Set 1: Construction Labour
Where’s Waldo? He’s the guy you can’t find in the affordable housing big picture — the one with the hammer in his hand. Set 1 is the massive amount of conventional construction labour needed needed to build the millions of affordable housing units required in thousands of cities, towns and districts nationwide.
Unfortunately, as bean-counters familiar with the housing industry are fully aware, the bulk of housing construction labour is fully occupied building market rate and luxury housing for those who can afford it. Try: The Affordable Home-Loving Politician’s Easy Oopsy. Where’s Waldo?
Set 2: Sweat Equity
Sweat Equity—voluntary labour as investment in the construction of affordable housing. World master of sweat equity (not to mention affordable housing fundraising) is Habitat for Humanity. But, even Habitat has been forced to admit that in the present free market housing climate, sweat equity, along with cash or in-kind donations, just isn’t enough. Read more in: Say It Ain’t So! Missing Middle Gobbles Up Habitat for Humanity Homes
Set 3: Student Debt
American student debt is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 1.5 trillion dollars. In human terms, this adds up to millions of ex-students, actually 1 in 4 American adults, who will spend half a lifetime or more to pay off their student loans. They will be pretty much locked out of the housing market until it’s paid off.
Increased funding for education is one alternative, but not the only one (hence this article). Read more in Washington Square News: Higher Education Needs Intervention From All Sides
Set 4: Good Will
Youthful good will is alive and kicking. Read more at WXTL: Tallahassee Students Join Together To Build Home For Local Family
Set 5: War Mobilization
National service sometimes features in a nation’s wartime commitment. Its most conventional expression is military service.
The term ‘war’ is being used to describe serious national problems, such as the ‘war on poverty’, or the ‘war on drugs’, or ‘Trump administration at war with California’, and on and on. These are ‘wars’ about attitudes or funding. They don’t involve conscription.
But national service has been used in crises that were not labelled ‘wars.’ Perhaps the best example occurred during the Great Depression, when the CCC (Civilian Construction Corps) provided paid employment for jobless, homeless and starving Americans.
At the moment, the most strident call to arms in order to fight a ‘war’ is the Green New Deal, which focuses on the dangers of climate change and pays lip service to the affordable housing crisis. Is housing only an afterthought in the ‘save our planet’ zeal?
Not for Daniel Aldana Cohen, who argues the significance of the housing crisis to the Green New Deal. He alludes to the ‘army’ of new construction workers needed to build the 10,000,000 or more houses that will end America’s housing crisis. Read more in Jacobin: A Green New Deal For Housing
Army? Job Corps? National service? It might be one way of getting 10,000,000 affordable houses built.
Sets and a Venn Diagram
Is there an overlap between all of the sets described above? We’d argue that a practical intersection of these ideas could solve two crisis-level American problems: student debt on one hand, and affordable housing on the other.
The model is well established. The military ROTC program, which has been in place for many years, pays for higher education in exchange for a fixed period of military service.
How about a program of paid higher education in exchange for Student National Job Corps employment constructing affordable housing?
