{"id":7530,"date":"2017-10-21T11:07:29","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T17:07:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=7530"},"modified":"2017-10-21T11:48:13","modified_gmt":"2017-10-21T17:48:13","slug":"lets-stop-encouraging-homeownership","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/10\/lets-stop-encouraging-homeownership.html","title":{"rendered":"Let’s stop encouraging homeownership"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"from<\/p>\n

So, it turns out, the big adventure of the past week in the Actuary home has been dealing with a broken, non-repairable fridge.\u00a0 The new one will come on Thursday, but in the meantime, we have been keeping some perishables in a cooler (for which the ice melted unexpectedly soon, so I\u2019ll have to replace the gallons of milk, and figure the margarine, cheese, and jelly will be OK).<\/p>\n

I deliberated about what to do with respect to a new fridge \u2014 do we get French doors?\u00a0 An in-door water dispenser?\u00a0 Something super-high tech?\u00a0 Ultimately, partly because we don\u2019t have a water line, and I don\u2019t want to know the plumber\u2019s charges for installing one, we went with a very generic model, the twin of what we have right now.<\/p>\n

So, fine.\u00a0 It\u2019s a hassle to have to deal with food-from-a-cooler until Thursday, what with trying to figure out meals that I can make that don\u2019t require a lot of perishables, and needing to make near-daily trips to the store rather than my usual weekly trip.\u00a0 And it was depressing to have to throw out All That Food, and I\u2019m a little worried the trash bin is now too heavy for the garbage truck to take it.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m an actuary.\u00a0 So is my husband.\u00a0 One thing that means (besides the country\u2019s lowest divorce rate) is $$$. We can deal with it.\u00a0 I mean, yes, I was in a crummy mood for the past week, and I\u2019m now irritated that I need to spend some time cleaning a broken fridge, because it\u2019s really starting to smell and my husband\u2019s travelling so there\u2019s no way to even get it out into the garage until he gets back, but we can deal with it.<\/p>\n

But every time this sort of thing happens, I think, I can\u2019t even begin to imagine what we\u2019d do if we were barely keeping our heads above water as it is<\/em>.\u00a0 I mean, sure, a couple generations ago, there would have been no fridge to break down \u2014 my dad still likes to use the term icebox, from his childhood.\u00a0 But consider that the costs of homeownership extend far beyond the ability to make a monthly payment, and can be some of the most substantial unexpected expenses an on-the-edge family can face:\u00a0 not just the fridge, but the furnace, the water heater, a plumbing problem, the roof, or a failed sump pump \u2014 all items which,\u00a0perhaps, however many generations ago it was that we adopted this notion that \u201ceveryone should own their home,\u201d and certainly in the days of the soddie above, either didn\u2019t exist or could be presumed to be repaired by the homeowner himself.\u00a0 (I didn\u2019t include washer & dryer because my impression is that outside my sheltered upper middle-class world, it\u2019s fairly ordinary to take your clothes to the laundromat.)\u00a0 These are the sort of expenses that push people into payday loans and other sorts of debt that they struggle to climb out of.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just harmless \u201cnudges\u201d that might be nudging in the wrong direction.\u00a0 Renters pay higher\u00a0rents than they otherwise would because their landlords pay higher property taxes than they otherwise would, because they don\u2019t get\u00a0owner-occupier deductions and because their property is assessed at a higher commercial-property rate.\u00a0 Everyone pays higher taxes than they otherwise would because homeowners get tax breaks for mortgage interest and property taxes \u2014 the proposed replacement of various piecemeal deductions with one much larger standard deduction would treat renters and homeowners equally in this regard.\u00a0 And that\u2019s not even addressing the government programs to give people the ability to buy homes in a subsidized fashion.\u00a0 As Megan McArdle wrote earlier this month<\/a>, the U.S. is nearly alone in having a 30-year fixed mortgage as the standard manner of purchasing a home, and we don\u2019t hear a lot of lamenting that Europe is just a cesspool of misery.<\/p>\n

Now, granted, I wouldn\u2019t go so far as to say that we homeowners should all be paying taxes on the imputed rent of our homes, like they do in the Netherlands<\/a>.\u00a0 But I can\u2019t support the Chicken Littles who say that the sky will fall if we stop handing out subsidies to homeowners.<\/p>\n

Yes, we say, homeowners are more stable, and care more about their neighborhoods, so in order to have stable, cared-about neighborhoods, we need more homeowners.\u00a0 But it\u2019s a circular argument:\u00a0 you create subsidies to move stable, responsible people into homeownership, then say, \u201chomeowners are responsible people!\u201d\u00a0 Did homeownership itself actually create these desirable personality traits?\u00a0 (And, yes, I\u2019m aware that this is a simplification, and in a perfect world, I\u2019d have enough time on my hands to actually dig into data on this point.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t; this is just a break from Saturday chores.)<\/p>\n

So, yes, this is my usual soapbox, but it seemed like a fitting time to climb on that soapbox, what with the new fridge and the tax reform discussions and so forth.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image:\u00a0\u00a0from Wikipedia; https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AOmer_Kem\u2019s_sod_house.jpg; By Solomon D. Butcher (1856-1927) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, it turns out, the big adventure of the past week in the Actuary home has been dealing with a broken, non-repairable fridge.\u00a0 The new one will come on Thursday, but in the meantime, we have been keeping some perishables in a cooler (for which the ice melted unexpectedly soon, so I\u2019ll have to replace […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6858,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[302,38],"class_list":["post-7530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-homeownership","tag-tax-reform"],"yoast_head":"\nLet's stop encouraging homeownership<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So, it turns out, the big adventure of the past week in the Actuary home has been dealing with a broken, non-repairable fridge.\u00a0 The new one will come on\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" 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