it and you need to
discover it so that you never lose it. Their third one is like,
you've almost described you in within you and your sister,
Steve jobs, you know, the sense of his dream and vision of
(28:05):
making technology transparent, The plug and play
computer. Nobody cares about widgets. They just want a thousand songs in your
pocket. And then somebody that must have worked tirelessly
that really said to do so you need to figure out how
to, you know, it's one thing to dream it, but it's another thing to do
it. And I think that's one probably the greatest lesson for people listening is you
(28:27):
don't always have to be the dreamer. You don't always have to be the doer.
But if you could put the tune together, find that higher purpose, find that
higher that North Star, and chase it. You'll have the
strength to push those boulders up the hill. And I'm just thrilled I had a
chance to spend some time with you today, and I know you've had a very
busy day. You've asked such perceptive questions, and I I really
appreciate, the enthusiasm I have also heard in your own
(28:50):
voice. It was a pleasure meeting you.
Joining me now is Leah Robinson. She's been on the show before. She's the vice
president of home equity financing at RBC. Leah, welcome back to
Chatter That Matters. Tony, thanks for having me. I'm happy happy to join you
today on this important topic. In terms of getting banks
to open their minds, this is a new way of looking at
(29:13):
housing. It requires more innovation, more creativity from the bank's
point of view. That's what you're doing at RBC. So I thought you could weigh
in and talk more about which isn't necessarily a a
skip in the park or an easy thing to sort of approve, but
still requires a kind of thinking and creativity that that, you're willing to put into
it. Construction right off of the bat is not for the faint of heart. And
(29:35):
I'll say that, you know, I'll say that over and over, because there certainly is
challenges in terms of working through the process. But it's it's
different ways of living. You know, when you look at some of the the the
supply challenges, we really have to look at this in many
different ways. New buildings, yes, are great, but how do we
reuse and recycle some of the existing infrastructure
(29:57):
and modify it so that families and communities can live
a bit differently? And that's where you know, we're looking at our programs saying,
how do we support people, who wanna do this, who wanna live in
multi generational homes or have the ability to
to generate, additional income to be able to support
support a mortgage. And so if I was in that situation saying,
(30:20):
listen. I've got this house. I you know, maybe I want my mother-in-law to move
in, or I wanna find some rental income. Is a process
for approaching someone like RBC different? Because it isn't
your, you know, here's my down payment, and here's how much I can afford in
a house. This is something I own and wanna do more with it. Yeah. I
mean, we certainly have programs both at if it's an existing
(30:41):
property that you own or that you wanna purchase. And it just
depends as well in terms of how deep are you planning on going with that
home. We do have those options for both kinds of clients
depending on what you want to do, whether it's multiple suites, whether it's putting
in a single suite, adapting a space you
know, for family members whether they're seniors and they need special equipment,
(31:04):
whatever it is. Leah, part of this is not just the sort of
doing the math, but it's the the insecurity and uncertainty
path that I haven't followed in the past. What is your advice? Yeah. I mean,
I think the first place to start is to really understand where you're living and
what are what are the requirements there. But when you're ready to kind of
go through that process and you said, this is a decision that makes sense
(31:26):
for me, our mortgage specialists are best equipped to
kind of have those discussions. Finding a
qualified builder, I think, is also a really important
piece of that process. Working with the municipality,
what are the requirements in terms of permits, how do you go through that application
process, and then the financing that you need, you
(31:48):
need to get through that. What role can an organization like RBC
play working with the city, two very
different entities, to try to encourage this kind of,
sentiment so that people that do have the ability to dream
and wanna do find less friction and less
bureaucracy and more people there saying, yes, let's do it
(32:11):
together. We can make this happen. It's really difficult right right now. And so
how can between a builder, a municipality, and a bank sort
of come together and say, we kinda need to create a repeatable
process because when people hear about how difficult,
it can be, it sort of pushes them away from that, right? And it creates
that fear of taking something like a big project like that on.
(32:34):
So, you know, creating those opportunities is really about,
looking at what are the right partnerships and what are the experts,
that the average person needs around them in order to be able
to accomplish, something like doing a major major
renovation on their home, major re reconstruction of their home in order
to be able to accomplish their goals. Leah, for all the things that you work
(32:56):
on and manage, I have to believe that what you're doing here in terms
of really helping people dream and do,
find a way to get more from their property, whether that's more family living with
them or more income, it's gotta be some of the most rewarding work you're doing.
