What Would It Take to Actually Fix Housing? Tyler Pullen of Terner Labs & UC Berkeley on policy, prefab, and the graveyard of good ideas.

Tyler Pullen doesn't traffic in buzzwords. As leader of the Building Innovation Track at Terner Labs, the nonprofit accelerator spun out of UC Berkeley's Terner Center for Housing Innovation, he's spent years separating companies actually building homes from the ones just building pitch decks.

Recorded live on the expo floor in Dallas, Tyler gets candid about what it really takes to move the needle on housing affordability: 70 expert interviews in a single month, a dozen California bills already in motion, and the stubborn truth that the biggest barrier to innovation in housing isn't engineering. It's navigating the humans.

We cover the forthcoming California building innovation white paper, why hardware is categorically harder than software, and what innovators consistently get wrong when they try to enter the housing market without speaking the language.

Download the "Potential Pathways to Scale Innovative Construction Methods in California" white paper here https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/PathwaystoScaleInnovativeConstruction2026.pdf

Apply to the Terner Labs Building Innovation Track: ternerlabs.org Reach Tyler directly: [email protected]

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