Keepers of the City: Housing the People Who Keep It Running

This essay is a compact ledger of what works and what does not—drawn from research in Europe and the Americas—and a plan for aligning housing, wages, and transport so that essential workers can live near the people who need them.

I. The affordability gap is systemic, not anecdotal

In the United States, the 2025 Out of Reach report sets the housing wage at $33.63/hour for a modest two-bedroom and $28.17/hour for a one-bedroom—well above pay in common care and service occupations. The gap is structural, not a cluster of unlucky cases.

France offers a different mirror: Paris's rent regulation (encadrement des loyers) saved tenants ~€800/year on average, evidence that targeted price rules can slow the burn in tight markets—though enforcement is uneven and coverage incomplete. The point is not that caps fix everything; it's that policy moves the dial.

Barcelona's data underline the scale problem: the city's public rental stock remains ~1.5% of all dwellings; local experts peg a 90,000-unit affordable gap—far beyond what incremental incentives can fill.

Across contexts, housing costs beat wages for many crucial occupations. The result is longer commutes, workforce churn, and fragile public services.

II. A city needs fit, not just "balance"

"Jobs–housing balance" is a blunt ratio. It counts jobs and dwellings, not whether the jobs match the rents. The better metric is jobs–housing fit: do local wages line up with nearby housing prices? When fit improves by one standard deviation, commute distance drops ~9% in California evidence—a clean, policy-relevant effect.

The research consensus is steady: where housing near low- and mid-wage job centers is scarce, commutes grow, VMT rises, and access to opportunity tilts. From early work on jobs–housing balance and spatial mismatch to newer "fit" methods, the core finding is simple—co-location matters.

Accessibility research adds a second lens: metropolitan studies track jobs reachable by transit in a set time window, revealing vast differences across U.S. regions and underscoring that service frequency and span (early morning, late night) are as decisive as tracks or lanes.

The Housing + Transportation (H+T) Index closes the loop: an address is only "affordable" if combined housing + transport costs stay under 45% of income. Cheaper rent in a transit desert is a false economy.

III. What fairness can finance: Moene, wealth shares, and urban dividends

Kalle Moene and Debraj Ray's Universal Basic Share reframes support as a fixed share of national income rather than a flat cash grant. Tied to the macro pie, the share rises with growth and embeds a civic claim on collective production. For cities, a parallel idea is an urban dividend—funded by land-value capture, progressive property taxation, and shared returns on public land—earmarked to keep essential workers in-city.

Thomas Piketty's body of research connects durable inequality to weak redistribution and weak worker power; his policy spine—progressive income and wealth taxation, codetermination, and broader asset sharing—aligns with municipal instruments that recycle windfalls from urban growth to those who hold the city together. The mechanism is not abstract: tax and wealth design can raise inequality or reduce it, depending on structure and enforcement.

Takeaway: treat a fraction of urban land and growth rents as a standing endowment for workforce housing, and tie support to income dynamics—not just annual appropriations.

IV. Three places, three hard truths

Paris: regulate where demand is inelastic; add stock where it is absent

Rent caps slowed increases for many tenants; savings are modest relative to need, but measurable. The deeper task is production—especially social and intermediate-rent housing—in the very arrondissements that export workers each dawn. Paris's rent observatories (OLAP) and national networked data make targeted action possible at building scale.

Policy path: double down on enforcement of caps while building or acquiring permanently affordable units near transit; deploy employer-assisted housing agreements for schools and hospitals within constrained districts.

Barcelona: lack of public stock is the bottleneck

With public rental at ~1.5% and a large affordable gap, Barcelona's plan mixes new production, rehab, and public–private vehicles (HMB) to grow supply. Effectiveness turns on speed and scale. Observatory work (O-HB) tracks affordability and can steer land to where fit is worst.

Policy path: reserve public land for non-market housing, accelerate co-ops and limited-profit rental, curb leakage to short-term stays, and hard-wire key-worker allocations near major hospitals and schools.

United States: wages and access diverge

In many metros, the wages of home health aides, paraeducators, and service workers fall far below "housing wage" levels, and affordable units cluster far from job centers. The result is longer commutes, especially for low-income households of color. Out of Reach documents the wage-rent gulf; accessibility studies show uneven job reach by transit; university work in California links improved jobs–housing fit to shorter trips.

Policy path: scale community land trusts, employer-assisted housing, and MIH in transit-rich zones; pair with night-and-early transit so shift workers are not stranded.

V. Public transport: availability is equity

Job access by transit is a measurable number: how many jobs can a worker reach in 45–60 minutes at 5 a.m., noon, or 11 p.m.? Regions with strong all-day service score higher; regions with peak-only schedules strand essential shifts. The University of Minnesota's Access Across America series has made this legible for planners; the lesson is simple—frequency and span matter as much as network geometry.

During the pandemic, Spanish mobility research reminded us who kept moving: frontline workers—and, overwhelmingly, women in care jobs—traveled when others stayed home. Designing transit for them, not just for peak-hour office commutes, is a baseline test of a city's ethics.