Absolutely. I mean, I've got, I've got personal stories in, in my own
family, you know, the difficulty, in, in affordability.
(33:19):
Right. And, and so giving people the options to be
able to adapt their, their spaces. Right. And that allows
them to, you know, live in a different style of
housing in a different neighborhood and things like that. So. I appreciate your time today
and, just looking forward to seeing what RBC's doing in this space
and, give you a standing ovation because fulfilling mortgages
(33:41):
is repeatable doing something like this. Each one of them's a bit of a one
off. And, I'm I just congratulate you for taking that on.
Thanks for having me, Tony. Appreciate it. Once again, a
special thanks to RBC for supporting Chata that matters. It's
Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
Give you a peek behind the curtain, Chad, that matters. I do my own
research, and I really like to have directional
questions and a sense of where I want this interview to
go. Wearing my listener's shoes, I always think
about head, heart, and hands. Is this subject matter gonna be
interesting emotionally? Is it gonna touch a chord? Are
(00:26):
there some ideas and that my listener can action, that I can
action as I go about my life.
But there's times where we go completely off script.
The game plan is thrown out almost immediately. And
trying to keep my emotions in check becomes very difficult because I,
in fact, am so moved. And that's my
(00:49):
interview today with Glyn Lewis. He's the visionary behind renewal
development. So we tear down 600 really
nice homes every year. To me, that seems incredibly
wasteful. It's It's wasteful from a a material perspective. It's wasteful from
an embodied carbon perspective. It's wasteful from a housing perspective. Those are good
homes that someone could be living in. He's turning a wrecking ball
(01:11):
into a tool for sustainability. He's
saving beautiful homes that were gonna be demolished just because they're in the way of
development and repurposing them into communities that
need housing. And they don't just get affordable
housing. They get the gift of a beautiful house.
And the emotions that poured through my veins when I was talking about
(01:34):
the admiration I have for him for finding this purpose
and pursuit, the gratitude he has for his mentors,
including his younger sister, his mother, his
comprehension of what it takes to both dream and do, his
knowledge of philosophy and psychology. Being a
disruptor, being truly innovative to
(01:56):
transform something to hopefully a better place is
incredibly challenging. Well, all of that ladders into one
beautiful tale of an entrepreneur who's in
a constant conversation with both mother nature and human
nature.
Hi. It's Tony Chapman. Thank you for listening to Chatter That Matters presented by
(02:19):
RBC. If you can, please subscribe to the podcast and
ratings reviews, well, they're always welcome and they're always appreciated.
And with that introduction, Glyn Lewis, I'd like to welcome you to Chatter
That Matters. Thanks for having me, Tony. So my show
is about people that overcome circumstances. They
(02:42):
chase dreams. They change their world and ours for the better.
I've walked by a house that deserves to be torn down a hundred times, and
I just see a house is about to be torn down. You saw this as
an opportunity to not only create a business, but as you call it, as a
campaign to to save the planet. So I wanna know a little bit more
about you before we get into the business. Where where did this sign of mine
(03:03):
come from? Talk to me about your, your upbringing. I think it was Shakespeare who
said the past is prologue and to understand where you're going, you really have to
understand where you've come from. I grew up here in Metro
Vancouver, went to Simon Fraser University. I signed up,
as a chemistry major. I thought I wanted to be, a
chemistry educator, actually. I had some really great teachers when I
(03:25):
was in high school, and I just thought that was gonna be my contribution, was
to kind of mentor and guide. Something interesting about the sciences that,
you know, it's a a fair amount of curiosity. You know, you're kind of trying
to understand the world, and you're trying to understand how things work and why they
work the way they do, and I think that kind of reflects a little bit
about my, you know, alternative way of looking at problems, is
(03:46):
through that lens of curiosity and what ifs. So I was at
SFU. I I watched Inconvenient Truth, the Al Gore
documentary about climate change. I guess that was around 02/2005,
how unsustainable it felt to keep developing our
communities and our global economy the way that it was,
especially if you look at population growth and you look at all these different factors
(04:08):
adding up together to have this incredible impact on the Earth's
ability to sustain life. But I I kinda felt like we knew what a lot
of the problems were, and it wasn't so much about defining the problem as it
was about coming up with creative solutions. And so I ended up
actually shifting my degree to this thing called sustainable community
development. I did my, thesis with this, doctor Mark Roseland. He wrote
(04:29):
this book called Towards Sustainable Communities. It's a seminal book. It's
used around the world now. And that course was kind
of my blueprint for thinking through how do we
build our communities differently, how do we build our economies
differently, how do we plan our our neighborhoods
differently? I ended up working in politics for a while. I went down to United
(04:51):
States. I worked there for a year. I came back, and I worked in politics
here in Canada, both at the federal level, and provincial
level and local level. Ended up starting a company that built
software, to help enable political campaigns and political
movements. I was working in the nonprofit sector a bit too, and then a few
years later, what happened, Tony, was my sister was living in this really charming
(05:12):
1920, '19 '19 '30 home in Esquimalt.
