The Homeowner Society

This is interesting and understandable. Homeowners tend to be wealthier (or is that just conventional wisdom?) and more dependent on the status quo. It caught my eye because of a discussion I heard on the radio yesterday about homeownership.

Home ownership is believed to be a solid financial investment and is seen as a way to make people better citizens who are active in their communities. In his book, “No Place Like Home: Wealth, Community & Politics of Home Ownership,” Brian McCabe finds that our belief about home ownership as a way to improve civic life doesn’t necessarily pan out.

  Here & Now

Author McCabe follows the country's obsession with homeownership through the 2008 financial crisis and to date from the thirties and president Hoover's creation of a commission to determine ways to make all Americans homeowners. McCabe argues that, rather than creating citizens who came together to improve and strengthen the American society as hoped, the creation of a nation of homeowners promoted economic self interest and political divide. He argues that non-owners tend to engage in community politics to address social and community issues, while homeowners engage in politics where the issues protect their property values. That seems like it would have been an obvious outcome to the Hoover committee. And maybe it was.

Excerpts:

In the short term,  [...] stimulating home construction would help to provide employment opportunities for millions of unemployed workers in the building and construction trades - one of the industries hit hardest by the economic collapse [of the thirties]. Their efforts to lower the barriers to homeownership would contribute to resolving the crisis of unemployment and lifting the nation from the depths of the Great Depression.

[...]

Beyond the immediate benefits of promoting homeownerhip, the president underscored the importance of building a nation of homeowners to America's long-term viability and health. Homeownership made for better family life, greater social stability, and improved citizenship, [Hoover] reminded the delegates. It would recommit citizens to the promise of democracy and serve as the foundation of American patriotism. [...] '[Homeownership] makes for happier married life, it makes for better children, it makes for confidence and security, it makes for courage to meet the battle of life, it makes for better citizenship. There can be no fear for a democracy or self-government or for liberty or freedom from home owners no matter how humble they may be."

[...]

"You are enlisted for further service which will not stop until every American home is clean, convenient, wholesome, sanitary, and a fit place for a mother and father to bring to maturity young citizens who will keep our Nation strong, vigorous and worthy."

[...]

While the campaigns worked to solidify owner-occupied housing as the preference of the majority of Americans, promoting homeownership as the choice of the true patriot and the upstanding citizen, fewer than half of American households were able to live in homes they owned.

[...]

One of the legacies of these programs would be the enduring patterns of segregation and social exclusion that persisted as a result of federal policies to build a nation of homeowners.

And to vote conservative.

Puts a new light on George W Bush's push for Americans' homeownership, whether they could afford it or not.

UPDATE:

[F]ar from buying new homes, millennials increasingly aren’t even renting. The proportion of this demographic – aged around 18 to 35 – who end up living with their parents has been on the rise steadily since the Great Recession, peaking at about 36%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Now, for the first time in 130 years, living with your parents has become the most common living arrangement for young men and women aged 18 to 34, Pew reported this week.

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway