Who’s looking out for you?
The morass of lost humanity within the housing crisis
The housing crisis sits as a lump at the back of my throat. Sometimes, with uncomfortable effort, I am able to swallow it and, at those times, I can breathe a little easier. But the lump isn't gone–it has just relocated to my gut, its heaviness a daily reminder that I may never own a home. The housing crisis for me, as I suspect it is for so many, is experienced emotionally rather than considered intellectually as a structural problem or a data-driven solution. That’s because it isn’t an abstraction for me–it is a personal crisis, just as it is for those of you who dream of home ownership–and need it for the stability and wealth-generation it provides–and yet question if that possibility will ever be actualized.
A few years ago, my landlord at the time decided, seemingly on a whim, to sell the multi-family house in which we were living. This decision came out of left field and hit me hard. Our lease was up for renewal in a month and I was wholly unprepared to pack up and move, let alone attempt to find new housing in the same school system where my oldest was about to start his final year of elementary school. I had started a new job just a few months prior, I was barely recovering from a serious back injury, and my youngest was just 8 months old at the time. There was already a lot on my plate and the need to suddenly and urgently find new housing felt insurmountable.
I find the language of the phrase ‘housing crisis’ slippery. Is it referring to a market crisis? A societal crisis? A crisis of affordability? Or perhaps, as I mentioned, to the many many millions of personal crises of those experiencing housing instability which combined become a tornado-like collective crisis. Generally, the phrase the housing crisis intends to point to the shortage of housing across our country or in other nations around the globe. But the reality, as research out of the University of Kansas has pointed out, is that there is not a lack of available housing. The problem is an affordability one. Housing has always been a challenge for low-income families and individuals. The likely reason we've reached crisis stage is that housing has now become unaffordable for many in the middle class as well.
The research on markets, supply, home price-to-income ratio, and zoning reform paints a complex picture to which much of the nation’s attention is drawn. But what interests me more are always the stories, getting down to the individual level. What is the experience of trying to find affordable housing like–whatever your personal level of affordability is? How does it feel to have 30+ rental applications rejected when you are a two-income earning couple? What is it like to be unsure if your landlord will still rent to you next year…at the same price…or at all?
The psychology of housing insecurity is worth exploring. It strikes me that we have so objectified and commodified housing that we can now easily talk about it without talking about the feeling of a home. Beyond the basic necessity of it, we divorce housing from its meaning–from the meaning we give to the places we call home. As a woman whose landlord is employing harassing techniques to lawfully evict people explains in the documentary, America Divided: A House Divided: “My concern is not only for myself. It is for the seniors in here, it is for the people who are sick in here, people who are on pensions and social security. We were here during the crack epidemic, we were here during the Crown Heights riots. We looked out for this building, but who’s gonna look out for us now?” This dichotomy explains much of the emotion at the heart of this crisis.
I have come across several articles and movements that are seeking to assert the human right to housing. In Australia, legislators have proposed a bill to codify that right, but even then it would just make it a policy objective rather than something the population could demand through litigation. I am certainly not advocating for that, but it speaks to a broader loss of humanity in the aims of our governments and the ongoing strangeness of a society that prizes the individual over the connected individual.
I listened to an episode of All in the Mind, an Australian podcast, in which a woman named Madi has been struggling to find a rental for herself and her partner. Before undergoing the process of repeated rejections, Madi had felt good about her life. She and her partner have stable employment–her partner is a chef and she works in community services. But as she goes from horrid, decrepit places to even worse places–which dozens of potential tenants are fighting for anyway–she begins to feel ashamed. She wonders if she too must become a commodity and ‘sell herself’ better in her applications to the landlords. She thinks about changing careers to something potentially more lucrative, despite the fact that she loves working in social justice and cannot imagine a different vision for her life. I could relate to Madi. About ten years ago, when I was struggling to find new employment after a contract position ended, I briefly toyed with the idea of going into real estate–a field that I find to be, frankly, so status-ified and commodified as to be deeply unappealing. Just as Madi was reaching the point of being willing to give up her role and future in the social justice world, I was reaching a point of giving up my role and future in the education world. This is not just a story about giving up on dreams. The specificity of those dreams are important. For the people who are low-income and, more recently, middle class, are the people doing some of the most important work in society–teaching, community organizing and advocacy, caregiving, and counseling. If you ask me, they are the people who are touching the most other lives daily in meaningful and lasting ways.
What does it feel like to struggle to afford a home? It feels like lowering your expectations for the quality of that housing. It feels like making financial tradeoffs in terms of healthcare and other essentials. It feels like shame. It feels like letting your kids down, your partner down, your family and friends down. It feels like it isn’t worth making connections in the community where you currently reside because you don’t know if you’ll be able to stay. It feels like a loss of agency over your life. It feels like hopelessness.
Is this the society we want? I hope it's not the one we'll continue to accept. The housing crisis needs all of our attention–yes from the bird’s eye view where encompassing solutions are envisioned but also from the next-door neighbor human level where communities are built and sustained. It needs our ideas, our efforts, and our compassion. Because the housing crisis is not about the supply and demand of a product; it is about our friends, our families, our loved ones, our fellow humans and their homes. We will not achieve better communities, much less connectivity across a large and diverse nation, until we ensure this basic stability in each other's lives.
For this week’s curated resources on the housing crisis, please visit:
Constructed Mind: The Housing Crisis
Look for future connected issues on the following: public housing, the future of housing, status, the wealth gap, residential segregation, homelessness…and more!
As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments. If there is anything that I am doing that resonates with you, please like or share. The support helps me continue with this project in which I believe so deeply.
From your fellow thought explorer and eternal seeker,
Katie