To Hell With Home Ownership, You Government Touts! Help Give Us A Break On Renting

Landlords are so kind that it’s easy to forget that every year there’s a monthly rent increase.

Then there’s the brother-in-law, needing to replace an old porch door. Alas, it’s old enough to be a non-standard size and so needs to be custom-ordered, skyrocketing the cost. But then, pulling down the old door framing revealed that the expensive termite eradication of the previous year needs to be done and paid for all over again, sending the porch door costs skyrocketing beyond outer space.

Clearly the landlord’s problem.

Unfortunately, the brother-in-law IS the landlord, having been seduced early in adult life by the siren song of the banks, adept as they are at whistling irresistible, come-hither music in praise of financial heaven: the American Dream, or the British Dream, or the FILL IN YOUR COUNTRY’S NAME HERE Dream.

Hallelujah! Home ownership!

In a day and age when virtually anyone who doesn’t already own a house cannot afford to buy one, the banks keep on whistling their saucy tune, and all kinds of ambitious folk still sign on to climb the housing ladder to sooner or later reach Nirvana.

That privilege invariably includes a lifetime of woke-in-the-wee-hours angst verging on panic over replacing termite-ridden, truly unaffordable porch doors. All this for the privilege of living inside the ups and downs of the largest financial investment you will ever make. It will ultimately to be paid off — not by you (the mortgage duration is literally to die for) — but by some distant relative (as it turns out, both the brother-in-law’s kids now live in other countries. But then, maybe they won’t outlive the same mortgage either).

Momentarily joining the unpaywalled glitterati, affordablehousingaction.org has learned that the The Spectator (paywalled) is reporting: “Reviving ‘Help to Buy’ would be disastrous for the housing crisis.” The Spectator reveals that The Times (also paywalled) says the United Kingdom’s government is thinking about reviving an earlier program to boost first-time housing buyers into the clutches of the banks. Government support would be doing so by once again providing short term loan guarantees and such-like in order to steady wobbly punters on their first steps up the supposedly all-desirable housing ladder.

But is the fulfillment of that National Dream so desirable after all?

Read more from The Guardian: I’m young but have no interest in the British cult of home ownership. I just want renting to be fair