Quality of Life in Housing? Look to Eastern Medicine and Web3
- Dain Ehring
- Oct 1
- 6 min read
By Dain Ehring
October 2025
The United States is not feeling well. It is sick. Our wellness is on life support. Our quality of life is in the ICU.
Our quality of life is dependent on housing. There is no ambiguity, no academic challenge, no political disagreement. A home is essential to any living thing walking on this planet, a mouse or a man. Our hole in the dirt is more than protection and safety. It is our identity. It is American. It is the most critical way to build wealth. It is a place to visit for the holidays, to hang up your coat and get close to the hearth on a snowy evening, to cook a meal for your new friends, and to water your indoor plants.
Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, said,
"Homeownership is the foundation of a strong community and a pathway to wealth accumulation."
Housing also has an enormous influence on the economy. It represents almost 20 percent of the Gross National Product (GDP).
The pressure on our living situation is mounting. We are unwell. As reported by the Wall Street Journal last month [source], the median home price has surged by over 35% in just three years since 2021. Unsurprisingly, the average monthly rent in the country has also climbed by 35%, now at $26.21 per square foot.
The residential finance industry has come to an abrupt halt. More families are compelled to rent, and couples are delaying starting a family because they cannot afford to buy a home to raise their children. U.S. birth rates have declined by 6.5% over the past four years.
This situation is unfavorable for all of us. The effects of this pressure are primarily experienced by middle- and lower-income families. A recent study reveals that an astounding 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, an increase of 10% from the previous year. In 2024, auto loan delinquencies reached a 13-year peak. Student loan debt hit $1.74 trillion in the same year and continues to rise. This year, hardship withdrawals from 401ks rose by 36%.[1].
"Most people don't realize that 20% of the adult population [in the U.S.] do not have a bank account. They don’t have normal banking," said Rick Harrison, Pawn Stars.
An article in the WSJ [2] highlights the issue in Phoenix, known as one of America’s eviction capitals. Maricopa County, where Phoenix is located, has one of the highest eviction rates, with 16 filings per 100 renter households over the past year, according to a 2023 research report by Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In January 2024, court filings reached a record of over 8,000 in a single month, and they have stayed above typical levels for much of the year. According to A.P., eviction filings nationwide are more than 50% higher than the pre-pandemic average in some cities.
In 2023, renters in the U.S. still owed nearly $11 billion in debt to property owners. The average amount owed was $2,094.[1] In New York, the New York City Housing Authority managed to collect only 65 percent of the rent it billed in 2023. Lisa Bova-Hiatt, NYCHA's CEO, described it as “a recipe for disaster.”[2] For municipalities, the most severe consequence is the rise in homelessness. Nationwide, homelessness increased by 12% in 2023 alone, reaching its highest recorded level in U.S. history, worsened by the influx of migrants. The homeless population in San Francisco doubled in 2022 to 20,000.
Delinquency poses a societal risk. Currently, 34% of U.S. renters are at least one month overdue on rent, and over 5.5 million renters are "not at all confident" about paying next month’s rent. Across the nation, 20 percent of Black, 15.4 percent of Hispanic, and 10 percent of White renters are behind on rent. In Wisconsin, an alarming 47 percent of Black renters are overdue.[3]
Research indicates that missing a monthly rent payment can result in 90-180 days of delinquency[4]. Ensuring tenants remain or return to good financial standing likely leads to ongoing punctual payments. Landlords initiate approximately 3.6 million eviction cases annually. The cost of eviction for property owners can vary from $5,000 per unit to as much as $50,000, depending on the local court's disposition. For public housing authorities, the impact is more significant: the potential failure of their mission.
The fix? Let's look to Eastern medicine.
Western medicine is learning lessons from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and achieving significant positive results in treating severe health issues, most notably in shared decision-making (SDM).
“Efficacy attributes most influenced patients' preferences, with increasing overall response rate (25-85%) and overall survival (6 months to 2 years) contributing to 50% of treatment decision-making.”
