For employees, a small act of repair

The American dream just got a little more real for the University's low and moderate-income workers.

On Monday afternoon, the University announced the launch of a new program to enable homeownership among the men and women who wash our dishes, clean our bathrooms and prune our hedges.

The program will provide, among other benefits, below market-rate mortgages, will require no down payments and will provide $1,000 to cover closing costs.

If this doesn't sound like big news, consider this: The gap between what many Princeton employees earn and what it costs to rent or own a home in Mercer County is now so wide that many University workers face the prospect of homelessness when the paychecks stop coming after school lets out in May.

The new program is not a panacea for what is truly a crisis among the University's working families — many, if not most, will still find it difficult to find affordable housing in Mercer County's overheated real estate market — but it is a start.

The new program is a recognition on the part of the administration that a campus so divided between haves and have nots — between the students and the servants — cannot be a healthy environment in which to train the leaders of the next generation. Though the current labor market would allow the University to sustain an impoverished and marginally housed workforce, the administration has instead chosen to place value on the dignity of its employees. In extending to all of its workers the opportunity to own a home, Princeton stated clearly that there are compelling social goods to which fiduciary concerns must sometimes be subjugated.

And now that we have done good, how can we do even better?

We can start by delivering what we have promised. Recent research by professor of psychology and public affairs Eldar Shafir and others indicate that the impact of the new housing program could vary significantly based on the way in which this program is presented to employees. Seemingly insignificant "channel factors" — anything from the wording of the program application form, to the location and timing of the information sessions — could substantially impact the rate at which workers participate in the program. The Human Resources Department must attend to these details vigilantly in order to maximize the program's potential of broadening homeownership among the University's low and moderate income workers.

While the new program is truly a step in the right direction, it is important to recognize that its potential is limited by what Princeton currently pays its employees. Even if the program is successful in helping some Princeton employees own their own homes, there will still be many for whom homeownership remains far out of reach.

A University dining hall employee earning $12.85 (a fairly representative wage of a dining hall employee) per hour will, on standard 42-week work schedule, earn $21,588 per year before taxes. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the median home price in the area is nearly $250,000 (and the survey that reached this figure was taken two years ago — before the boom in home prices was in full swing). Those two numbers do not add up to a proud new homeowner, regardless of how the new housing program seems to sweeten the deal. The new housing program would be most effective in the context of a wage schedule that acknowledged the high cost of housing and living in this area.

How cruel would it be of the University to tell its lowest-paid workers to hope for homeownership, and then give them only an outside shot at realizing their dream? To stop with the new housing program would be to halt an ascent that we have now enabled. We cannot pretend that our obligation to these workers — our small acts of repair to a nation damaged by its divisions — is yet fulfilled. Thomas Bohnett is a Wilson School major from Princeton Junction. He can be reached at tbohnett@princeton.edu.