She took really good care of the home, and they were renovating it, and they
just it was just it's such a beautiful, charming, you know, big bay windows and
the high vaulted ceilings and all that kind of stuff. And, a
developer bought the whole city block to do what's called
a land assembly, so to add density. And we're seeing this happen
(05:33):
hundreds, if not thousands of times, all across Metro Vancouver, Greater Victoria,
and some other growing urban areas where you're seeing a lot of these single
family homes being gobbled up into land assemblies and being
slated for demolition to make space for higher density development. And so when
my sister's house was purchased in this land assembly by this developer,
Nesquimalt, she being also being a bit of environmentalist
(05:56):
herself, just thought this was a terrible idea, and she said, no. I don't I
I don't wanna let just this home go to the landfill. So she ended
up, working with a, a contractor who
lifted the home and put it on a truck and moved it, North
of Souk. And she moved it there with her partner, and then they repurposed
it. Tony, when my sister did this, it just awakened
(06:19):
in me this, like, wow, what a brilliant model. Right? It's
housing. It's more affordable housing. It's more sustainable housing, you know,
and there's all of these great homes being demolished. Why doesn't more of this happen?
I wanna unpack a lot of that. I guess the first question is you're in
this white lab coat and you're doing everything you
thought you wanted to do. You make a big course correction when you
(06:41):
start focusing on the environment. And then the next course correction is
saying, I don't want to be in this lab coat anymore. And I'm curious, was
that an individual that touched you in a certain way? Or was it just simply
the, you know, the Al Gore film and book? Or do you think this was
something that was always in you, that there was a greater calling than a classroom,
that your calling was going to be a community or broader? You know, I'm a
(07:03):
big believer that we're we have certain innate capabilities and
skills and talents. At a certain point, you might hit a
ceiling. And I think that within the lab environment,
I saw a limitation of what I'm capable of or what I'm
interested in and what I can do using this space.
And I just felt that there was more growth in an if I took a
(07:25):
different pathway. And the different pathway was to say, okay, great. We
we know what the problems are, but I I really wanna work on the solutions.
And then my second question, because when you go into politics, it
really is a profession of influence versus authority.
Going into there. Did you feel that that was also limiting in the sense
that. It was a lot of consensus and a lot of collaboration and
(07:47):
maybe a first gear where you were wired more
for saying, I want to have my hand on that stick shift and I want
to choose the gears. When I was working in politics, you
know, it's such a machine. Right? And there's
different people play different roles, and it's huge, and it can be very
bureaucratic. And you have to work really hard for a really
(08:08):
long time to build enough power internally of that structure
to really have latitude, to have a fair amount of agency.
