Renting Makes a Comeback

For years my wife and I have dreaded getting grilled by well-meaning relatives at family events with the same blunt question "when are you going to buy a house?" (naturally, the question "when are you going to have a baby?" always comes close on its heels).

But a nice piece by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow in yesterday's Boston Globe shows that the financial crisis is causing many economists to join forces with progressives like myself that have been saying for years "what's so great about owning a house anyway?" Looks like there's some data coming in to back the usual retorts my spouse and I would level against the relatives (including amusing/sad data showing that people who own houses weigh 12 pounds more than those of us who don't on average).

What the piece misses though is a focus on vastly increasing government spending on public rental units. Renting will become a more attractive option to the extent it is decoupled from the private market ... and the extent to which more, better and more reasonably priced rental units are made available ...

I think pushing for more public money for public housing - together with instituting rent control and other needed housing regulations - is an important way to break the weakening stranglehold of a market mentality on those millions of us for whom markets like the housing market simply don't work. So it's worth having much more public discussion and debate on this issue on that merit alone.