By: John McManus | Builder
Anyone who’s been in a dumb recurring fight knows that the entire problem could be cleared up if everyone could just agree on exactly what was said or done. But you can’t, so you end up stuck in a cycle of relitigation. Housing-policy discussions are like that. They descend into crushing bickering because even the basic facts are up for debate.” – The Atlantic, Jerusalem Demsas
Not a day goes by without stark reminders of this riddle – locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.
Some of those reminders are deeply specific, personal, like someone you know living out of a car, or forced to move to another town because they’re priced-out of everything nearby their familiar stomping grounds.
Some are more abstract – data, rates of housing overburdened households, widening disconnects between earnings and rents.
For town council-members, mayors, county executives, governors, lawmakers at every level, and agency officials at the state, regional, and Federal level the clamor around housing’s affordability crisis is a deafening din in an echo-chamber.
Innovations that open doors to safe, decent, attainable access to a more expansive universe of people, and, better yet, keep them open, and even better than that, become a model for other localities and regions to effect that kind of impact are as hard as they are necessary.
