Opinion: Have you seen my home?
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To those of us not threatened by the foreclosure mess (i.e. renters), plans to ‘save families from losing their homes’ sound more like collusion to keep prices permanently unaffordable, thereby dimming any prospect of owning. Economist and Dust-Up alumnus Steven E. Landsburg feels our pain, writing in Slate yesterday that one unlucky owner’s eviction is another renter’s long-awaited shot at the American Dream:
None of these foreclosed houses is going to disappear. After a foreclosure, one family moves out, and another moves in. We see the sad faces of the people moving out, but we don’t as often see the happy faces of the new homeowners moving in. Nevertheless, those happy faces are out there, and we should not discount them. That’s important, and it’s important in a larger context. Often when it comes to economic policy, some effects -- in this case, the genuinely moving stories of good people who can’t afford to live where they’ve been living -- are highly visible, while others -- the genuinely moving stories of good people who can now achieve their dreams of home ownership -- are less well-publicized. That doesn’t make them any less real.
I’d add another point of frustration to all this talk of ‘saving’ homes and keeping roofs over families’ heads: This is a crisis in which owners (if you can even call them that) are becoming renters, not one where a bunch of poor children and parents are ruthlessly forced onto the streets by greedy banks. If families were indeed having to sleep on sidewalks because they couldn’t afford to own their homes -- and if renting weren’t a choice -- then we’d have a real humanitarian crisis on our hands. But the choice isn’t between owning and homelessness, but rather, between owning and renting. If that constitutes a crisis, then as a renter, I expect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to speak up any day now about federal assistance to move me out of my apartment.