You know, all of the backbencher MLAs and MPs or the people who work
on campaigns, it's like you're just part of something way bigger. But if you're
someone like me who appreciates agency and having
freedom and creative control and all of these things, that that just wasn't
(08:31):
the right forum for me to be fully expressed. And
so being an entrepreneur, creating something where I can have
complete creative control and leadership and guidance
over. If I'm gonna use the best of my talents and skills and capabilities,
this was the right channel for me. What advice can you give to young people
to have the courage to look around at their circumstances
(08:54):
and go, if this is a square peg in a round hole,
it's okay to declare that and to find something else versus
a lot of people, which I think get on this escalator that they think they're
heading up, but as quickly as you did or maybe a decade later, they
realized they're really not moving. The posters behind me are from
Apple's, think different campaign. One of my favorite ads of all
(09:16):
time. So that entire the ethos that Steve Jobs brought to
Apple and what he thought what he saw and envisioned Apple's role in the
world was and which I thought was so perfectly
summarized in the think different campaign. Right? The the square
pegs and the round holes. Here's to the crazy ones, the ones who've
envisioned a different world and are willing to to fully commit themselves
(09:38):
to creating that world in in their own way differently. And we all
benefit from that through innovation and creativity, break down old
barriers and trying to force change onto industries or force change
onto established norms. And it's incredibly hard, Tony, and
I'm I'm sure from all a lot of folks that you've probably talked to in
in the work that you've done in your in your life, being a disruptor,
(10:00):
being truly innovative to transform something to
hopefully a better place is incredibly challenging. But, you know, Newton's
I think it was his first you know, being a scientist, Newton's first law of
thermodynamics, an object at rest has a tendency to remain at rest
unless acted upon by an outside force. You have to
put the force together, and that could be creative force, it could be
(10:23):
spiritual force, it could be emotional force, you know, enterprise force.
You have to amass that to try to drive change onto something that doesn't wanna
change. And inherently and and physics and and the the natural world
shows us that things don't wanna naturally change. You know, it takes a
certain amount of courage and boldness to try to envision what you want your own
life to be about, to create the role that you want to. It could be
(10:45):
in your relationships. It could be within your family. It could be within your
career. It could be within whatever domain it is. It's about just not falling
into the pattern. It's not about falling into the stream just because the stream
is moving in this direction, charting that new different course or the way that
that feels right for you and having the courage to lean into that. No.
It's funny. I always talk about it as the invisible bars at the status
(11:07):
quo, and we never realize that we're holding on to
them. I always wonder when I talk to young people, is it
a comfort level? Is it validation? Because this is what your
parents wanted you to do. Is it just, you know, I've
decided that in my life, I'm going to work to live versus
choose a path in life that, that also gives me life. So great
(11:29):
philosophy. Your sister, is she older or younger? She's two years
younger. Her desire to save this house. There
must have been an awful lot of people that said to her, you know,
this is not a smart decision. It is something I've always
known about her is that she doesn't accept the status quo.
And if she thinks something is broken, she will fight to change it.
(11:52):
And I think it's that quality that I admire, often to her own
detriment. When I saw her do this project, it just fit within
this what I knew about her to be true. She's always going to be that
person to pick the hard fight to do the right thing. Here's
to the crazy ones, the misfits,
the rebels, the troublemakers,
(12:14):
the round pegs in the square holes, the
ones who see things differently. They're not fond of
rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You talk about
here's the crazy ones. If it were if you had to pick between you and
her to be in that ad, who would just who would have deserved it more?
I think she has more vision than
(12:36):
I do. I think I have more of,
like, the strategy about what needs to happen to get to that point. While some
may see them as the crazy ones, we
see genius. I listened to one of the interviews you did, and you
talked about a teacher in your life, this Yoda that touched you
and and made you realize there was more to you
(12:58):
than you thought even met your eye. Who was that
teacher? My chemistry grade 12 teacher. A little bit bit about me
going in in high school is I wasn't a great student. In fact, I struggled
a fair bit. I think I had my own learning challenges and
motivation challenges, and I almost failed grade 11
chemistry. In the summer of grade 11 going to grade 12, I
(13:20):
kinda had to sit down with myself and I just said, you know, what is
this life gonna be about, Glyn? If you if you really wanna do something here,
you're gonna have to sit down and really apply yourself and focus. And so I
came back that September, Tony, guns a blazing,
and my teachers did not recognize me. I ended up with the second
highest grade in chemistry in grade 12 in our school. So a
(13:42):
big part of it was just that fundamental mind shift and approach that
I had to take. But also, I had a great teacher. I had this great,
mister Pong. He encouraged and he was supportive, and he was just one
of those teachers that you wanna have in your life that that someone comes along
and says, I believe in you, even when you don't might not believe in yourself.
