As Richard Florida points out in a March 2009 article in theatlantic.com (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/200…) the days of home ownership may be waning.

“And not least, (home ownership) created a workforce too often stuck in place, anchored by houses that cannot be profitably sold, at a time when flexibility and mobility are of great importance.

So how do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life? What’s the right spatial fix for the economy today, and how do we achieve it?

The solution begins with the removal of home ownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy. Substantial incentives for home ownership (from tax breaks to artificially low mortgage-interest rates) distort demand, encouraging people to buy bigger houses than they otherwise would. …The measures that prop up this demand should be eliminated.

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Home ownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there. A recent study by Grace Wong, an economist at the Wharton School of Business, shows that, controlling for income and demographics, homeowners are no happier than renters, nor do they report lower levels of stress or higher levels of self-esteem.

And while home ownership has some social benefits—a higher level of civic engagement is one—it is costly to the economy. The economist Andrew Oswald has demonstrated that in both the United States and Europe, those places with higher home ownership rates also suffer from higher unemployment.(!!!) Home ownership, Oswald found, is a more important predictor of unemployment than rates of unionization or the generosity of welfare benefits. Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work—if they can find it—that is a poor match for their interests and abilities.

As home ownership rates have risen, our society has become less nimble: in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans were nearly twice as likely to move in a given year as they are today. Last year fewer Americans moved, as a percentage of the population, than in any year since the Census Bureau started tracking address changes, in the late 1940s. This sort of creeping rigidity in the labor market is a bad sign for the economy, particularly in a time when businesses, industries, and regions are rising and falling quickly.”

In a related article on de-cluttering in the July/August 2008 issue of Saltscapes magazine (p77) it appears that “the trend is for older people to become renters, rather than homeowners. StatsCan says that elderly people are playing a larger role in the rental market than they did 20 years ago.”

Older folks find it easier to travel from an apartment base than from a (vulnerable) house.

That would appear to create more demand for non-book “libraries” of things we use rarely. (also rental accommodation). As others have pointed out, the structure of how these “libraries” will function is yet to be determined. Everything from cutlery to houses can be rented now. The trick is to make the rental/borrowing experience both more common/acceptable, and more user friendly. And to make renting less of a second class experience to ownership.

The banks have done a wonderful job of convincing us how right home ownership is (the ads telling us to “Pay yourself, not a landlord” really mean “Pay us (mortgage interest), not a landlord”). And since ownership of a house is right, then ownership of everything else needed to fill it up obviously follows. (By the way banks will lend you money to do that.)

Centuries ago the display of wealth through ownership was an announcement of power. Those without power thought that if they had the stuff they’d get the power. Doesn’t work.

Thank you.

Since I have had it with this ancient apartment falling down around me, I am planning to move once again, for the eighth time in ten years, but the thought of filtering out the dross and packing up has been giving me panic attacks. I have been in this place for a year and a half, longer than most places, and until now I had gotten pretty good at regularly culling the pile. The last move, however, coincided with my first month of architecture school and I was barely able to remember to feed myself. My mom just dumped all my stuff in boxes, got it on the truck and then got it off the truck to where it has been jammed into that spacious closet ever since (a full one-bedroom dumped into a studio at that).

So now I just remembered how much I miss mobility, but the problem for me lies not just in necessary household objects, but also in necessary clothes for different aspects of a given lifestyle. It’s one thing to be a punk rock waitress and only wear the same 5 t-shirts and sneakers every day. It is quite another thing to have to give presentations for the professionals who may some day be your employers and colleagues…and so now I have this whole other wardrobe of clothes that seem useless in my “real” life, but are too expensive to discard lightly. If only there was a library for suits and heels…

It’s about a couple fighting, on the verge of breaking up. The bridge goes:

so we took down all the pictures /
and then we took down all the walls /
packed up our expectations /
piled them in the hall /
yeah we bagged our future /
kicked it to the curb /
and then we stood there unencumbered /
and we stood there undeterred /
cause we were done clinging /
to the things we were afraid to lose /
and the only thing left /
was a breathtaking view /
you looked at me /
and I looked at you /
and we said, “How about now, /
“what you wanna do?”

now there’s nothing in the way
in the way of my love for you