Nearly 120 years ago, Lizzie Magie, a stenographer, and typist at the Dead Letter Office in Washington, D.C., received a patent for a game she invented called the Landlord's Game*. Her explicit goal in making that game was to demonstrate the risks inherent in systems that allowed for the accrual of vast sums of wealth by few at the expense of many. Magie saw the writing on the wall: A "free" market (in this case, housing) would always benefit the few. If we wanted the market to serve the masses, it needed guardrails.
We are in the midst of a nationwide housing crisis. This interactive map from NAR (note: best on a desktop) illustrates the breadth of the shortage. We don't have enough housing stock to supply the people in need of housing, nor do we have housing stock at the price points where it is most needed. As we address the hydra that is the housing crisis, it's important to remember that the current situation was not created overnight or within a single election cycle and will not be solved that quickly either.
The Covid-19 pandemic did not create the housing crisis, nor did the 2008 financial crisis or the dot com bubble; its roots stretch back to the inequities embedded in our nation's founding. Social programs to address systemic inequity that arose in the wake of the Civil War and the Great Depression, flawed as they were, were hobbled in the last fifty years–look no further than the Regan administration's housing policies (note: paywall)–when the federal government drastically reduced its investment in affordable housing construction and subsidized housing programs (Section 8) along with other social supports that helped to keep housing within reach.
Rectifying decades of disinvestment in housing, a critical component of our social safety net, will take time. This is partly because planning, permitting, and construction take time–anyone who has undergone a repair, remodel, or renovation knows that–and also because the hole in our social safety net has grown larger. But also because any effective repair will require that we reimagine housing as a human right instead of a commodity.
April 11th marks the 55th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act, legislation that protects people from housing discrimination, which was an enormous step toward a more equitable housing future when it was passed. Yesterday, our governor, Tina Kotek, signed a $200 million housing bill into law. Though it's impossible to resolve the foundational causes of the national housing crisis at the state level, this legislation takes the critical and logical first step of offering support to folks who find themselves, through no fault of their own, on the lowest rungs of the housing ladder.
Want to learn more about the housing crisis? Here are a few helpful pieces that explore how we got here on a national level, a state level, and where exactly "here" is.
As always, we would love to hear your thoughts or discuss any questions you have on anything housing-related.
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*Landlord's Game was the precursor to Monopoly–which has a fascinating history of individual and corporate greed! The original game came with two sets of instructions (anti-monopolist and monopolist). Monopoly, as most of us know it, only came with one set of instructions...even game manufacturers resisted Lizzie Magie's warning.