“A problem well-stated is half-solved.” Charles Kettering
In 1173, construction began on a bell tower, or campanile, for a cathedral in the Italian city of Pisa. Within five years, it reached a third of its current height when a war broke out, and construction was halted for about a century. During that time, the tower started to lean due to the uneven nature of the soil that served as the foundation for the tower.
When construction resumed, the solution was to build the low side taller to bring the building plumb, albeit it curved.
Construction continued, and by 1817, when the first recorded measurement was taken, the tower’s inclination was about 4.9 degrees, and it just kept leaning.
There have been three significant efforts over the last 200 years to correct or stop the leaning. The first two failed and actually caused the leaning to speed up. The third succeeded in reversing the lean so that it went from 5.5 degrees to under 4 degrees.
The first two efforts to save the Leaning Tower of Pisa failed because the engineers did not state the problem correctly. Their mission was to fortify and stop the low side from sinking. In both cases, their efforts caused the low side to sink even faster.
The third attempt, in 1990, succeeded because the world’s foremost expert on dirt reframed the problem and focused on the high side, which he proposed should be allowed to settle faster so that it caught up with the low side.
Emeritus Professor John Burland of Imperial College London was an expert in dirt and fairly proficient at reframing the problem so that the correct solution followed.
The lesson learned here that can be applied to Vermont’s housing crisis is as follows.
What if the high cost of housing is not the issue, what if the low wages that prevent tenants from affording housing is the issue?
If we reframe the problem as “wages in Vermont are too low and fail to provide employees with the means to pay their rent with 30% of their income,” then the solution would be to focus on better jobs and better wages and better working conditions and better training to raise up a talented and skilled workforce.
Last week, a prospective tenant looked at a vacant furnished apartment I offered, complete with all utilities, including internet. He liked it and wanted it but asked if his boss could call me. It turned out that he was living in employer-provided housing, and that was coming to an end after three years.
His boss called me and explained how much he made per hour and how much that amounted to at the end of the week, and then calculated 30% of his gross pay as the rent that the boss proposed that I accept.
I explained that if the employee had been #1 in his department for three years and if he was a valued employee, perhaps the true solution was for the employer to increase the employee’s wages so that 30% of his gross was sufficient to rent a one bedroom furnished apartment with all utilities included. Since the employer could terminate the employee at will without notice, he may consider a one-year contract so that the employee would feel secure in his employment.
There we were; the employer wanted the landlord to lower the rent, and the landlord wanted the employer to increase the wages.
I’m writing this column from Washington, D.C., where I came to attend the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) policy forum and also to engage our federal delegation in a conversation about the need to focus on good jobs and training to increase the number of skilled employees.
My recommendation to the NLIHC is to focus on prosperity rather than squandering its 50-year legacy on normalizing low-income housing.
According to the Pew Report, fully 80% of the rental housing is provided by mom-and-pop housers that own an average of 1.7 units each and only 50% of the housers claim a profit, while fully 50% of the owners of rental housing claim a loss.
If we are short on housing, the last thing we need to do is depress the market and discourage investment. Housing needs to be a profitable enterprise if the State of Vermont is going to meet its goals for providing housing to all who need it.
To that end, the problem needs to be restated. Vermont needs to focus on jobs and training so that a talented and well-paid workforce can afford to pay for market-rate housing and still have 70% of their gross wages left over to take care of their other expenses.
For more information on strategies for resolving the current housing crisis, join Stephen Box and Partners in Housing on the last Friday of every month at 1:30 p.m.
Partners in Housing is a local housing committee that connects housers, wrappers, supporters, and the government to get more safe and healthy housing online, quickly and efficiently, with a commitment to financial responsibility and good stewardship.
