We Can Do Better on Affordable Housing, and it’s Possible with a Little Imagination

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Most people know that there are few matters dealt with in our society simply. It takes an inordinate amount of time, effort, and money to make the machine move. However, I’d like us all to try and exercise our imaginations beyond our current situation. Strip away the man-made concepts we’ve become accustomed to, and visualize what we, as a society, could achieve together.

Imagine affordable housing is already widely available locally. In a world full of harsh realities, idealistic dreamers are necessary. People who are willing to be creative, passionate, and even impossible in their thinking.

Now take it even further, and imagine affordable housing is upheld on the national level. It wouldn’t even need to be called affordable housing at that point, just the American Housing System, or something with a more clever acronym, perhaps.

We could have education as early as high school, teaching children about navigating costs associated with homeownership. We could have stabilized rental units available for bright-eyed young adults beginning their careers. We could have consistent, accessible, and plentiful space for the disabled, the unhoused, and the elderly. The list goes on and on. In this utopia we’ve so easily imagined, anything is possible. So why isn’t it?

As it stands, what we currently call affordable housing is anything but. The ratio of units to necessity has created a volatile market of scarcity. Cities across the United States, including Newburyport, are making attempts to fill the gaps with more complexes, without addressing the larger issue at hand. We do not have agency over community in this country anymore.

A system of governance functions solely on the premise that its citizens’ contributions will be met with equal opportunity in society. This “inescapable network of mutuality” we are all caught in, as described by Martin Luther King, Jr., is intended for the benefit of all. Currently, it has devolved into a tangled web, where we all argue over who gets to be the spider.

Though I digress into more foundational problems, the reality is, affordable housing is not as complex as the political discourse surrounding it. We’ve become disillusioned by the failure of “self-made success” ideology. If we could take all that energy directed at everyday people simply looking for stability, and put it into action, these so-called “socialistic” practices could be commonplace. Beyond that, they would be sensible.

From where I stand, housing is a right. Many may disagree with the validity of that statement, but I believe in it nonetheless. Without it, you cannot progress your life sufficiently. The resounding effects of housing instability are felt across our nation, altering physical and mental health, disrupting communities, even damaging the growth of our children. So what do we do? I genuinely ask this to any who have made it this far.

Well, first and foremost, we require a shelter to sustain life, build a career, a family, and a future. Once we manage to protect that initial aspect of sheer survival, the doors of opportunity open one after the other. So I’ll pose my open-ended question differently: Do we choose to invest in a better future, or insist on maintaining the mediocrity of the present?

There is no “perfect” solution to anything nowadays, least of all affordable housing. But that distracts from the fact that there is a growing crisis. All I ask is that our imaginations grow faster.

Alan Estes
Newburyport resident

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