What about people who don't currently own a home? How do they feel about their chances of becoming homeowners?

We found that over 80% agree that rising housing costs have made it difficult to become a homeowner.

And here in North America, just under half of non-homeowners surveyed don't think they'll ever be able to own a home.

And big barriers are high housing prices, which have accelerated so much faster than incomes over the past five years.

And then the huge challenge when you're paying so much in your rent for ever being able to save a down payment.

And what we know is while not everyone should be a homeowner, for so many families over the past 75 years, owning a home has become that way to create an intergenerational asset and really be a springboard for families to come into the middle class.

When we take that opportunity away and that hope out, we really become a community increasingly of people with assets and without.

So besides relying on the government to invest in housing, what can be done? What's the solution to make safe, affordable housing more attainable for people?

Talk to us a bit about how this is a bit different from other builds.

Well, the Carter Work Project is like every other Habitat build, but way bigger, and this is a special year in a couple different ways.

One, as you said, this is President Carter's 100th birthday today.

So we know, and he was very clear, that the best birthday present for him was to keep the work going that he has been part of for now 40 years.

And so it's really quite remarkable, as we also remember Mrs. Carter today, who was another great champion, that in 1984, the two of them got on a bus with a group of volunteers from Plains and drove up to New York City and slept in a church basement and rehabbed a tenement building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

And Habitat was a tiny organization.

That's really when the world found out about Habitat.

You must be getting that kind of feedback from the people that you interact with all the time.

Can you tell us a little bit from your research about the link between homeownership and health?

Well, Kristen, we have seen, and the data is overwhelmingly clear, that the ability to have a healthy home has a dramatic impact on the health costs for families.

So when we think about affordability, it's not just the cost of your rent or mortgage, but also... your other costs, and we've seen over and over again families moving out of a less healthy apartment into a Habitat home.

They've had fewer doctor visits, spent less on medicine, and the difference of having that healthy environment for their children has made a huge impact, and that leads to better educational and other outcomes as well.

I have a pediatrician friend who's become a big housing champion because she said she kept treating children over and over again for symptoms and realized what she really wanted was a prescription for a healthy house because otherwise she would send them home with medicine and then they'd be back in again because ultimately whether it was mold or other issues that were exacerbating their asthma or allergies, that healthy home was the real desire.

Where do you guys see yourself working together in the home building process in the years to come? What do you see on the horizon?

Thanks, Kristen.

It's really amazing.

What was it that other than your deep faith and an opportunity that made you say, I've done enough in the corporate world, I've sort of either checked that box or made enough money or my faith is just is compelling me to give up on corporate America and go be a pastor?

Yeah, you know, I think both opportunity and that long-term sort of sense of calling.

And the opportunity side was if I didn't leave within 12 months of the acquisition of Musicland, I would lose all the benefits of the merger.

So there was kind of a ticking cycle.

clock.

And I stayed for, I was the only senior leader who stayed to help with the transition, but it was clear they'd put in their own person to run this, now what is going to be a division.

So it didn't, we couldn't have two presidents.

Let me just lead that to you to just talk for a moment about what Habitat's doing around the globe and what is either makes it easier for you to have an impact outside of the United States or harder for you to have an impact outside of the United States, given what you see in other countries.