Musical chairs

The game musical chairs leans too hard into a cutthroat, Hobbesian state of nature to be a good model for understanding the world. But musical chairs can help understand some issues around homelessness and housing.

Gregg Colburn used it recently in Bend to help people think about homelessness.

Who is he? Colburn is an associate professor at The University of Washington. He is the author with Clayton Page Aldern of the book “Homelessness is a Housing Problem.” He gave a talk last week sponsored by Building a Better Bend and also spoke at a meeting of the Bend City Council. You can watch a recording of those here: tinyurl.com/BBBend and here: tinyurl.com/ColburnBend, respectively.

So, let’s play musical chairs. Imagine 10 people lined up in a room to play. One of them, John, struggles with addiction and has been drinking. There are 10 chairs in the room. One chair is pulled out. The music starts. Everyone parades around the chairs. The music stops. Everyone scrambles for a chair. John may be a little slower to react. It’s harder for him to get a chair.

If we think of the chairs as housing, we might argue that the reason John may end up homeless is because of addiction. Is his addiction truly the cause of his homelessness?

It may be, in a way. The real problem, Colburn says, is the lack of housing. People struggling with addiction, who lost their jobs, who have trouble making enough money to afford housing, need housing, too.

Economist Bryan Caplan, author of “Build, Baby Build,” has also used musical chairs to make another argument about housing. One of the criticisms of a Bend housing incentive program is that it has been used to create higher-end housing. We understand that feeling. Helping to build swanky apartments with taxpayer money seems a little off.

Think about, though, a game of reverse musical chairs. Start again with 10 people in the room. John is there. There are 10 chairs. Then we add a chair. The music starts. Everyone parades around. And when the music stops, there is not much drama. Plenty of chairs.

And if we think about that in terms of housing, when more expensive housing is built, people who are living in less expensive housing and are looking to move up can find something that fits their needs. The more acute need may be for people at the lower end of the market. But when the swanky apartments get built, people with money don’t have to cling to the housing they have, freeing it up for people with less money.

“Every new structure built makes the competition for housing a little milder, until practically everyone comes out a winner,” Caplan writes.

The musical chairs analogies have flaws. They still can help us understand some of the forces at work when the music stops.