My grandfather, Conrad Pat Harness, came back from the Sicily campaign of World War II to Washington DC and found himself a real estate journalist for the Washington Post. This led to a long career in home building, and ultimately a position on the board of NAHB. My father, Chris Harness, has been home building for my entire life. His footprint has over 20,000 new units constructed in a long career.
Generations of Harnesses have focused on housing. It's in my blood, on my mind when I wake up. It's a passionate obsession.
We have a massive housing gap in the United States. The question is whether the tools of capitalism — speed, incentive, competition — can be pointed at it deliberately enough to close it. That is what TestFit is trying to do: make the economic case for building housing so fast and so clear that developers can't afford not to act.