Parable of the Tower
Housing, lack thereof, and the need to build.
Once upon a time off the coast of California there was an island with perfect weather. People settled there, and they built homes, and they named their new community Housington.
In the early years there were just ten families living in Housington. Over time, new families arrived, and the children of the original founders grew up and built houses of their own.
When someone wanted a house, the process was simple. Building a home cost $20,000, and the buyer could simply choose a plot of land and pay the fee. Some people didn't have $20,000 up front, so they worked out a plan where the bank would pay the builders and the owner would pay the bank back over time. It worked well enough.
As Housington grew, the people decided that the western half of the island should remain a nature preserve. They loved to camp and bike there, and there were several unique species that required the habitat to survive. Even with half of the island off limits, the Housingtonians still had plenty of room to build.
So, they built, and all the while more children came of age and more mainlanders arrived. Almost no one who came to Housington wanted to leave. It was beautiful, and peaceful, and it was home to all their lifelong family and friends.
Then one day something odd happened. As the hundredth home was constructed on the island, the Housingtonians realized they had no more room to build. The island, apart from the nature preserve, was full.
At first nothing much changed. Life went on as it always had. The children, however, were older every day, and there was no obvious place for them to start their own young families. Some reluctantly moved away. Others stayed, if they needed to care for aging parents or just loved the island too much. Those that remained stayed stuck at home, living out of their childhood bedrooms at great expense to their independence and love lives.
Then one day an elderly, childless resident died, and a home became vacant. “I want it!” said an islander daughter who was working as a nurse.
“No, I want it!” said an islander man who was currently getting a divorce.
“No, we want it!” said a wealthy couple who were looking to move from the mainland.
This had never happened before. Three people wanted a Housington home, and there was only one home to give. The city council debated what to do, and in the end they decided to hold an auction.
The wealthy couple won, and the house sold to them for $380,000, making the mainlander descendants of the deceased a relative fortune. Occasionally, another house would become free, and each time the final auction price was even higher than the one before.
The higher the prices grew, the bigger the loans required to buy them became. Soon, nearly every new buyer was spending half his income or more on paying back the bank. This made the bank very happy, because they got to earn a fee from every loan that they gave out.
Smart people from the mainland soon noticed that the price of Housington homes was rising quickly, and they decided that such homes were a good investment. Together, they formed a corporation called Island Landlords and bought up ten of the homes at auction to turn into rentals.
Some of the young people, who had long been stuck with their parents, pooled their incomes together to rent these homes. Living with roommates was cramped and awkward, and it made having kids almost unthinkable, but at the very least they had achieved some small independence.
Years went on, and more kids came of age, and soon the housing situation had grown intolerable. Every time a house was auctioned, it sold for $2M at least! No one living at home or with roommates could afford that, and the dream of having a house on the island seemed more and more out of reach.
Beyond that, an even more stark situation was unfolding. Some people who had taken loans found themselves unable to repay them, due to various misfortunes. So, as was written in the terms of the loan, the bank would come and take possession of the house. Many of these sad cases moved away, but many others stayed in Housington and began to roam the streets as aimless drifters. The longer they drifted, the more dire their lives and appearances became, and soon no one wanted to hire or have anything to do with them again.
At this point the Housingtonians knew that something had to be done. To address the issue, they got together as the city council and acknowledged the obvious. Houses and rents were far, far too expensive.
The young people, who were the majority of renters, were the loudest at first. “We need to bring rents down!” they demanded. “No one can afford a dignified life!”
So, the council passed a law limiting the maximum price per month to rent a home. The young people enjoyed this, and some of them swore they would never leave, since they were guaranteed such a good deal.
One did leave, however, and his house went up for rental auction. “I’ll pay $4,000 a month!” said one man, which was the most that Island Landlords LLC was now legally allowed to charge.
“I will too!” said a mainlander family.
In fact, several hundred people were all clamoring to pay the legal maximum to rent the house. What was Island Landlords to do?
“I have an idea,” said one enterprising executive. “We can set a fee to move in, and whoever will pay the highest fee gets the house.”
So the rental corporation added a fee, and indeed there was one wealthy dentist who was more than happy to pay it. When the city council got word, they wrote a law banning rental fees, and so Island Landlords switched to an even more complicated system of bribes and brokers. It seemed that as soon as one scheme was stopped, another one took its place. As long as multiple competing families were willing to bid against each other for a home, there was no way to keep the total price from climbing ever-upward.
All the while more and more people were becoming displaced drifters. Young people were reluctantly leaving, and the schools had to downsize since there were so few children being born. It seemed like, if nothing changed, Housington would become nothing more than a retirement community overrun with vagrants.
Then came the man with the tower. It was only a drawing of a tower, and he laid it out for the whole city council to see. “I can solve your problem,” he told them. “With this tower, I can give you and your children good, cheap places to live.”
“Where would you put it?” was the immediate question.
“Where a house is now,” said the man. “It would replace, perhaps, four houses.”
“But people live in those houses!” someone exclaimed. “The problem is that we have too few houses, and you're trying to take more away?”
“The people who live in the houses now could live in the tower,” said the man. “The tower has as much living space as fifty houses.”
“What if they don’t want to live in the tower?” a councilman asked. “I wouldn't want to live in a tower. I'm scared of heights.”
“Then they could move to a different house instead,” said the man, “maybe the house of someone who just moved into the tower.”
