How to Create Housing for Community over Profit - with Jeremy McLeod of Nightingale Housing

What happens when an architect develops their own projects, stops chasing profit, and starts designing for people, planet, and purpose? Jeremy McLeod, founder of Breathe and Nightingale Housing, shares how a single prototype sparked a housing movement in Australia. From ditching car parks and private laundries to designing rooftop commons and slow elevators, Nightingale flips the development playbook — proving that sustainability, affordability, and community aren't just compatible, but catalytic. With a waitlist over 21,000 strong, this conversation reveals how one radical idea changed the market and inspired a new model of ethical housing.

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Keywords

Jeremy McLeod, Nightingale Housing, affordable housing, nonprofit developer, ethical development, triple bottom line, sustainable housing, Melbourne architecture, car-free housing, shared laundries, rooftop commons, housing affordability crisis, build-to-sell, housing without profit, real estate innovation, alternative housing models, climate-resilient design, housing as a human right, community-focused development

Chapters

0:00 — Why Profit Gets in the Way

2:00 — Building the Prototype Without a Developer

5:00 — When 1,000 People Lined Up

8:00 — Launching Nightingale from a Manifesto

10:00 — Triple Bottom Line: Sustainability, Community, Affordability

14:00 — Nonprofit Development in a For-Profit World

17:30 — Why Australia's Housing Market Is Broken

21:00 — The Rising Cost of Homeownership

24:00 — Designing for Community, Not Just Residents

28:00 — Rooftop Laundry, Not Penthouses

31:00 — Slow Elevators and Street-Level Encounters

34:00 — System Redesign: Finance, Rules, and Ballots

36:00 — Powering Every Building with Renewables

38:00 — The Market Starts Paying Attention

41:00 — Ditching Car Parks for Shared Cars

44:00 — Lessons in Scaling: Trade-offs and Adaptations

51:00 — Designing Meaningful Imperfection

54:00 — What It Takes to Start Something Bold

56:00 — The Future Will Ask: Why Didn’t We Fight Harder?

Links

Jeremy McLeod (LinkedIn) - https://au.linkedin.com/in/jeremy-mcleod-architectNightingale Housing - https://www.nightingalehousing.org/Breathe Architecture - https://www.breathe.com.au/Let My People Go Surfing - https://www.patagonia.com/product/let-my-people-go-surfing-revised-paperback-book/BK067.html