Author Archives: Jon Lowder

Reading/Listen/Watch List Week of June 21, 2025

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Read

The most Dad thing you did in the last year (Ryan Nanni’s Bluesky Social thread)

‘The essential ingredient is openness’: Curtis Sittenfeld on the deep joy of midlife friendship (The Guardian)

Durham grants $1.5M loan to housing authority in ‘crisis.’ How it will be used (The News & Observer)

Western North Carolina’s 60+ wineries have largely reopened but are facing fewer visitors and steep repair bills; ‘We’re here – come visit’ (The Charlotte Ledger)

Recovery Failure: Why we struggle to rebuild for the next storm (NPR)

Landlords owed thousands, as Housing Authority continues to have trouble paying tenants rent (ABC11)

Apartment developer sees muted impact from tariffs so far (Multifamily Dive)

Housing is unaffordable – does anyone care enough to fix it? (The Carolina Journal)

How the potential end of Energy Star could affect apartment operators (Multifamily Dive)

Mapped: The Most and Least Expensive U.S. State (Visual Capitalist)

U.S. must face claims over pandemic ban on residential evictions (Reuters)

What if federal hurricane relief dries up in Western North Carolina? Here are some lessons from history. (North Carolina Rabbit Hole)

Why the costs of child care shouldn’t be borne alone (EdNC)

Listen

From Pandemic Pivots to Political Power – The New Blueprint for Apartment Associations (The Associated)

Watch

Social Media, Connection & Career Growth in Multifamily with Alexis, Bill, and Marcie (Be Amazing Podcast/YouTube)

More Than Housing: The People Powering Multifamily Guest Jon, Chiccorra, & Bryan (Be Amazing Podcast/YouTube)

Rescue Brew contest transforms animals into NoDa Brewing mascots for a good cause (WCNC)

The Before: Final Prep for Hardwood Floor Installation

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The hardwood floors are scheduled to be installed beginning January 30, so the past weekend was spent making final preparations. That included: removing the chair lift from the staircase, removing the carpet/padding/carpet tack strips from the stairs, making sure the floors were clean, and screwing down the subfloor to minimize squeaking. Let’s just say my back, shoulders, forearms, and hands are paying the price for a LOT of labor.

Morning Beers and a Little Known Hero

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Two things I read this week that are definitely worth sharing:

Atlas Obscura’s piece on the three London pubs that still open for breakfast, and yes you can have a beer with your bacon and eggs. Here’s my favorite factoid from the article:

…drinking before work is fairly taboo in Britain, and most people wait until at least lunchtime. Back in the day, though, workmen would easily drink six to eight pints of beer every day, says Jennings. For what else could they drink? The water often came from sewage-ridden sources such as the River Thames, and there were no soft drinks. Tea and coffee eventually arrived, but they were expensive, foreign imports and, even once they became more common, subject to heavy taxation. “So people drank beer with their meals during the day. That lasted well into the 19th century for many people,” says Jennings.

The second piece that really caught my attention was this article from North Carolina Rabbit Hole about the man who led the team that disarmed two hydrogen bombs that accidentally fell near Goldsboro, NC in 1961. Here’s the opening paragraph:

On a cold wet day in January 1961, Lt. Jack ReVelle climbed out of a muddy hole in the ground, holding a rough, gray sphere the size of a volleyball against his chest. For the better part of a week, he and his crew had been digging in the swampy ground outside of Goldsboro, North Carolina. It had been raining and snowing, and the hole had grown to be larger than a football field. Jack was just 25 years old, but he was in charge. When he and his men finally found what they were looking for, Jack was the one who got to climb up the ladder and bring it out.

I definitely recommend reading the rest of the article to learn about a man who did something extraordinary, and yet no one knew about it for 50 years.

The Before: Kitchen Floor Demo

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The flooring company took out the olden kitchen floor, which was something we didn’t think we could do ourselves and we were right. It took three guys, who do this all the time, the better part of a day to get it all out, and they had WAY better tools than we do for the task. New hardwood floors are scheduled to start going in on January 30.

The Before: Kitchen Demo Day

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Friday (January 20) our contractor took out the peninsula cabinets and countertop in the kitchen, and took out the laminate “supposed to look like hardwood” floors. The flooring company will take out the layer of linoleum and underlayment next and then hardwood will be going in on the entire main floor. Here are pics from the cabinet removal.