Renting Makes a Comeback
For years my wife and I have dreaded getting grilled by well-meaning relatives at family events with the same blunt question "when are you going to buy a house?" (naturally, the question "when are you going to have a baby?" always comes close on its heels).
But a nice piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in yesterday's Boston Globe shows that the financial crisis is causing many economists to join forces with progressives like myself that have been saying for years "what's so great about owning a house anyway?" Looks like there's some data coming in to back the usual retorts my spouse and I would level against the relatives (including amusing/sad data showing that people who own houses weigh 12 pounds more than those of us who don't on average).
What the piece misses though is a focus on vastly increasing government spending on public rental units. Renting will become a more attractive option to the extent it is decoupled from the private market ... and the extent to which more, better and more reasonably priced rental units are made available ...
I think pushing for more public money for public housing - together with instituting rent control and other needed housing regulations - is an important way to break the weakening stranglehold of a market mentality on those millions of us for whom markets like the housing market simply don't work. So it's worth having much more public discussion and debate on this issue on that merit alone.
But a nice piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in yesterday's Boston Globe shows that the financial crisis is causing many economists to join forces with progressives like myself that have been saying for years "what's so great about owning a house anyway?" Looks like there's some data coming in to back the usual retorts my spouse and I would level against the relatives (including amusing/sad data showing that people who own houses weigh 12 pounds more than those of us who don't on average).
What the piece misses though is a focus on vastly increasing government spending on public rental units. Renting will become a more attractive option to the extent it is decoupled from the private market ... and the extent to which more, better and more reasonably priced rental units are made available ...
I think pushing for more public money for public housing - together with instituting rent control and other needed housing regulations - is an important way to break the weakening stranglehold of a market mentality on those millions of us for whom markets like the housing market simply don't work. So it's worth having much more public discussion and debate on this issue on that merit alone.
Labels: housing renting rent public
posted by jpramas at
2:34 PM
1 Comments:
Eighteen years ago, my wife and I said to ourselves "go west, young man!" In this case it was to Norwood, a conservative and insular little burb west and south of Boston.
There we bought our first piece of property; and became stewards of a ramshackle three bedroom cape. One hundred and sixty eight mortgage payments, innumerable expenses for maintenance and upkeep, and two kids later, we're back in the city.
We sold the place just before the housing market imploded four years ago. Was owning a house worth the trouble? It was if you count the money we pulled out of it (when houses were still supremely overvalued) which we put towards our current home. Along the way, however, both my wife and I lost jobs and came dangerously close to personal bankruptcy. It was only because of family and friends who helped financially were we able to survive.
Most people don't have that kind of safety net. And stimulus package or not, no heroes on white horses are riding into town anytime soon.
So it's no shock that people are looking at renting apartments as an alternative American "dream." But activists will tell you: there's hardly enough affordable rental units to go around. If middle America re-discovers the convenience of renting, I'm sure they'll say, this potential wave of migration from owners to tenants will make past gentrification look like jimmies on an ice cream sundae.
I don't know if rent control, as Jason suggests, will ever again fly politically. But definitely now is the tipping point for a bold new discussion about civilization and the social responsibility we all share for helping our fellow citizens.
You know, as payback for all those years when most of us lived in our ivory towers – mine was made of cedar shingles actually – and mocked the unkempt, apartment dwelling hordes for missing out on the American “dream.”
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