Storytelling: Find Your Place in History

George Bailey/Jimmy Stewart engaging in some serious storytelling in Bedford Falls, courtesy, "It's a Wonderful Life." If you've got a bundle of facts sitting around, start nailing them together and build your own story.

Did you know that over the last 60 years, the average American house has doubled in size and quadrupled in cost (even using dollars adjusted for inflation)?

First off, no, you haven’t stumbled onto the This Old House blog.

That bit of single-family home trivia above formed while I was developing content for storytelling, for my client, HomeEc. That company builds highly efficient tiny homes and home additions very affordably, and very quickly.

So as any obsessive person would, I was researching the history of housing in the United States. In the process, I stumbled upon a tremendous document – “The Impact of the Baby Boom on the Society in the United States” – which I found via our local library’s EBSCO subscription.

I was thunderstruck by a moment of time cited in the document: during the Baby Boom, a wonderful father-brother-brother team (the Levitts) decided to build AFFORDABLE, HIGH-QUALITY (my emphasis added) homes to meet the demand for homes that had pent up during The Great Depression and World War II (and the following boom of babies and consumerism).

The Levitts bought a floundering 2,000-acre potato farm on Long Island to construct 4,600 houses, and to sell them for about $7,000 a pop ($92K in 2024 dollars). Most of these small (1,200 sq. ft.) homes remain standing, a testament to the Levitts’ commitment to provide affordable, quality housing that would stand the test of time.

They could have gouged these consumers, or built substandard structures, and rented them out*. For those old enough to appreciate the “It’s a Wonderful Life” reference, they could have built a Pottersville, instead of a Bedford Falls. Talk about storytelling gold.

*UPDATE: Since I wrote this, I found out the first 2,000 Levittown homes were rented out. D'oh!

Effective Storytelling Means Digging to Find Historical Parallels

Suddenly, in my mind, this all came together: During the Baby Boom, about 13 million homes were built to quench this demand. In 2024, the U.S. government declared a need for at least 3 million new, affordable dwelling units to deal with a shortage caused by higher labor and construction material prices, investors snapping up homes foreclosed upon in the 2009 subprime housing market collapse, increased homelessness, and higher interest rates. What homes that have been built in the past decade or so have averaged more than 2,000 square feet in size. I watched firsthand as 1950s bungalows were being bulldozed and replace with million-dollar McMansions that exceed 3,000 square feet, leaving most middle-class people without a chance of homeownership.

And my client, HomeEc, is positioned perfectly to fill this need, in the spirit of the Levitts: smaller homes and home additions, with smaller prices, with the advantage of more advanced materials that can be assembled more efficiently. The HomeEc story becomes easier to tell when there’s a historical backdrop for storytelling. Read their blog post to see how it turned out.

Good Storytelling Can Mean Juxtaposing Other Timelines Against Yours

In researching issues facing HomeEc, I came across data that shows that company is swimming against a tide of booming Homeowners Associations (HOAs). Here's the chart I built based on that data:

You'll see that while the HOA timeline above doesn't completely overlap with either the Levitts' timeline or the HomeEc timeline, it's broad enough to inform readers about the massive influx of restrictive land use since 1970. Many HOAs don't allow the construction of Accessory Dwelling Units. In fact, many are using the exact same HOA agreements that they had when they were founded.

You might have noticed the data above originated from the Foundation for Community Association Research, an advocate group for HOAs. Did I ask permission to use this data? No. They published it and placed it before me, on a silver platter. Why would I NOT use this data to be a better storyteller? (Click here to learn more about how to use data for more effective storytelling.)

Don't Ask an AI Storytelling Generator to Perform an Incredibly Human Function

It's possible that PilotAI or Claud might stumble upon the Levitts or the Foundation for Community Association Research by the year 3000.

In 2025, an AI can't tumble down an internet rabbit hole and emerge with the following narrative: HomeEc is an important part of the story of how affordable, equitable housing finally finds its way to the masses, despite what legal obstacles are thrown its way.

Your organizations/clients also need to know their place in a historical timeline, if they don’t already. Hence, the importance of establishing a timeline for your clients. Even if you never use it.