#3: Mapping the Evolution of a Wicked Problem — The Lack of Affordable Housing in Pittsburgh, PA
A reflection on our approach to mapping the evolution of the wicked problem of a lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh, PA from a multilevel perspective
By Team Emergence:
Tomar Pierson-Brown, Joe Nangle, Janice Lyu, Bingjie Sheng
The dynamics of change and transition give rise to many interconnected wicked problems. The interconnected problems tied to the lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh are surfaced and discussed in our wicked problem map. The interconnected hopes and fears of those with a stake in the problem of a lack of affordable housing are illustrated and analyzed in our stakeholder relations map. The identity, mindsets and experiences of stakeholders to this problem contribute to and reflect the narratives, perceptions, and patterns that shape the evolution of affordable housing as a wicked problem over time. Properly contextualized, this historical knowledge enhances both efforts to conceive what the problem might look like in the future, and what interventions may be worth investing in at present.
Our team used the multi-level perspective framework (MLP), a tool of transition design, to map the historical evolution of narrative, perception, and pattern embedded within the lack of affordable housing wicked problem. The MLP documents change across time relative to three domains: the macro or “landscape” level; the meso or “regime” level; and the micro or “niche” level. “The relationship between the three concepts can be understood as a nested hierarchy, meaning that regimes are embedded within landscapes and niches within regimes” (Grin, et al, 2010. p. 18). At the niche level are socio-technical innovations. This level represents novel approaches which may or may not be embraced at the regime level, or become part of the status quo. “In niches, the social networks are small, unstable and precarious, consisting of entrepreneurs and innovators that are willing to take a chance” (Grin, et al, 2010. p. 18). In contrast, the regime level is more stable. At the level of the regime, social networks are larger, rules are well articulated, and norms are established as well as reinforced by behaviors and institutions. Niche-level interventions that gain traction may permeate and alter the regime, however the stability of regime-level systems may be resistant to new approaches. The landscape level is comprised of broad background structures; the doctrines and “-isms” undergirding regime-level systems.
The three domains of the MLP are intended as, “functional scale levels”. Each domain represents purposeful, closely woven relationships between individuals, structures, and norms. “The higher the scale level the more aggregated the components and the relationships and the slower the dynamics are between these actors, structures and working practices.” (Grin, et al, 2010. p,4) MLP does not explain why change does or does not occur. Rather, it provides a canvas for understanding conceptual, habitual, and innovative arcs over time. Narratives and perspectives traverse each domain. Patterns emerge across the matrix. Against this backdrop, assessments about complexity and the nature of transition can be harnessed to the task of addressing wicked problems.
This post discusses two narratives around lack of affordable housing- particularly how housing became integral to the American dream and a public health issue with rapid urbanism; the perception of affordable housing over time; and the pattern of misalignment between minimum wage and rent in Pittsburgh, as depicted in our MLP map. Starting with an acknowledgment that the territory we call Pittsburgh was Seneca Land before it was invaded and colonized by the French, and then the British, our look into the past begins in 1920, and progresses in 20-year increments to the present day. We conclude with a reflection on our process and the lessons learned from this distinctive, transition design approach to documenting and learning from the historical evolution of a wicked problem.
Housing as the American Dream
Our narrative starts with the concept of the “American Dream”. The United States, as a nation of immigrants, couldn’t have made such great progress without the people in the land during a relatively short history. The dream of owning land and property seems to have been associated with the production and activities of people here in this country from the very beginning. From the Homestead Acts of 1862 to the construction of single-family homes in suburban communities in the 1970s, these visions of a warm and welcoming home have inspired generations of people to pursue the American dream. We can thus also see that the followers of the American dream often do not have many assets to begin with, they may be working class, immigrants, etc., but it seems that today, the American dream is slowly moving away from us… Unaffordable home equity and unprotected entitlements (e.g., racism) are slowly dusting off the American Dream in people’s minds.
One interesting regime-level event we find is that the TV as media propaganda helped promote the conservative family value in the 1950s. World war II left the United States in a uniquely powerful position. While Europe and Asia had experienced extensive destruction and loss of life, no battles had been fought on the soil of the United States. But the following Cold War and postwar traumatic stress risk exacerbating domestic instability in the United States. The reinforced family value served to distract Americans from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Television as a medium has helped deepen such ideology, with mainstream TV shows, home commercials showing scenes of happy family life, a constant reminder of how wonderful life is in America. In this way, the American dream seems to become more fleshed out and within reach under the rendering of television images. This finding brings us back to the niche level. In 1925, when TV was invented, people may not be able to imagine how it will help reinforce the idea of the American dream. And the connection is also surprising for us. Thinking about it, with the abundance of media today, is it possible that our imagination of the ideal life is also shaped by these media? At the same time, we mentioned in our last tweet that people have a prejudice against affordable housing, thinking that they are inferior to single-family houses, and how much of this stereotype is shaped by the media. Next, if we want to try to change the stereotypes, can we in turn use the power of the media？
Society’s changes in the distribution of wealth have also directly influenced the pursuit of the American Dream. As mentioned earlier, the portrayal of the good life made individuals more motivated to pursue a better life, and this contributed to the sustained and steady growth of the American economy during the 1950s and 1970s. The income and benefits of the worker community also received a significant boost during this time. Universal public-spirited higher education provided upward mobility for the working class, the American Dream was once so reachable. The pattern of initial distribution of wealth in the United States has changed dramatically after the Cold War. After the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union, external competition from socialist countries disappeared, and the U.S. ruling class lost the fundamental motivation to take the initiative to alleviate domestic class conflicts. As income inequality has increased substantially since the 1970s, the American dream has begun to seem less attainable for those who aren’t already affluent or born into affluence. According to U.S. Census family income data, real family income began to grow much more among the top income group than among other segments of American society. This finding led us all the way to Capitalism and Class Stratification at the landscape level. The American dream faded as the inequality was reinforced back and forth between landscape level and regime level.
