New Orleans       For younger Americans, there may be a significant re-evaluation of whether owning a home is part of the so-called “American dream.”  There are a lot of reasons for revising such personal goals of course, including high interest rates, even if they are falling now; student loans, even if President Biden continues to hack away at them; escalating insurance rates, particularly since climate change and weather disasters have turned actuarial estimates upside down; and, the simple fact that the pricing and scarcity of available and affordable houses has pushed them way past dreamland with 10% of sales over one-million bucks now.

Opinions on this trend are backed up by some research and polling as well.  A Minnesota survey of boomers and millennials found that owning a home for the younger set was now way down the list compared to building a family and achieving other life goals.  Bankrate found that while 88% of boomers believed owning a home was critical, only 68% of Gen Z thought that was important.

There will be a lot of hand wringing from business interests and policymakers about what kind of future the country will face if is less centered on homeownership, but there’s a silver lining for the rest of us who hold close the dream of more tenant power, and the project of building it.  We desperately need public policies that restore the priority of providing public housing, especially since so many families are now paying between 30 and 50% of their income for rent.  We need more incentives for the construction of affordable rental units with rent controls as part of the program that maintains their affordability.

If policymakers and politicians can get their heads turned to this future, rather than the past, there’s a huge pot of money available for this new dream.  The largest social service subsidy in terms of governmental cost is the mortgage interest tax break, which dwarfs what we spend for welfare and a long list of other safety net programs.  Reducing that tax advantage or eliminating it would create options needed by tenants, whether for direct rental subsidies, making section 8 an entitlement, rather than a fixed allocation, and creating more incentives for building working and lower income housing rental housing developments.

The biggest problem with the homeownership myth of the American dream is that having a home is still the bulk of most asset-based citizen wealth for families.  Having more and better options for creating real family security, rather than depending on recycling or gentrifying existing housing stock on the assumption that housing values will always increase, is critical for the US.  Keeping housing affordable will be part of the outcome of different policies, of course, but that also devalues the capitalist equation underneath long term homeownership.  A fairer tax system, less premised on market fluctuations, would substitute individual and family wealth creation for a deeper and broader social welfare system that provided security for more, rather than wealth for some.

We need to embrace tenant power and all it could mean in order to create a sustainable future, especially for cities, so that families can still afford to live in urban America rather than having to abandon their streets to the rich like Seattle, San Francisco, and New York.  Homes will still be more affordable in ex-urban and rural areas, which might redistribute some of the population and wealth in a positive way as well.

The impacts could make a long list, but a tenant centered housing policy might be our future, why not embrace it and make it the best it can be for everyone?