“I don’t like this tower,” said the elderly woman chair of the Old Ways committee, who loved the old ways more than anything. “We never used to have towers here, and we were fine. Manhattan has towers, and it's even more expensive than Housington! So it’s not like towers make things any cheaper. Besides, it's offensive to live in a crummy little box in the sky with no yard and people stamping on your ceiling.”
“I assure you,” said the man with the plans, “this will be no crummy little box. It’s the most luxurious tower, state-of-the-art. It has all the modern amenities. Everyone will want to live there.”
“How dare you!” shouted the young woman chair of the Being Nice committee, who was more committed to being nice than anyone. “People are dying on the street, drifters with no hope, and you're talking about building a luxury tower for the rich!”
“Perhaps if the rich move into the tower, there will be more space in Housington for the poor,” said the man. “I’m sorry, but I won’t make my design worse on purpose to keep the rich out. It would cost nearly the same to build it without the amenities, and I do need a return on my investment.”
The chairwoman of Being Nice rose to her feet. “Do you see?” she said. “All he wants is to take our money, that's why he’s here. He’s another selfish businessman like Island Landlords LLC.”
“Yes, and his tower would block our views of the sea!” the wealthy dentist added. “Isn't that why we moved here? To gaze at the sea and quiet the thoughts in our heads? He's trying to destroy nature.”
“Sir,” said the head of the council, addressing the builder with courtesy. “What would the price of these tower homes be? Would they really be affordable?”
“I don't know,” said the man, “that depends on the people of Housington. I build good homes efficiently and then I sell them at auction. That’s my business.”
“We don't need more auctions,” said the Being Nice chairwoman, “we need affordable homes for the people.”
The city council murmured agreement to all this, and a law was added forbidding any towers from being constructed on the island. The man thanked everyone for their time, then departed with his tower plans in hand.
Following that meeting, the status quo continued, and the housing situation on the island got progressively worse. Nobody seemed to know what to do, except for the very confident people of the Being Nice committee, so by virtue of their confidence the Be Nicers ended up in charge.
“A lot of you have suggested that we should stop more mainlanders from coming to the island, or even kick out the ones that are already here,” said the young woman chair to the council. “Shame on you. That's not nice at all. Is not each of us descended from mainlanders? What if our parents and grandparents had been barred from coming to Housington? We wouldn't exist.”
Approval sounded at this.
“No,” she went on. “We, the city, will build housing for the poor. We will use the plaza at city hall and build ten units so cheap to rent that anyone can afford them.”
“How will we decide who gets to live there?” someone asked.
“According to need,” said the chairwoman. “We will rank every person on the island in terms of neediness, and the ten neediest of all will get to move in.”
So the city council got together and began building the affordable homes, and after five years and $2M per home the building was complete. It was easy to find ten needy people on the street, for in those five years over twenty Housingtonians had become new vagrants.
Building the affordable homes had been incredibly expensive for the city, and maintaining them was expensive as well. Additionally, the Office of Ranking Neediness was consuming considerable funds, and the price of a house at auction was just as high as ever.
“Island Landlords LLC rents one of their homes out to vacationers,” an angry councilman declared at a high stakes meeting. “Let’s make them rent it to the people instead!”
A law was passed, and it made little difference.
“The Ellingers have a home on the cliffs that they use just for summers!” a Be Nicer announced, pointing at a councilman and his wife. “That home should be for the people!”
So a law was passed, and the Ellingers were forced to sell, and it made little difference.
“I’m going to say it,” the head of the council said at last, “and I want you to know this isn't something I propose lightly. We could, of course, expand into the western nature preserve.”
A chill swept across the room. Even the most fiery of radicals knew that this would be a step too far. On a deeper level, they knew that destroying the preserve would only grant them a hundred years of reprieve before all these problems returned.
It was then that the man with the tower plans came back. “Just try it,” he said, attempting to sound reassuring. “Try one tower and see what you think.”
“We won't let you destroy any homes,” said the Old Ways chair. “ They are pieces of history. They require preservation at all costs.”
“I've already accounted for that with my new proposal,” said the man. “This tower will have sixty homes, and it will be built where your grocery store is now.”
“But we need that grocer!” the people cried out.
“You will have a grocer, on the first floor of the tower,” the man explained, “along with a café and anything else you like.”
“Fine,” said the head of the council, “but our budget is very tight right now. How much would you charge us to build this?”
“Charge?” the man with the plans laughed. “Nothing. Just let me do it. I'll pay the owner of the grocery store whatever he wants for the land. Don’t you remember? You put a law on your books the first time I came here, forbidding towers. All I ask is that you take it away, and I'll do the rest.”
So the law was repealed, and the man brought workers in, and within a year the tower was complete as if by magic. Then, all of a sudden, a strange thing began to happen. The smart men at Island Landlords LLC issued a report indicating that, due to the tower, homes on the island were no longer a guaranteed investment. Soon after, they sold all ten of their properties, and the price of a home in Housington fell just a bit for the first time in living memory.
The day of the tower home auction came with excitement. Many of the young people living with their parents showed up to bid, and several bought units either with or without roommates. Mainlanders came as well, but not nearly as many as some people in the city feared. In the end, the average home in the tower sold for far less than a Housington house did before. The man with the plans was satisfied with his profits, and he thanked the city council for giving him their trust.
“What happens when the next generation grows up?” the head of the council murmured to the man. “What happens when more mainlanders come? We’re back in the same old pickle.”
“Yes,” said the man, “and when they do, we can expand even more—not into the nature preserve, but into the sky.”
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