Architects, engineers, financiers, and civil society tirelessly devise ideas to solve the housing crisis. Despite their relentless efforts, the desired outcomes remain elusive. Could there be a white elephant in the room that needs to be addressed?

Imagine a bucket riddled with holes, each representing a different aspect of the housing crisis – the engineers plugging one hole, architects attempting to patch another, financial institutions pouring efforts into yet another, and civil society striving to seal a different leak.

For some reason, however, no matter how each group tries to patch up a hole, they can’t seem to fill the bucket to the brim, and the water pressure drills out new holes in other parts of the vessel. 

Is it possible that everyone missed – or possibly intentionally decided to ignore – an even larger crack at the bottom of the bucket? 

What’s fueling the housing crisis?

Let’s dial back a bit and tackle the real-life situation behind the paradox. Experts have long tried to pinpoint the cause of the housing crisis and even tried to solve the problem within their respective fields.

Designers and architects like myself believe the housing crisis is a design problem. We work on the premise that we must design superior and more affordable housing. On the other hand, engineers and material scientists believe construction methodologies and materials may not be affordable or cheap enough. That said, they look for ways to tweak the existing methods to reduce construction costs.

Experts from the finance industry tackle yet another side of the issue – they try to devise ways in which housing can attract subsidized capital for development and somehow carry the mortgage risk on the poor who are not credit-worthy. Consequently, civil society advocates for building strong, equitable societies empowered enough to partner with one another and collectively solve the crisis.

On top of this, everyone who doesn’t fit into the four groups above also has opinions and suggestions on how the crisis can be solved. In fact, I have posted this question to hundreds of people, and no one has ever come clean to say they don’t know how to solve the housing crisis.

All four expert groups, meanwhile, try to address what they, in their perspective, see as the core problem and the solutions for those problems. As in the paradox, they’re aware of other holes in the bucket, but still, they try to address the hole within their expertise, hoping that their singular efforts can spark a systemic change.

And then, it gets even more complex. Aside from people working to fix the leaky bucket, there’s a larger group of experts whose purpose is to solely analyze the problem and research the statistics but they don’t actually take any action. These are the believers in the power of data, measurements, and statistics and take pride that because of them, the experts can take legitimate action. In reality, however,  the size of the problem is so big that it makes no difference whether a city has one or five million people in need of housing because we just don’t have a solution for either.

In 2019, just before the COVID-19 lockdown gripped us, I was invited by the House Speaker of the California State Assembly as part of a housing conference. California State has one of the highest homeless populations in the US, with about 161,548 homeless people (2023 statistics).

Of the speakers invited, I was among the few ones who talked about solutions that can be implemented and possibly executed. The rest were academicians, policymakers, and civil society representatives who all had large data points to share and elaborated on the reasons for homelessness. If any offered solutions, however, they were far removed from anything that could ever be realized.

These groups of people who are generally unaware of issues on the ground exist in all conferences; they mutually validate one another’s efforts and generate a sense of accomplishment while the housing problem remains intact. 

That experience got me thinking – Could we not embrace a dose of sober humility and accept that we are failing? After all, one doesn’t need statistics to grasp the issue; a walk or drive around any major city in California is all it takes to be hit by the gravity of the problem. 

In the leaky bucket context, we could say that academics point out the holes and discover new ones for the other groups to address. However, they seldom provide any solutions that can actually fix the holes. 

Academics highlight the gaps, and expert groups try to patch them up. And yet, the bucket continues to leak as it has done so for decades.

How government corruption worsens the housing crisis 

If we look carefully and see beyond the visible holes in the bucket, we can see severe damage at the bottom of the pail, which serves as the core issue that fuels the housing crisis – corruption in the government and in society as a whole.

Yes, there you go, I said it. Corruption is the real problem behind housing, which we do not want to admit and talk about.

Perhaps we do not want to acknowledge corruption because of the gargantuan efforts needed to fix it. After all, corruption cannot be solved with our professional skills or by merely giving money or time. Solving corruption requires an honest questioning of our leaders and institutions, as well as their performance. At the same time, it demands an introspection into ourselves, including our prejudices and wants. Identifying corruption and corrupt people would take lots of courage and will definitely not win any friends – on the contrary, it’s a quick way to make many foes.

Here’s something to ponder: Over the last decades, government officials, ministers, and institutions have failed miserably in addressing the housing crisis and haven’t had the humility to admit their failures, nor has anyone had the guts to tell them so.

And yet, every housing conference is often chaired, inaugurated, or graced by the leading minister or bureaucrat responsible for housing in that city or country. We welcome these personalities with garlands, put them on a pedestal, give them center stage, invite them for selfies, and shower them with praises. We find ourselves in awe of their authority, power, and ascendancy to make decisions to take concrete actions. 

They fall short in their duties, but we don’t hold them accountable. Some of us even deliberately allow them to escape their responsibilities by justifying that it’s a job that’s simply too difficult in the first place.

But just imagine – what would happen to people like me in the private sector if we don’t perform and deliver at our jobs because it’s “too difficult?” We’ll probably get reprimanded or even fired!