Urbanism/ Housing as a Public Health Issue
Our team identified rapid urbanization as a driving factor that contributed to the rise in the housing market, inflexible housing stock, and shortage of affordable housing. We saw a close link between urbanization and its impact on the health of the communities that are already most impacted by the lack of affordable housing and thus further exacerbating the wicked problem. Again while no narrative is perfectly linear or spontaneous, we uncover the landscape, regime, and niche level elements that reinforced this narrative over time.
Rapid urbanization, which we classified as a landscape-level element, took place most recently in the U.S. from the 1970s into the 2000s. Prior to this time period, urban growth was slow but steady since the 1920s in response to the Second Industrial Revolution (another landscape level). The Second Industrial Revolution, largely characterized by large-scale iron and steel production and widespread use of machinery, created job opportunities for people to meet the demands of mass production and drew people into the cities to work for factories. Inventions such as electricity and growing electrical grid use in the U.S. at the niche and regime level, respectively, fueled the Second Industrial Revolution. By the 1920s, the United States were beginning to form pockets of urban cities which grew and resemble the city that we know today. In addition to the steady growth, with the end of World War II and the Cold War, we see second and third waves of immigration into the United States. When immigrants move to countries, they naturally seek to settle in regions with the most proposect for economic growth and job opportunities and therefore relocate to cities. This fuels the growth of urban regions which creates a demand for housing despite the supply causing a rise in real estate prices and creating a market that resists affordable housing.
Another element that interestingly reinforced rapid urbanization is the rise and fall of the U.S. suburban communities. Our team classified these changes as regime-level elements. With the end of World War II (landscape level), the U.S. government began offering low-interest home loans to the general public but particularly the veterans to compensate for the war. Housing became more affordable and this caused Americans to move to the suburbs to start a home and a family. Not only did this feed into the first narrative of the “American Housing Dream” but two events resulted from this — abandonment of city housing and growth of the middle class. As people evacuated the city, we saw that landlords did not find the motivation to maintain them causing the housing to get old and rugged. By the time there was a wave of urbanization when people came back to the city- there were many housing that were uninhabitable. This event highlights the issue of lack of quality affordable housing in the market for our team which adds a layer to the wicked problem. In addition, with the growth of suburban communities, the U.S. middle class was growing and seeking higher education. This created the younger generation to flock back to the city where most of the colleges were located and stay to start a new life. As more people began moving back to the city, the cities became more lively and the government also began investing in them which created an increase in social preference to live in a city. It didn’t help that the economy at the time began to rely on the more service-oriented businesses. Niche-level socio-technical innovations such as UberEats or Airbnb that stemmed from the service-oriented economy further increased people’s desire to enjoy these benefits in the city. This created a huge demand for housing despite the supply of land and perpetuated the lack of affordable housing problems.
Until now, we looked at how rapid urbanization directly impacted the lack of affordable housing issues but we also want to highlight its negative impact on public health at the regime level which indirectly exacerbates the lack of affordable housing issues. There are several health issues strongly correlated with urbanization. To name a few, urbanization creates poor air quality causing asthma and leading individuals to be admitted to the hospital. It also can be a source of environmental hazards where injuries may happen. These health issues may prevent the communities from low-socioeconomic status who need affordable housing the most from working and bringing in income to pay for housing. Fortunately, we’ve discovered that with the growing awareness on the concept of “social determinants of health” that started at the niche level and moved to regime and focus to care for these communities from landscape influences from COVID to BLM, efforts are being made to address the lack of affordable housing issues.
Perceptions of Affordable Housing and the Reoccuring Gap between Minimum Wage and Rent
In addition to narratives, perceptions of affordable housing over time contribute to the evolution of how this wicked problem has been situated from a multilevel perspective. Our MLP map tracks perceptions of affordable housing beginning with the Progressive Movement’s charity-driven approach to addressing the housing needs of the poor in urban settings, like Pittsburgh in the 1920s. Over the 101-year arc the map tracks, we document how affordable housing evolved from being a crusade of uplift for “the deserving poor” to a misunderstood, yet widely-needed resource by 2021. This change in perception of affordable housing, we argue by the depiction on our map, was largely driven by niche-level congressional interventions and maintained by racism, class-based social hierarchy, capitalism, and misogyny at the landscape level.