So you and your sister, I have to believe you weren't the
(14:04):
easiest kids just because of your appetite for life. But how did your
parents did they encourage that? What I always say
to parents sometimes is when you have these, these people with an appetite for
life, don't starve it, feed it. A bit of
backstory is my, my dad was a sixth
generation Canadian. His his grand his mother was Russian. They were
(14:26):
Doukhobors. And my mom was Greek. And so she had this
entire different worldview than my dad did. Born in,
in Athens, and she grew up in in Europe. And I think
my mom really had this perspective of the world's your oyster
and if you work hard and if you fight for what you believe in, Glyn,
you're anything and everything is possible for us to keep leaning
(14:49):
into everything that we wanted to do. So when my sister took on the fights
that she did, when I'm trying to, you know, create build renewal
development and and do the work that we do, I I we're constantly coming up
against opposition and resistance, and you have to kinda have
this innate belief that it's possible to get through
it. Coming up
(15:10):
is much more than just my three takeaways with Glyn Lewis. We
have an honest conversation about whether his model, his
vision, of instead discarding our past because it gets in
the way of progress can in fact be repurposed so that it
helps others get on the way to their future. And then I'll
have Leah Robinson who's been on the show before. She's the VP of home equity
(15:32):
financing at RBC to talk about the work
RBC is doing to make homeownership more affordable.
Hi, it's Tony Chapman from Shatter That Matters. RBC is
offering more financing options to support Canadian homeowners
looking to maximize their property's potential. Whether you want to provide
(15:55):
supportive housing for a family member or supplement your income with a
rental, RBC's Construction Mortgage Multi Units program has
you covered. You can finance additions like laneway homes, garden
suites, modular units, or even redevelop your home into
duplexes or triplexes. Speak to an RBC mortgage specialist today to
see how this program can work for you. Maximizing the potential of your
(16:17):
home, well that matters to you, to me, and to RBC.
We are one of the only companies, if not the only company, structured the
way we are in North America. The demolition, the moving, and the repurposing all
integrated into one company. As far as I know, no other company is structured like
us. It's not only just building your own team. It's not only just being a
(16:38):
CEO and the culture and having the right people and training them up. It's
also externally how dynamic and innovative and disruptive
our business model is and how challenging it is.
Today, my special guest is Glyn Lewis. He's a
crusader. He's a change maker. He's transformative.
He believes in a better Canada, and for all the above, I believe
(17:01):
in him. So talk to
me about renewal development because this business
makes complete sense for humanity and the planet.
Mhmm. But I have to believe you must have hit so many
walls of resistance because to some,
you're a deterrent. I just want to land grab and build. I
(17:24):
just want to get on with my business. So tell me about the business
and how you fashioned it in a way that it was
worth your effort to see this thing happen? Because I gotta believe in the early
days, it wasn't easy. It's gotten easier over the years. You know, it feels like
pushing a huge boulder up a hill, and you're gonna hit these bumps and
all of a sudden, it slow down and you sometimes you feel like you had
(17:46):
a little bit of momentum and then all of a sudden, you know, you now
you feel like you're losing momentum and doors open, sometimes a lot of doors
close. I think what a huge part of the motivation for me is that I
believe in it so firmly. Right? And you kinda have to. You wouldn't
do this unless you really believed in what in in the
sustainability part of this, the the raising the consciousness part of
this, the, affordability part of this. You know, I
(18:09):
often say that renewal is a campaign disguised as a
company. So talk to me about renewal development. If I you know, the old the
classic Dragon's Den pitch, you know, that everybody's so fascinated,
like, everything everybody wants things snackable and in a sound bite. Right. The
snackable sound bite that sort of gets me excited about what you're doing.
We look for homes slated for demolition. And
(18:32):
every year, there's about 3,000 single family homes slated for
demolition across Metro Vancouver every year, 3,000. And
that's as a result of all of this push for density. It's all of this
push for for more housing. You know, we hear it from the provincial government, the
federal government, the local government. We don't have enough housing. We don't have enough affordable
housing. And so a huge part of the solution that's being promoted
(18:54):
is just to build more housing. Now in a landlocked
area, like Metro Vancouver or Greater Victoria, you know, you're only
gonna be able to scroll out so far. And so now
the push is to to build upwards, to densify.