Whether the problem lies in our officials not knowing what to do or being clueless about how to do it, we’ll never know unless we first accept the failure of these institutions. Exalting them doesn’t help either. In contrast, our officials must surround themselves with people who will criticize them and raise the right questions for check and balance. 

Over the years, I have met with numerous heads of state, ministers, and top-level bureaucrats, all of whom are legally responsible for solving the housing crisis. During our meetings, they all talk about the great policies they have enacted and discuss incredibly complex solutions on how they plan to tackle them. Sadly, they prove to be ignorant of ground realities. 

To those who say that solving the housing crisis needs to be a collective effort and the government cannot be held responsible alone, I disagree.

Today, most of us live in market-driven economies. That said, it is the job of governments to tackle market hiccups and failures. When things like housing, which should be accessible to all, can’t be handled by regular market forces, governments need to step in and fix the system. 

Singapore, where I now live, is, without a doubt, the best example in the world that proves the housing crisis has been solved. The problem wasn’t addressed by corporates, architects, financiers, or civil society; it was solved by a government that was not corrupt. In fact, 2022 data says 77 percent of the resident population in Singapore lived in public housing provided by the government. 

I’ve seen how the Singapore government solved the housing problem: it sees housing as a human right. Moreover, the government is performing well, and its institutions are strong so that officials know their roles, boundaries, and people’s expectations of them.

In addition, Singapore has been generous in sharing its best practices in public housing. I myself have been involved in a government-to-government project between Singapore and Mongolia. I’ve also taken many of my architect friends and officials visiting from India on tours of Singapore to show them how Singapore does it. 

Sadly, nearby countries haven’t succeeded in replicating the city-state’s public housing practices because it’s not just about copying Singapore’s policies; the solution lies in solving the issues within their own local institutions. They first need to reflect internally before they can go out to learn from the rest of the world. 

NIMBY syndrome among citizens

Corruption in institutions contributes to the housing crisis, but it’s crucial to acknowledge that citizens also share a degree of responsibility.

Let me explain. 

Housing requires land – plots in our cities, towns, and villages. Land for housing needs to be near jobs, schools, transportation, hospitals, parks, and other facilities. In a market economy, land is precious and almost always becomes even more valuable over time.

However, well-intentioned ministers, bureaucrats, or government institutions struggle to find land to build affordable housing. Why? Aside from land being expensive, having affordable housing makes a neighborhood less desirable, thus impacting property values.

Aside from depreciating real estate prices, there’s another factor affecting affordable housing construction: prejudice. 

As citizens, we support equity in our cities. We acknowledge that housing is a human right, pay our taxes, and even possibly donate or support the fight against homelessness. We want affordable housing to be built – however, our advocacy only holds up just as long as these projects aren’t too close to us and our families. 

Our inhibitions lead us to think that a concentration of poor people will make our neighborhood unsafe for children and will overcrowd roads, parks, and other infrastructure in our area. As a result, we protest, lobby, and do everything we can to ensure affordable housing remains distant from our vicinity. 

This effect is called “not in my backyard” or NIMBY – another grave crack at the bottom of the bucket.

The real shape and form of this effect varies drastically from country to country and city to city, but it exists. And this is why you’ll never find affordable housing in the wealthiest neighborhoods. 

In California, for instance, you won’t see homeless people in Beverly Hills. However, just on the outskirts of this affluent area in Los Angeles, you can readily observe individuals relying on makeshift accommodations.

Cities such as Santa Monica, on the other hand, support people without homes by offering shelters where they can spend the night. While this is a good initiative that reflects a city favoring equity, prospective residents don’t prefer Santa Monica precisely for this reason. Case in point – I once lived in the coastal city and found it a pleasant experience, so I recommend it to friends from Singapore looking to move to Southern California. However, none of them considered living in the city because they didn’t want to “take their chances.”

Shifting the focus from homelessness in California to a parallel challenge, Mumbai’s Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) presents an intriguing perspective on addressing housing disparities in a densely populated city.

SRS mandates that developers who want to construct high-end housing towers on certain parcels of land must include plans for rehabilitating slum dwellers living on that land. In other words, developers are obligated to provide alternative housing to the slum residents affected by their projects.

It goes without saying that the challenge of housing goes beyond bricks and mortar; it delves into the realm of perception and attitudes. While we aspire for accessible and affordable housing for all, our yearning for comfortable living conditions can occasionally clash with the broader goals of inclusivity.

BillionBrick’s position around the leaky bucket

But just as a bucket with holes cannot be filled effectively until the major crack is fixed, the housing crisis cannot be solved comprehensively until the underlying corruption is addressed – both in the government and in society.

As long as the channels of integrity remain compromised, the best efforts of engineers, architects, financial institutions, civil society, and startups like us are akin to temporary fixes.

To truly overcome the housing crisis, we need to shift focus from merely treating symptoms to tackling the root cause of corruption. Only then can our collective efforts truly make a lasting impact.

References:

1. Slum Rehabilitation Authority. Jurisdiction of SRA.

2. Statista (2023). Share of population living in public housing by the Housing and Development Board (HDB) in Singapore from 2013 to 2022

3. World Population Review (2023). Homeless Population by State [Updated August 2023]