On Sep 24, 2008, at 5:01 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
> I may not have a good understanding of the social or political
> toxicity of home ownership fetishism. But when I talk about home
> ownership, I'm not arguing in favor of McMansions, each with an
> Olympic size swimming pool and a 10 acre backyard to keep the
> neighbors out of sight. I'm talking about people at the bottom of
> society.
I'm not talking about McMansions, or real mansions either. I'm talking about how American society has, for many decades, treated owning a house as one's prime material goal in life. Sometimes buying a house makes economic sense; in some circs, it can be cheaper than renting. That's a rational calculation. But that's not always the case. There's a long history of Americans really stretching to buy a house, when they could have done better by renting. (Roediger has a chapter on early 20th century homeownership and the "whitening" process in his most recent book: owning a house made you white; renting made you unwhite.) The Clinton admin, in accordance with the homeownership fetish, made a policy out of encouraging low- or no-money-down house purchases. That, combined with the cultural bias and the devious and innovative practices of the financial industry, helped contribute a lot to the whole subprime bubble. Sure, some buyers were lied to about the terms of their loans; sure, some were confused by complex terms. But I'm certain that a lot of them just didn't think about risks because owning a "home" (not a mere house, but a "home") was so important.
From an economic point of view, the U.S. is way overinvested in residential real estate. We'd be much better off buying less housing and using the resources instead to build the productive infrastructure. Why people at "the bottom of society" should stretch to buy when they could more comfortably rent is beyond me. If it's about "wealth accumulation," they'd be better off spending the money on college tuition.
Doug