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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2011 > May > 14 > Entry
Editorial: Rise in rentals has some upsides
The clichéd linking of home ownership with The American Dream is probably beyond combating. Most of us have internalized it. The question of whether to pursue home ownership has been an official no-brainer for generations.
The desire to own a home has been so widespread that the politicians have long been eager to abet it. So the federal government offers a tax break on the mortgage interest you pay, one of the most expensive breaks in the tax code, in terms of how much it costs the government (and how much it raises the tax rates that apply to those without a mortgage).
And the government put together those mysterious entities known as Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation) that have been in so much trouble during the national economic meltdown. Their basic purpose was to encourage home ownership by making more money available for mortgages.
This push to get people into their own homes was thoroughly bipartisan. Just before the economic collapse, President George W. Bush was bragging that home ownership had reached an all-time high on his watch.
Owning became so much the norm that renters had something of a bad name. Cities and neighborhoods worried when too many of their houses weren’t owner-occupied.
Buying a house became almost a defensive act, a way to avoid being seen as somehow defective.
Now, however, home ownership has turned down slightly. That hasn’t been entirely voluntary, of course. People have lost their homes, in some cases because they lost their jobs, and in some cases because they bought homes that were too expensive or they were sold loans with predatory terms.
But people are making choices, too. Even though they are spending money again — witness record corporate profits — they are not buying homes. That sector of the economy is lagging way behind.
Statewide, the number of people living in homes they own was 69.1 percent in 2000. By 2010, it was 67.6 percent. In the Dayton region, it was 69.8 percent, but dropped to 68.6.
That’s hardly a revolution; more like a correction. Still, some of the numbers are more striking.
In growing Beavercreek, a thousand more rental units were added than the 1,591 owner-occupied units that were added. In struggling Riverside, the drop in the home ownership rate was 9.1 percent.
The numbers may continue to shift toward rentals. Mortgage lenders are being conservative. They not only took a lot of financial hits in the housing meltdown, but suffered a public relations blow for making bad investments and giving borrowers bad deals. And there are new regulations they have to follow.
However involuntary — or semi-involuntary — some renting may be, renters may discover that it’s not the end of the world.
They don’t have to worry about owing more on a house than the house is worth, as so many homeowners do these days.
And they don’t have to worry about fixing their own roofs and furnaces or pipes, or about what changes in their neighborhood might do to their investments. They don’t have to worry about whether they can sell their place if they want to move. And many of them don’t have to spend as much on housing.
They do, of course, have to worry about finding some other way to put aside money, to accumulate wealth.
But the renting lifestyle has worked for other generations and other societies. It works for a lot of Americans today, including some who can afford to buy.
Home ownership will continue to work for most Americans. But it’s not for everybody, given not only differences in income levels, but differences in values.
The collapse of the housing sector has brought home to millions of Americans the fact that “owning” a house doesn’t bring all the freedom and independence the word suggests. Sometimes renting makes one freer.
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