Framing an Unfamiliar Problem: How To Create Affordable Student Housing

Solving problems starts with defining, empathizing, and reframing to create new perspectives

Creative Strategy: Problem Framing

The lawful commodification of acceptable housing opportunities is what we have come to call the housing economy, the real estate business.

In previous blog posts we validated the fact that students are among the most vulnerable to housing insecurity within the housing economy. This is a complex problem and has many variables that are related to one another to account for in its solution.

From a business context, we ask "How do we create affordable student housing?", but I think empathy, understanding the student perspective, must be accounted for to frame the problem properly. Our desire for answers shouldn't get ahead of asking the right questions.

Be patient, it's a process.

"What does a student need from their housing?" is a shift in perspective that reduces affordability to a singular variable among many; from their needs, we can begin to pursue avenues of meeting them affordably.

The Process of Familiarization

I'm a college student, so I have my own informal answers for what a student needs from their housing. From an academic research perspective, the best chance of collecting accurate data is a well thought out survey completed by honest and consenting student participants.

The bottom line is simple: the problem solvers of today and tomorrow are dropping out because their housing is unsustainable, exponentially draining the world's brain power.

UNM went to the trouble of conducting a student needs assessment in 2020 and their report is hard not to empathize with. UNM measured housing insecurity with the following nine survey questions and found that over 41% of respondents were housing insecure.

1. In the past 12 months, was there a rent or mortgage increase that made it difficult to pay?

2. In the past 12 months, have you received a summons to appear in housing court?

3. In the past 12 months, have you not paid the full amount of a gas, oil, or electricity bill?

4. In the past 12 months, did you have an account default or go into collections?

5. In the past 12 months, have you moved in with other people, even for a little while, because of financial problems?

6. In the past 12 months, have you lived with others beyond the expected capacity of the house or apartment?

7. In the past 12 months, did you leave your household because you felt unsafe?

8. In the past 12 months, have you been unable to pay or underpaid your rent or mortgage?

9. In the past 12 months, *[have you moved more than three times]?

If you answered "yes" to any of these questions you are housing insecure, like me. It's ok to be mad about this. This video is controversial, but worth a watch.

While I don't necessarily agree with defaulting to a race critical perspective of personal finance, it's not hard to relate to at least one idea presented in this video.

It's painfully obvious that the percentage of housing insecure students has only increased since 2020, but no new opportunities to reduce housing insecurity has emerged.

Instead of asking "How do we create affordable student housing?", we must first ask:

"What does sustained student housing security look like?"

Creative Strategy: Yellow Hat Logic

"What does sustainable student housing security look like?"

or

"What must a housing opportunity specifically provide to be sustainable to students?"

Let's invert the problems presented by the survey to answer the question.

Spending more than 30% of gross income on housing is wrong, but encouraged and normalized by real estate blogs.

1. A sustainable housing opportunity for students must have rent costs that are manageable for students to pay, between 0% to 30% of their income: although 20 hours of work a week would interfere with their education, [which is wrong], students earning $11.50 an hour pre-taxed [minimum wage] would gross $920 a month, making the manageable rent cap $276 a month. This is about what on-campus fraternities charge per room per month. Putting students to work within the housing operations and management business cycles can further subsidize their rent costs, similar to a co-op model.

2. The rental terms must be structured to bypass potential financial anxiety or legal issues:

this includes paying pre-paying portions of leases, backpay programs, and financial assistance.

3. Lease terms must be long term, flexible, anticipate full-length of study as well as student to employee transition time, and are written in favor of the student renter: this reduces the rate of dropouts and removes the disruptions of having to move frequently.

4. All rented housing units are adequate for single occupancy, safe to habitat, built around effective quarantine practices, and protected by campus security.

It boils down to just four factors to verify if a housing opportunity is sustainable for a student or not.

When we apply these four defining criteria to a [Zillow rental search], we find zero results in the state of New Mexico. Again, we are left to create a new way to live that exists outside of fraternity house culture.

Creation Strategy: Inventing Sustainable Student Housing

Let's create some milestones for inventing a new model of sustainable student housing.

Now:

Finish writing a blog post explaining why sustainable student housing is important

Then:

Start a sustainable student housing [interest group] made up of NM alumni, students and faculty that are willing to be emailed quarterly newsletters, take surveys, and vote.

Generate interest, recruit, hold events, education & outreach programs, etc.

Vote on group's name and leadership, create and execute fund raising plan.

Use funding to publish business plan, campus and grant proposals.

Finally:

Execute business plan and finally get students in sustainable housing!

This Is Going To Be A Long Ride

These practices in the creative process are going well along with the idea of narrowing down the scope: we went from unpacking a big problem, how to solve the housing crisis, to something at a scale that we can actually impact and make positive changes:

creating sustainable housing opportunities for students.

Just need to keep the momentum going!

-Tony