Shared decision-making is replacing the current Western relationship with the patient’s well-being. In her paper, Dr. Julia Tsuei writes in the Journal of Medicine, “The development of medicine in Western nations follows the method of hypothetical deduction, and the Eastern approach uses the inductive method. The Western approach divides health from disease, yet the Eastern approach considers health as a balanced state versus disease as an unbalanced state.”[6]
The current relationship between a property owner and a resident is the same as in traditional Western medicine. The prescription for renting a home is a monthly payment due on the first of the month. A five-day grace period allows for irregularities in the US Mail. Late fees are immediately assessed and accrued.
This 19th-century Charles Dickens approach to renting a home puts the responsibility of managing cash flow for the following month squarely on the shoulders of low—to middle-income renters. Nearly 80% of these renters live paycheck to paycheck, and 20% don’t even have a bank account. Pay rent on time, or the eviction process begins. It’s in the standardized rental agreement.
The skills required by most residents to manage their volatile cash flow and make a single payment of 30-40% of their monthly income in cash every first of the month, unassailably prioritized over any other life event they may encounter as small as a flat tire or as large as losing a job, are beyond the skills of the most sophisticated Fortune 500 CIO.
For life-threatening care, we in the West have begun to use lessons from the East. The American Cancer Society Journal writes that shared decision-making has been linked to important healthcare quality outcomes. In a 2014 study in radiation oncology, 32.3% of patients participated in SDM, and 76.2% reported feeling very satisfied with their care.
Likewise, we must appreciate that housing is part of our well-being. Providing shared decision-making – SDM -- to the residents on payment schedules and their cash flow can likewise result in a healthier tenant – a happy resident who wants to keep their rent up to date. Without subverting a rental monthly payment to an individual credit card, which is more than likely behind in payments itself, shared control allows the resident to define and break up rental payment terms within the month.
In recent pilots, this ‘shared control' is done without person-to-person interaction between the property manager and the resident, reducing management costs, including delinquency collections and eviction. By managing payment schedules online without interaction, residents can manage their cash flow without explanation, which can be intimidating and prone to disparate impact.
By allowing the rental residents to make multiple payments within the month that they define as meeting their income cash flow, renters are less pressured to create an exacting plan every 30 days. In addition, unforeseen exceptions—a broken arm, a fender bender, or classroom books—can be better managed while maintaining up-to-date rent. The resident becomes happier, stays in their home, and keeps payments up to date. So, like an athletic shoe commercial, just do it.
This represents a chance for the Web3 model. The technology is available to offer renter autonomy and connect property managers, property owners, and residents. Initial findings indicate that shared control over rental payments can reduce delinquency and evictions by 15-25%. These metrics significantly affect the finances of owners, housing authorities, and municipalities. Although the impact of satisfied, current renters on the community hasn't been quantified, it is intuitively significant.
This distinctive method, known as shared control, in the distressed rental market for both private (market rate) and public rental housing, can and will generate a wide-ranging positive socio-economic impact nationwide.
[1] National Equity Atlas 2024
[2] New York Times Jan 23 2023 As Thousand Fall Behind on Rent, Public Housing Faces ‘Disaster’ Mihir Zaveri
[3] HelpAdvisor analysis of U.S. Census Bureau; Racial Disparities in Housing Struggles: 1 in 5 Black American Renters Are Behind on Rent; 2024 helpadvisor.com
[4] Urban Institute, Rental Pay History Should be Used to Assess the Creditworthiness of Mortgage Borrowers, April 17, 2018; Goodman, Zhu
[5] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38076274/ Copyright © 2023 Thomas, Ailawadhi, Popat, Kleinman, Ross, Gorsh, Mulnick, O’Neill, Paka, Hanna, Krucien, Molinari, Gelhorn and Perera.
[1] Payroll.org 2023 survey published 2024
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