So to densify, these developers are buying up all of these single
family homes to do land assemblies. What I do is I
(19:17):
try to find the good ones. You know, they could be mid century homes, they
could be character homes, they could be homes built in the last five or ten
years. Twenty percent of the 3,000 homes torn
down every year are actually really nice, good condition, high
value homes. So we tear down 600
really nice homes every year. To me, that seems
(19:38):
incredibly wasteful. It's wasteful from a a material perspective. It's
wasteful from an embodied carbon perspective. It's wasteful from a housing
perspective. Those are good homes that someone could be living in. And on the flip
side, we have a housing crisis in so many of these non urban
communities. We essentially provide, a demolition
service, a sustainable demolition service to these developers. We
(20:00):
lift them, we put them on trucks often, we put them on barges, we take
them to non urban communities, and then we repurpose them. So I'm
essentially a general contractor, but instead of going down to Home Depot and
buying all the the lumber new and all of the copper new and all of
that stuff, I'm trying to maximize what already exists. You
describe when people are trying to challenge your vision,
(20:23):
sort of a dragon, the dragons that are in the way. So tell
the audience what kind of dragons are sort of breathing fire
on what I love is this approach is the ultimate
recycling, the three r's, but you're happy to be doing it with 2,000 or
3,000 square feet versus a Pepsi can. And
it's interesting the metaphor of a dragon because it's very literal and you can see
(20:44):
it, and some of them are much more subtle than something that's trying to
literally fight you from getting through the passage. The demolition industry.
So I'm currently trying to bring a paradigm shift
into an industry that's been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years, which is
you've got something, you don't want it there, you smash it up, and you send
it into a landfill. They own excavators,
(21:07):
and they own a lot of the trucks to haul the materials, and sometimes they
even they own the transfer stations. So they've got these entire
business models built around demolition. So
I come along and I say I think there's a more responsible way to do
this, and that is to recycle the good homes and then to
recycle the materials that we can't, demolish. And so I am actively
(21:29):
they're kind of a dragon. I I try not to see them as such
fierce competitors. In some ways, we could probably work together. In some ways, I hope
that they amend their business model, but I think that
we're going to force change on that industry. The other challenge and resistance
points that we have in front of us are just developers who aren't familiar with
this model. Those developers know demolition. So now I come
(21:50):
along, I meet them in their boardroom, we'll demolish and recycle the homes that we
can't move, but I'm gonna move a couple of the home the good homes. In
of itself, that new model, that new process
can put fear into people. It it's that change
because they're often so risk averse. They're just gonna fall back to the
thing that they know how to do, which is smash the building up and get
(22:12):
going because they just all they really care about is building their their
project and selling their units and then moving on to their next project. Right?
So it's a mind shift change. When do you know
you're that chemistry teacher that impacted you when you finally connect with
a developer who not only feels, I'll give you a chance,
but this is the right thing to do, that they change their whole mindset, that
(22:35):
they realize that demolition matters
because it's not only what you take down, but what you do with it. I
had a great project with West Group. They're a huge developer here in Vancouver.
I walked into their boardroom. I said, listen, you're doing a 66 home
land assembly in Port Moody. We've driven through there. We think there's at least 10
really nice homes in there. This is the model. And to their
(22:57):
credit, they're a big developer. It was a big project. They said, yeah.
Okay. Let's do it. It generated so much media interest because I
ended up we ended up Renewal ended up moving the 10 homes from Port Moody
to the Sunshine Coast in partnership with the Sechelt First
Nation. So the nation received the 10 homes. My company
general contracted the whole thing. We did some fix ups. We did some renovations. We
(23:20):
added basement suites. And so it's gonna end up being 17 units of
of below market rental housing for nation members. It
generated a lot of interest. Well, first of all, West Group got a lot
of great publicity and and recognition, which I I think they honestly
deserved. The nation did too for doing something so innovative
and sustainable and and a housing solution. But what it also
(23:42):
did is it it kind of prompted all of these other developers to kind of
perk their ears up and say, wait a second. That's interesting. And so we ended
up getting a whole bunch of phone calls after that. So I think these things
do snowball a lot. And like I was I was mentioning that pushing the ball
the the boulder up the mountain is, like, you do it a few times, you
prove that it works, you iron out the kinks, and it does in theory
(24:02):
get easier. When do you get bored of this and do something else? And
I I don't mean this disrespectfully, but as you start pushing these boulders
up, does this ever start feeling like you're wearing a lab coat? I've figured
out this model much like your software company, and now I I need to find
a new tight rope to walk on? Or do you think that this is your
calling and there's just gonna be, you know, the boulders will get
(24:23):
bigger and the grade gonna get steeper and that's what's gonna
keep you inspired and motivated? You know, in politics, because
I worked in The United States and I worked in Canada, people decide to run,
you know, maybe they've worked been working towards it, and maybe they start off at
a local level, and then they go up to a state level or a provincial
level, and every one of those rungs tests
you. You're up against five or 10 or different people, and it's gonna
(24:47):
be hard, and it's gonna be sometimes cutthroat and
and challenging. And I've watched this with peak candidates who run for elected
office. I've now experienced this building, like, a really challenging business model,
is that the fight and the challenge, if you can get through it and if
you can survive, it strengthens your resolve.