The Federal Housing Administration was created in 1934, as the prevailing ideology that charitable organizations should be relied upon to address housing needs shifted to calls for government assistance in housing. This shift in perception toward a need for government-administered affordable housing emerged in tandem with the great depression, as Americans who had grown up distinguishing between the “deserving and undeserving poor” and with the stigmas associated with charitable assistance found themselves among those seeking relief. That new legislation was administered in ways that maintained the de jure racial segregation of the regime and reinforced landscape-level notions of white supremacy arguably allowed these efforts to gain traction and change the housing landscape at the regime level. Federal housing assistance offered during the great depression, and again in the post-World War II era were disproportionately made available to white Americans. The number of households able to establish homeownership through these programs contributed to the regime-level institution of residential suburbs, which changed norms around housing, class, and reified the narrative of the American Dream
In reflecting upon the completed map, a trend in conceptions of affordable housing emerged. The negative perception of affordable housing, which seems to have remained constant over time, is most associated with brick-and-mortar efforts to provide affordable housing. For example, in 1972, critics of the infamous Pruitt-Igoe towers in St. Louis, MO, “…suggested the housing development was representative of stereotypical ills, such as crime and buildings in disrepair…” (Watson, 2019). This perception failed to account for the reality that dilapidated conditions of public housing represent disinvestment by state and local authorities nationwide. Aversion to public housing can also be seen in NIMBY (not in my backyard) protests to efforts to locate such resources in existing residential spaces. “While Americans value equality and equal opportunity, they often oppose specific measures intended to achieve those goals” (Tighe, 2010. p. 5). In contrast, Perceptions of affordable housing have been favorable when such access comes in the form of mortgage assistance or when framed as part of an economic stimulus program. New Deal policies that made housing cheaper and mortgages more affordable were lauded. The Cares Act in 2020 and the American Rescue Plan in 2021, both contained cash assistance for renters and homeowners and were well-received by voters. Perhaps this is because the government expenditures are still rooted in the free market values central to capitalism, while the logic of providing built housing is tethered to, “the ideologies of communism and socialism” (Watson, 2019)
Finally, our MLP map briefly tracks the pattern of the federal minimum in relation to rental housing over time. We present minimum wage as a niche-level innovation that has become a fixture within the regime. On balance, it has not been increased with the regularity or the market sensitivity needed to make most rental housing affordable to a minimum wage earner. Our team identified the industrial automation process that evolved in the 1950s and the second wave of globalization especially as China opened its economy to the world in 1992 as major influences. In the present day, financial wisdom advises that rent comprises no more that 30% of household income. The first federal minimum wage was $0.25 per hour, instituted in 1938. Census data reveals that in Pennsylvania, median rental costs were $27.90 for white Americans, and $26.22 for black Americans (see table, below). This put most rental housing out of reach, at about 60% of a federal minimum wage earner’s salary (not considering any taxes or withholding). By 1970, a median Pennsylvania rent of $93 per month was less than half, but still more than 30% of a federal minimum wage earner’s $200 monthly salary. In 1991, the federal minimum wage was raised to $4.25, yet by 1990, median rents were now $404. The minimum wage was raised to $7.25 in 2009 and has not increased since. Today, the $1337 average rent in Pittsburgh exceeds a minimum wage earner’s pre-tax $1160 monthly earning. The incorporation of a minimum wage has failed to disrupt and is likely depressed by the class-based stratification, racism, and misogyny that continue to pervade the landscape.
Conclusion
Our findings started with narratives about affordable housing. Such narratives primarily describe the norms, behaviors, and institutions present at the regime level. By first identifying events at the regime level, we were then able to scale up to connect with more general themes in the landscape level and scale down to find out niche level events that contributed to the development of the narrative. Further, the approach made our narrative more solid, rather than just falling lightly on one big general concept.
This strategy prevented us from dwelling on too many details and failing to focus on important topics. But there were drawbacks to such a way of working. Outside of the narrative, we have identified, there are other important parts of our wicked problem which our MLP map does not discuss. In our previous map, we identified three major stakeholders: government, developers, and single-mother households(see our post 2). A review of our MLP map shows that we spent most of our time researching government and policy-related events at the niche-level, and how they impacted narratives at the regime-level. Details are missing regarding the other two stakeholders especially single mothers, which we identified as a less powerful group of people. With further research, we could focus on innovations and norms that have shaped single-motherhood and private housing development over time.
Although according to our previous research, long neglect and stigmatization have made the lack of secure housing a serious problem, by reviewing our evolution map, we were surprised to find that there were events at all levels that actually helped alleviate this wicked problem, such as the emerging field of social determinants of health research, the COVID-19 pandemic; tech innovations such as Zillow and Smart Cities, and cultural trends such as tiny houses and HGTV programs which glamourize renovating existing dilapidated housing. Any of these could be leveraged into our intervention in the following research steps.
So far, our research has explored the wicked problem of lacking affordable housing in Pittsburgh in terms of depth, breadth, and time scale. With all the previous research on this wicked problem, in the next step, we will vision a desired future and explore approaches to landing on that future.
