The Unfair Housing Game

Purpose

Why do White households have ten times as much wealth as Black households? Why is the homeownership rate for Whites 74% and for Blacks 46%? Why are more than half of Black (57%), Latino (53%), and multiracial (50%) renter households cost-burdened, i.e. pay more than 30% of their income on housing, while 46% of White renters are cost-burdened, according to the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies.

The purpose of the game is to help players understand why such disparities exist. Players experience how housing policy in America has been biased because of factors relating to race, ethnicity and income level. They will also learn of solutions to our housing crisis. This game has been played by graduate students, high school students, and people of all ages and backgrounds.

You will learn about actual housing policies, gain a clearer understanding about how these policies affect people’s lives, and explore how it feels to be privileged or discriminated against.

This is an interactive game in which players learn about each other as well as housing policies. We recommend that you start by asking ice-breaking questions like: “How did your parents afford housing?” “How did you afford to purchase or rent your home?” “Do you know anyone who is struggling with housing?”

Pieces: One die.

120 hundred-dollar bills.

6 black and white pawns.

 

Rules of Play

·        The game is best played with 5-6 players.

·        Players choose a white or black pawn to determine their status. Make sure that at least half of the players have white pawns and half have black pawns.

·        Choose a banker to distribute and collect money.

·        The color of the pawn establishes both the initial amount of money assigned and the selection of available cards.  

·        Black pawns receive a single one-hundred-dollar bill. White pawns receive ten hundred-dollar bills. This represents the actual wealth gap between white and Black households.

·        White pawns roll first, draw a card from the white pile, and read it to the group. Black pawns draw from the non-white pile and reads it to the group.  After reading a card, keep it for post-game reflection.

·        Players receive a hundred-dollar bill for each number they throw on the dice. They also receive or forfeit bills depending on what the card says.

·        Players who forfeit all their money may ask to borrow money from other players. If they do, players may choose to charge interest. You are also free to make up your own rules to deal with bankrupt players.

·        Play the game until all the cards are picked or until everyone feels ready to end it.

·        The player with the most money when all the cards are picked or when the game ends wins.

 

Post Game Reflection 

·        Reflect on how it felt to be the winner or the loser in this game.

·           Pick at least three housing policy cards and discuss them based on experiences in your own life or community.

The Developers of this Game: Making Housing and Community Happen

This game was developed by the founders of Making Housing and Community Happen, a nonprofit whose mission is to “equip congregations, community leaders, and neighbors with practical tools needed to transform their communities to end homelessness, and to stabilize the cost of housing through education, advocacy, organizing, and advisement.”

Our work is comprised of both local campaigns as well as initiatives in other parts of the country. We run local grassroots housing campaigns to get affordable housing built, protect tenants, and create vibrant, sustainable and racially just neighborhoods. Our work, both locally and in towns and cities across the nation, involves training people to organize and advocate and also providing housing justice educational forums on specific housing issues.

We organize for housing justice locally and across the nation. We have four teams:

• Our Affordable and Supportive Housing Advocates team runs local campaigns to increase affordable housing and housing justice policy in Pasadena, CA. This team of local resident advocates have won campaigns to build permanent supportive housing, use closed school sites for affordable housing, rezone the city so that underutilized land belonging to religious congregations can be used for affordable housing, and support tenants through rent stabilization and eviction protections (in partnership with the local tenants union and an immigrant day laborers center). These campaigns are led by our low income staff and marginalized residents in need of affordable housing, including unhoused people, who organize and advocate for the housing and programs they need. This team is currently working on streamlining the city’s notoriously difficult approval process for affordable housing, strengthening the city’s “right to return” policy (to help reverse gentrification and displacement), and organize for affordable housing on closed school sites and other underutilized land. We won 110 units on one closed campus.

• Our North Fair Oaks Team is working to revive an historic "Black Main Street" in Pasadena. They have hired organizers over the past 10 years to listen to the community and grow local leadership.  The motto of this team is to "beautify not gentrify!" This team, composed of mostly Black residents who participate in the neighborhood, and have created a Vision Plan for their neighborhood to be adopted into the city's official "Specific Plan" for that area.

• Our Congregational Land Team works with religious congregations to use their underutilized land for affordable housing and has helped write state legislation that rezoned religious land for affordable housing. This team works with faith congregations using a six step process to help them envision what they want built on their land, what is feasible given their situation zoning and land use regulations, how to listen to and collaborate with their neighbors, and help them choose a developer that best matches their needs. By working with a collaboration consisting of a local planning firm, architects and affordable housing experts, this team provides expert advisement to creates professional feasibility studies and writes Requests for Proposals to pitch to potential affordable housing developers. From beginning to end, the local congregation is in charge of the process at their pace equipped to be wise stewards of their land to meet the critical need for affordable housing. This team has worked with 35 congregations in Southern California and created learning community with other teams forming in Texas, CO, Washington State and more.

• Our Safe Parking team has successfully created the first Safe Parking program in the San Gabriel Valley. We began the program "under the radar" because it was not permitted use. When the city found out we were housing people living in their vehicles, they did not want to shut it down, so they gave us a temporary use permit. By telling their stories, the Safe Parkers in the program successfully advocated at city council meetings and public hearings to make our (their) program fully permitted and legal.  The program is run by a partnership between Friends-in-Deed, a local nonprofit service provider, and Trinity Lutheran Church, which provides the site. Our team is currently looking for additional safe parking sites in the San Gabriel Valley.

 In addition to our four teams, we are typically invited two to three times a year by community leaders in cities across the nation to offer One Day Housing Justice Institutes. These institutes involve 3-7 meetings with a local planning team to plan the event by first coaching them research their local affordable housing policies, and their city’s history to discover their culture, appetite for housing justice and opportunities,  and consider possible which strategies might help them move toward housing justice. The goal is to leave in place a local housing justice team. This has happened in Denver, CO, and in CA in, Arcadia, Monrovia, Placer County, Fullerton, and La Canada. Local existing teams have been strengthened in Bellflower, and Long Beach, CA, Durham, NC, and Biloxi, Mississippi.