You get more locked in, and you get more committed,
(25:09):
and you get stronger. And I've kind of felt that evolution in me
over the last five years. You know, you hit some huge roadblock.
Someone says no to you. You can't move a home through there. And you say,
well, that doesn't make any sense. And then you fight to overcome that
challenge. You fight to get through that that dragon. And then on
the on the flip side of it, you come out
(25:31):
stronger. You come out more confident. And this has happened to me probably at
least 10 times already, Tony. I think it kind of
strengthens you to take on bigger and bigger challenges and
to take on bigger and bigger projects. It actually, I think, also
carves a path for people behind you, myself and other people who are
in this these kind of leading circular economy industries.
(25:54):
We're leading paths for others to follow in our footsteps. So when do
I get bored of this? I mean, my one of my dreams is to create
a whole community of of relocated, repurposed homes somewhere here in
Coastal British Columbia. I'd love to do that. 75
to a 50 homes. Master planet, think about
sustainability, think about community, rescue these homes. I think it'd be
(26:16):
such a great thing. And I think after something like that, Tony, which might be
five, ten years away from actually realizing it and completing it, and there's gonna be
a bunch of stepping stones along the way. I think after that, something like
that, I'll feel really good about what I've accomplished here, and
hopefully we've shifted mindsets and we've shifted policy and we've
shifted ways of thinking and ways of looking at a lot of these, these
(26:38):
things about demolition and construction. Then I think I'll be ready
for another challenge. I probably will need a break because this is
exhausting. I love what we do for now. And I think I can see myself
being in this for at least the next five to ten years. You know, I
always end my interviews with my three takeaways and this
interview went in such an extraordinary places, but this Newton
(26:59):
law of, the sense of inertia, unless there's external
forces to me is such a powerful metaphor of
how life can just suddenly Bring us into the
status quo. And it's whether it was your chemistry teacher or in
your case now, Glyn walking into a boardroom and saying there's a different way that
when you put this external force on, especially one with such
(27:21):
positivity and possibility, magic can happen. The
second one is the way you, you described your mom as this
sort of, I almost saw her as this twenties movie star, this
coming from Greece and then Europe, and then ending up in Canada,
which I gotta believe must have been such a change for her.
You could take her out of the world, but you couldn't take the world out
(27:43):
of her. And she blessed you with that. I think that is so wonderful
that this world is your oyster, I think was her way of
saying that's part of me and I'll never lose it and you need to
discover it so that you never lose it. Their third one is like,
you've almost described you in within you and your sister,
Steve jobs, you know, the sense of his dream and vision of
(28:05):
making technology transparent, The plug and play
computer. Nobody cares about widgets. They just want a thousand songs in your
pocket. And then somebody that must have worked tirelessly
that really said to do so you need to figure out how
to, you know, it's one thing to dream it, but it's another thing to do
it. And I think that's one probably the greatest lesson for people listening is you
(28:27):
don't always have to be the dreamer. You don't always have to be the doer.
But if you could put the tune together, find that higher purpose, find that
higher that North Star, and chase it. You'll have the
strength to push those boulders up the hill. And I'm just thrilled I had a
chance to spend some time with you today, and I know you've had a very
busy day. You've asked such perceptive questions, and I I really
appreciate, the enthusiasm I have also heard in your own
(28:50):
voice. It was a pleasure meeting you.
