The average American is worried about the cost of living, particularly housing. The average pundit is worried about the state of our social fabric. These are parallel conversations, but they are closely entwined.
The evidence for both sets of problems is abundant: church attendance is down around 10% in the past decade; members of organizations like the Rotary Club and Elks are getting older and older; home prices have moved from three times median household income to over five times that level; mortgage rates have gone up and prices have stayed high; rents in some cities swallow paychecks whole.
Though often treated separately, housing costs and our fraying social fabric are related. Individual misery is inseparable from collective decay. Of course there are other factors undermining community鈥攕martphones, for one鈥攁nd there are concerns about community even where housing costs are relatively low. But affordability is at the very least a prerequisite for community. Americans disconnected from their community feel little investment in a society that has failed them. Putting the twin housing and community crises together helps clarify both problems.
What do we value in a community? People want decent schools and parks. They want safe streets. They want to feel like they鈥檒l be able to stay as long as they need. They also want neighborliness鈥攑eople they can relate to and interact with. We all have our own values, but there is broad consensus on core issues of safety, stability, and resources.
The problem is that what people want for themselves is often in tension with what works for the community. According to a , roughly 55% of U.S. adults 鈥減refer to live in a community where 鈥榟ouses are larger and farther apart but schools, stores, and restaurants are several miles away.鈥欌�� Meanwhile, the vast majority of aging Americans (more than three-quarters by some measures) want to remain where they are as they age. That home might be better for a young couple starting a family, but existing residents often (and understandably) want to stay in the home they鈥檝e lived in for decades and in which they might鈥檝e raised a family. Both dynamics tend to increase housing costs: there鈥檚 simply less room for spread-out houses and more house per person further limits how much housing is available.
A world of expensive housing exacerbates all sorts of community problems. Say you want to live somewhere that works for your kids, with parks and good schools. That could mean spending half your income (or more) on shelter, or working extra hours to make ends meet. What鈥檚 left in your tank for socializing or human connection beyond your immediate family? According to a study by the American Enterprise Institute鈥檚 Survey Center on American Life, only about 40% of people talk to their neighbors a few times per week or more, down 10-20% over the last two decades. Expensive housing erodes community in other ways: the more of your paycheck goes toward housing, the less you have to spend at local businesses rather than megastores down the highway. Worst of all, some Americans become trapped in bad living situations, crammed in with extended family or in toxic relationships. Almost feel 鈥渓ocked in鈥� to their living situation thanks to high interest rates or costs for alternate shelter. That鈥檚 not a feeling conducive to community.
What to do? We do need to meet people where they are. Many Americans want the option to live without close neighbors. But almost 45% of Americans want the opposite: denser communities in which (in the words of the Pew Survey), 鈥渉ouses are smaller and closer to each other, but schools, stores and restaurants are within walking distance.鈥� Appealing to the latter creates better communities and eases pressure on the spread-out neighborhoods. More importantly, if you鈥檙e like me and believe good community will win by changing people鈥檚 expectations and desires, let dense communities serve as their own evidence of success and, over time, draw in the skeptics.
What would it mean to think about housing first from the perspective of community? Community grows organically from interactions between neighbors, which means we need to actually encounter each other, on the street, in church, or at the market. When people from different backgrounds and in different life stages coexist, they can create collective endeavors and joy. Even when coexistence leads to conflict, it encourages shared solutions.
The conclusion, then, is that community needs density and it needs variety. Sidewalks that people actually use. Varied types of housing to appeal to people young and old, people without kids and people with kids, and more. A building full of studio apartments might not build community as effectively as one with a variety of apartment sizes. A neighborhood of all single-family homes fosters less variety than one that also includes duplexes, rowhouses and apartment buildings. Options create community. They even allow more Americans to age (somewhat) in place by moving elsewhere in the neighborhood, which opens up larger homes to new families.
Thinking about community first requires care in navigating the double-edged sword of neighborhood stability. A community wants elders who have been in place for decades. They have wisdom, they have life experience, and they are invested in what happens. The challenge is that stability risks stultification; NIMBYISM is often strongest in these places. A community also needs new perspectives and new people, whether growing families or young housemates. Policy must somehow value stability and community input without giving longtime residents a veto on what that community looks like鈥攏o easy task.
What about community institutions? Everything from membership organizations to sports leagues to small businesses are what bring a community to life. They can be encouraged but they must emerge organically. Density, variety, and stability provide fertile ground. But it is not enough. We also need a shift in mindset. To have good neighbors, you need to be a good neighbor. To have things worth joining, you have to be willing to join. You might even need to start a chess club, a park-cleanup group, or a basketball league yourself. That requires adjusting our collective mindset, but nobody will have time or energy to do so without affordable and adequate shelter.
The housing crisis is a mountain of individual tragedies. People who cannot afford shelter cannot fully thrive. But those individual tragedies form a collective one as well: the erosion of our sense of community. Our social fabric is fraying. Community cannot be built from scratch; it emerges organically, from people putting down roots and having the time and energy to invest in the people and institutions around them. That cannot happen without affordable housing.
Joshua Specht is associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Property Values: The Rise and Fall of the American Homeowner (快色直播) and Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beef Changed America (快色直播). His work examines the intersections between political economy, culture, and environment in the history of the United States.