A Lot More
Observations on housing's wreckage and recovery
On renters
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the Q&A with me on homeownership and the bubble in Salon today.
Comment from reader KayWWW stresses a supremely important point:
Renters and Owners
I’m glad someone has mentioned renters, at least briefly. One reason people tried so hard to buy homes is because renters are treated so badly. In most places, they have almost no rights at all. When your landlord can basically throw you out any time, for any reason at all, it’s no wonder people are desperate to buy. (I had one landlord who tried to evict me because the heat was broken and it was “too inconvenient” to fix it. That may be illegal, but good luck getting anyone to enforce the law.)
I don’t really want to buy a house – I’ve moved frequently for my job, and buying would be inconvenient. But it’s hard to continue renting when there is so little security, even if you have a lease. And the animosity toward renters is shocking – I went to a town meeting to hear about a new housing plan (they want to build luxury rental condos), and I heard the most nasty things directed toward renters (even ones that can afford trendy condos).
Not everyone wants to be a homeowner, and not everyone should be. The housing bubble showed that. But there needs to be stronger protection for renters, so people will have a viable alternative.
One Response to “On renters”
Leave a Reply
How the homes we live in turned into the monsters that ate our economy and the United States became a nation obsessed with real estate.
The Latest
Organizations that matter
- Affordable Housing Centers of America
- Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute
- Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program
- Center for Budget and Policy Priorities
- Center for Responsible Lending
- Demos
- Drum Major Institute
- Joint Center for Housing Studies
- Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
- National Consumer Law Center
- National Housing Institute
- National Housing Trust
- National Low Income Housing Coalition
- National Training and Information Center
- Natn’l Community Reinvestment Coalition
- NEDAP
- New America Foundation
- PolicyLink
- Pratt Center for Community Development
- Revson Fellowship
- Smart Growth America
What Alyssa reads
- Baseline Scenario
- Ben Smith
- Bloomberg News
- Calculated Risk
- City Limits
- Consumer Law and Policy Blog
- Doug Henwood
- Felix Salmon
- Galleycat
- Housing Wire
- Mother Jones
- Next American City
- Paul Krugman
- PolicyCents
- Ryan Avent
- Shelterforce
- Street Level
- Talking Points Memo
- The Audit
- The Balance Sheet
- The Big Picture
Tags
American Prospect Ameriquest Andrew Cuomo Atlanta Barney Frank Bloomberg News Bloomsbury Bush Business Week California Clinton Community Reinvestment Act Consumer Financial Protection Agency Dean Baker Elizabeth Warren Fannie Mae Felix Salmon FHA financial stability foreclosures Freddie Mac Gretchen Morgenson Home Mortgage Disclosure Act homeownership Larry Summers loan modifications media mortgage-backed securities Mortgage Bankers Association mortgage brokers mortgage fraud mortgage suicides New York Times Obama Paul Krugman publishing Rick Santelli Salon securitization subprime tenants Texas The Big Money Timothy Geithner Wall Street Journal
As someone who has rented (apartments and houses) and owned a condo, the intense venom reserved for renters is bewildering. It’s just assumed renters never take care of the properties we live in, and that we’re all somehow transient thieves. Like you I am stunned by this. The housing bubble only made the animosity worse.
I’m a writer and moved a lot for jobs, too. I remember explaining this to someone once, when asked why I didn’t buy, and they still held I should buy, sell, and buy again in my new city. Evidently I should just keep repeating the process (even at a loss) with every new job and city. I guess it would save me from being a dreaded renter.
My folks think owning offers great security. Perhaps it does compared to renting, but as someone who toured many foreclosures before settling on one to buy, owning didn’t look much more secure. In my parents’ development, I once counted 5 houses on their short block up for sale. Two had just sold a year earlier, and were clearly being flipped. And yet they “feared” the renters two doors down were hurting their property values. Renting isn’t wasted money. It’s used to keep a roof over your head. I’m amazed people continually discount that.
When I sold my condo, my new husband and I looked around for a another property, but realized we couldn’t afford a new home in the neighborhood we wanted. So we used our windfall to help finance his 2 year-stint as a stay-at-home dad for our baby boy…in a huge apartment in a great complex in a beautiful (and fairly expensive) town – a town that sees the value in all residents (homeowners and renters). People seemed to think we pissed away our profits because we didn’t plow it into more real estate, but that was easily the best money we ever spent.