For more than four decades, Pam Patenaude has been at the center of U.S. housing policy.
She’s served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, overseeing the day-to-day operations of a $52 billion agency and managing $37 billion in disaster recovery funding. She’s led influential organizations including the Bipartisan Policy Center and the Urban Land Institute’s Terwilliger Center for Housing. And lucky for us, she’s also a PadSplit Advisory Board Member.
PadSplit’s CEO recently sat down with Pam to discuss the challenges and opportunities around housing policy. When someone with that depth of experience says housing is broken — and that coliving is part of the solution — it’s worth listening.
Forty years of policy — and the same challenges
Pam’s career in housing began more than 40 years ago. Since then, she’s worked across multiple administrations, political parties, and economic cycles. What stands out most to her isn’t how much has changed, it’s how much hasn’t.
Many of the federal housing programs still in use today were designed decades ago. While programs like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) have produced millions of affordable units, they simply cannot meet today’s demand.
Pam shared how receiving a voucher is like winning the lottery because only one in four households that qualify for housing assistance actually receive it. At the same time, HUD’s budget has grown significantly, yet they’re still not able to keep pace with the growing demand.
In Pam’s view, this makes one thing clear: subsidies alone are not enough.
“There’s enough square footage out there to house all Americans,” Pam says, “if we just start looking at things a little bit differently.”
Coliving does exactly that.
Why shared housing works then and now
For Pam, coliving isn’t a new or experimental idea. It’s deeply rooted in American history.
Her grandparents were Irish immigrants who lived in shared housing while working in textile mills. That arrangement allowed them to save money and eventually become homeowners. Today’s version of shared housing offers the same core benefits: affordability, flexibility, and the ability to save — without requiring government subsidies.
Pam also sees coliving as uniquely well-suited to serve multiple demographics at once. For young adults just starting out, coliving offers an alternative to crushing rents, student loan debt, or moving back home simply because it’s cheaper. For older adults, it can be a way to age in place: staying in their homes while offsetting rising costs by renting out unused rooms.
In both cases, coliving provides something increasingly rare in today’s housing market: choice.
The policy opportunity ahead
Pam is clear-eyed about the barriers that remain. Most housing challenges, she notes, exist at the local level: zoning rules, occupancy limits, and regulatory hurdles that make shared housing difficult or impossible in many cities.
But there may also be a silver lining. Housing affordability is now one of the top issues facing Americans, and for the first time in decades, there is bipartisan agreement that something must change.
That creates an opening to rethink long-standing assumptions and elevate solutions like coliving — solutions that don’t require new federal programs or massive subsidies, but simply the willingness to allow them.
Why PadSplit’s model resonates
What drew Pam to PadSplit is simple: it works without federal subsidies, it leverages existing housing stock, and it creates affordability through design rather than dependency.
By turning underutilized homes into flexible, private rooms, PadSplit expands supply in a way that’s faster, more scalable, and more adaptable than traditional models.
After 44 years in housing policy, Pam Patenaude believes we need every tool available to address the crisis.
Coliving, she says, is one of those tools — and one we can’t afford to ignore.
Because after decades of doing the same things and getting the same results, housing won’t be fixed by waiting. It will be fixed by rethinking how we live — one room at a time.
🎧 Listen to the full conversation with Pam on One Room at a Time: padsplit.com/podcast.