VI. What happens when essential workers live far away?

Evidence from education and health care is blunt: long commutes and unstable housing push people out of the professions that hold the city together. California studies find teachers priced out of their school districts face heavier turnover and longer commutes; the literature review on teacher housing finds clear need but thin evidence on which interventions work best—an argument for piloting and measuring.

In Australia and the U.K., multi-city studies show essential workers moving farther out, raising commute times and vacancy pressure in core services—signals of a workforce system losing coherence.

VII. Policy architecture that actually keeps people close

1) Measure fit, not just balance

Adopt low-wage jobs–housing fit as a primary planning metric at the neighborhood scale; publish a map of where low-pay jobs outnumber nearby affordable homes. Target those tracts first.

2) Treat housing + transport as one bill

Use the H+T Index threshold (≤45% of income) for zoning and funding decisions. If a project pushes typical workers above that line, it fails the affordability test.

3) Build or buy permanent affordability in job centers

Acquire and convert existing buildings near hospitals, depots, schools; use public land for limited-equity co-ops and social rental. Barcelona's deficit shows why stock, not just subsidies, is non-negotiable.

4) Create an "Urban Dividend" for key workers

Localize Moene's basic share: dedicate a slice of land-value growth and progressive property receipts to a permanent fund that issues housing stipends or rent buy-downs to the workers a city cannot lose.

5) Align tax policy with inclusion

Take Piketty's core point seriously: tax and ownership rules can widen or narrow inequality. Favor progressive property/wealth taxation and value capture over tax expenditures that inflate land prices.

6) Make employers co-produce proximity

Hospitals, school districts, and transit agencies should fund employer-assisted housing within defined catchments; lock commitments into labor agreements.

7) Buy access with service, not just tracks

Run reliable, frequent, all-day transit to job centers; judge success by jobs reachable at odd hours, not by route miles.

8) Legal tools for working roofs and rooms

Legalize ADUs and boarding-style rooms near big job sites where family housing is scarce; tie permits to fair leases for defined worker groups.

9) Regulate where it helps, enforce where it matters

Use rent caps where demand is inelastic (Paris), but pair with production and enforcement; publish violation rates and recover overcharges.

10) Pilot, publish, repeat

Follow the teacher-housing evidence gap with rapid pilots: small, well-measured projects that report retention and commute outcomes within a year.

VIII. Paris, Barcelona, and an American metro—what success would look like

Paris

Now: modest savings from rent caps; strong data through OLAP.

Next: a 5-year acquisition window for buildings within 800 m of major hospitals and school clusters; ABF-compliant rehab to social/intermediate rent; enforce encadrement; publish fit maps each quarter.

Barcelona

Now: a thin public stock and a deep affordability gap; active right-to-housing agenda.

Next: dedicate every city-owned parcel within transit-rich zones to non-market rental; scale co-ops; deploy O-HB dashboards to prioritize tracts with the worst fit for nurses and teachers.

A U.S. metro (example playbook)

Use Out of Reach to set income floors for essential roles; map jobs–housing fit; buy buildings near hospitals and bus depots; write employer-assisted deals; expand all-day bus service. Measure outcome as reduced commute distance and improved vacancy stability in schools and clinics.

IX. The moral contract in plain terms

A city that cuts loose its workers loses memory: the people who know the bus that fails on cold mornings, the teacher who can calm a class by name, the home-health aide who knows which hallway light flickers. Housing them nearby is not charity. It is maintaining the machine.

Moene's language—linking support to the common surplus—reminds us that cities are joint ventures. Piketty reminds us that tax and ownership rules decide who shares in growth. Transit researchers remind us that access is a clock, not a line on a map. Together they say: keep people close. Everything else—safety, learning, care—depends on that geometry.

Selected references and sources

Universal Basic Share / wealth sharing

• Debraj Ray & Kalle Moene on the universal basic share
• UiO overview of basic share concepts
• Moene TED talk on shared prosperity

Tax, wealth, inequality

• Frémeaux & Piketty on how taxation can increase inequality if mis-designed
• Piketty's synthesis on participatory, progressive remedies

Affordability gaps

• NLIHC Out of Reach 2025 (housing wage)
• Health effects of housing insecurity (systematic evidence)

France / Paris

• APUR & OLAP rent observatories
• Measured rent-cap savings in Paris (Le Monde reporting on APUR analysis)
• National rent-control oversight

Spain / Barcelona

• City and metro housing plans
• Public housing stock brief
• O-HB (Barcelona Housing Observatory) affordability work
• Mobility and frontline workers in Spain

Jobs–housing fit and commuting

• Benner & Karner (2016) on low-wage jobs–housing fit
• 2025 ARB policy brief quantifying ~9% commute reduction
• Classic jobs–housing literature (Cervero; Giuliano)

Access by transit

• University of Minnesota Access Across America series
• 2025 update on job access by mode

H+T affordability

• CNT's H+T Index and methods paper (45% combined threshold)

Teacher and essential worker housing

• California studies on teachers priced out of school districts
• Literature review on teacher housing interventions
• Australian and U.K. studies on essential worker displacement

This essay synthesizes research from urban economics, transportation planning, housing policy, and distributive justice to offer a practical framework for keeping essential workers housed near the communities they serve. The policy architecture is drawn from comparative evidence across Paris, Barcelona, and U.S. metropolitan areas.