I just read the article a little more closely as well as reading more of the comments. I think that this paragraph from the article is just a fantastic summation:
For the better part of a century, politics, industry and culture aligned to create a fetish of the idea of buying a house. Homeownership has done plenty of good over the decades; it has provided stability to tens of millions of families and anchored a labor-intensive sector of the economy. Yet by idealizing the act of buying a home, we have ignored the downsides. In the bubble years, lending standards slipped dramatically, allowing many Americans to put far too much of their income into paying for their housing. And we ignored longer-term phenomena too. Homeownership contributed to the hollowing out of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed America’s overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for those who had lost a job to find another. Perhaps worst of all, it helped us become casually self-deceiving: by telling ourselves that homeownership was a pathway to wealth and stable communities and better test scores, we avoided dealing with these formidable issues head-on.
It was also interesting that most of the comments seem very negative on the article. A couple down from the baby boomer, there is a guy who starts with:
“I’d be interested in knowing how many writers and editors at Time own a home at this time.”
Really? Are we still harping on the 2005-era ad hominem that anyone who questions the sacredness of home ownership has some shadowy agenda? If they don’t own homes at Time, it’s probably because they think it’s not a great deal do so, and they may well be right.
The same guy ends his comment:
“Besides from being the American dream, home ownership is and always will be the best investment we can make in our community and future.”
Well met, sir. Well met.
If the comments to this article are any indication, highly emotional and reflexive defensiveness of home ownership still seems to be firmly established…