Joining me now is Leah Robinson. She's been on the show before. She's the vice
president of home equity financing at RBC. Leah, welcome back to
Chatter That Matters. Tony, thanks for having me. I'm happy happy to join you
today on this important topic. In terms of getting banks
to open their minds, this is a new way of looking at
(29:13):
housing. It requires more innovation, more creativity from the bank's
point of view. That's what you're doing at RBC. So I thought you could weigh
in and talk more about which isn't necessarily a a
skip in the park or an easy thing to sort of approve, but
still requires a kind of thinking and creativity that that, you're willing to put into
it. Construction right off of the bat is not for the faint of heart. And
(29:35):
I'll say that, you know, I'll say that over and over, because there certainly is
challenges in terms of working through the process. But it's it's
different ways of living. You know, when you look at some of the the the
supply challenges, we really have to look at this in many
different ways. New buildings, yes, are great, but how do we
reuse and recycle some of the existing infrastructure
(29:57):
and modify it so that families and communities can live
a bit differently? And that's where you know, we're looking at our programs saying,
how do we support people, who wanna do this, who wanna live in
multi generational homes or have the ability to
to generate, additional income to be able to support
support a mortgage. And so if I was in that situation saying,
(30:20):
listen. I've got this house. I you know, maybe I want my mother-in-law to move
in, or I wanna find some rental income. Is a process
for approaching someone like RBC different? Because it isn't
your, you know, here's my down payment, and here's how much I can afford in
a house. This is something I own and wanna do more with it. Yeah. I
mean, we certainly have programs both at if it's an existing
(30:41):
property that you own or that you wanna purchase. And it just
depends as well in terms of how deep are you planning on going with that
home. We do have those options for both kinds of clients
depending on what you want to do, whether it's multiple suites, whether it's putting
in a single suite, adapting a space you
know, for family members whether they're seniors and they need special equipment,
(31:04):
whatever it is. Leah, part of this is not just the sort of
doing the math, but it's the the insecurity and uncertainty
path that I haven't followed in the past. What is your advice? Yeah. I mean,
I think the first place to start is to really understand where you're living and
what are what are the requirements there. But when you're ready to kind of
go through that process and you said, this is a decision that makes sense
(31:26):
for me, our mortgage specialists are best equipped to
kind of have those discussions. Finding a
qualified builder, I think, is also a really important
piece of that process. Working with the municipality,
what are the requirements in terms of permits, how do you go through that application
process, and then the financing that you need, you
(31:48):
need to get through that. What role can an organization like RBC
play working with the city, two very
different entities, to try to encourage this kind of,
sentiment so that people that do have the ability to dream
and wanna do find less friction and less
bureaucracy and more people there saying, yes, let's do it
(32:11):
together. We can make this happen. It's really difficult right right now. And so
how can between a builder, a municipality, and a bank sort
of come together and say, we kinda need to create a repeatable
process because when people hear about how difficult,
it can be, it sort of pushes them away from that, right? And it creates
that fear of taking something like a big project like that on.
(32:34):
So, you know, creating those opportunities is really about,
looking at what are the right partnerships and what are the experts,
that the average person needs around them in order to be able
to accomplish, something like doing a major major
renovation on their home, major re reconstruction of their home in order
to be able to accomplish their goals. Leah, for all the things that you work
(32:56):
on and manage, I have to believe that what you're doing here in terms
of really helping people dream and do,
find a way to get more from their property, whether that's more family living with
them or more income, it's gotta be some of the most rewarding work you're doing.
Absolutely. I mean, I've got, I've got personal stories in, in my own
family, you know, the difficulty, in, in affordability.
(33:19):
Right. And, and so giving people the options to be
able to adapt their, their spaces. Right. And that allows
them to, you know, live in a different style of
housing in a different neighborhood and things like that. So. I appreciate your time today
and, just looking forward to seeing what RBC's doing in this space
and, give you a standing ovation because fulfilling mortgages
(33:41):
is repeatable doing something like this. Each one of them's a bit of a one
off. And, I'm I just congratulate you for taking that on.
Thanks for having me, Tony. Appreciate it. Once again, a
special thanks to RBC for supporting Chata that matters. It's
Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening and let's chat soon.
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