Ryan Avent takes a look at Felix Salom’s arguments about the benefits of homeownership, but finds that sometimes, its societal benefits are a little overstated:
It’s clearly right that homeowners take an active interest in local policy in an effort to protect and enhance local services and the value of their homes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that homeowners are generating societal benefits. Take schools, for example. Homeowners take many actions to boost the performance of local schools, both because they’re interested in obtaining a quality education for their children and because school quality is capitalized into home values. But how is this accomplished? If the improvement is primarily achieved through careful monitoring of school budgets and methods, then homeowners are indeed generating some societal benefits. But if it is primarily achieved through efforts to exclude lower-income households from the school catchment area, then homeowners are actually reducing societal welfare. And obviously that’s one of the main ways that homeowners protect the quality of their public services — by crafting zoning rules that have the effect of strictly limiting the kinds of households living in an area. One might argue that that’s their right. Perhaps, but such homeowners clearly don’t deserve a subsidy as reward for their behavior. (Emphasis mine)
I do recommend reading the whole (short) piece. Mostly because I too have mixed feelings about our country’s seemingly religious fanaticism with regards to the sacrament of homeownership.
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