The Cost of Living: What We Really Pay for Housing

Jedidajah Otte's recent article about the supposed "dream" of home ownership having turned into a nightmare for a great many Americans is worthy of notice for a number of reasons. One is that, in contrast with much of the coverage of this subject, it acknowledges that rather than the "pride of ownership" or the security that is supposed to come with owning the four walls and roof within which they reside, the problems of renters in a time of scarcity and spiking prices (and zero acknowledgment from anyone in a position of authority that humans might have need of affordable rentals) have constituted a significant "push" factor in this direction. Another is that in considering the troubles of homeowners Otte discusses not only the high sale price of homes, but also the high cost of continuing to live in a home even after one owns it "free and clear"--the cost of taxes, insurance and maintenance.

The last in particular is testimony to the fact that not only has housing been made difficult to attain by an economy running on real estate speculation turbo-charged by casinonomics-minded ultra-loose monetary policy, and policymakers' matching their obsequiousness toward all those who benefit from that game with contempt for the public's housing needs (indeed, they invariably hasten to blame "irresponsible" homeowners for any problems they have, the better to deflect any criticism of the Finance-Insurance-Real Estate sector), but the decrepit or obscenely high-maintenance character of the housing built and sold to the public. Making it no accident that your spam box may be full of unsolicited offers regarding the roof you may or may not have, the product, in contrast to the traditional logic and justification of economic growth and the exactions it demands as being for the sake of making necessities cheaper and more abundant, is all too consistent with the now century-old consumer culture designed to force people to consume as much as possible by making meeting basic needs as expensive an affair as possible, turning home ownership into one unending "renovation" of a money pit while glorifying the situation as "choice," and attributing any failure of the product or absence of potential improvement to consumer tastes. (Home buyers, they tell us, go for cheapness rather than solidity in their homes, and then at the same time they tell us that it's the consumer and not the builder who resists price-cutting "manufactured" house-building. Sure, no contradiction there.)

The next time some techno-hyped nitwit gives you the spiel about surging technological change making our lives better every day, remind them of what they are paying for shelter.

And food.

And health care.