you ever contemplate that sentence? "i want to own a house." that's the bedrock want of ~~~western civilization~~~ right? but it means something completely different depending on how rich you are.
a rich person "wanting to own a house" sees the house primarily as a generator of capital. it's an investment whose market value is likely to go up over time, and in the meanwhile it can be rented out to those who can't buy a house as a fun little double-dip of stolen profits. i say stolen because most of the time rich people don't live in the houses they own. human beings interacting with a rich person's property in any meaningful capacity is a necessary evil that they very openly resent. in their ideal world, your presence as a renter would be as a ghost, intangible, leaving no trace, making no demands. i mean if you're a renter you know most landlords just straight up expect you to be purely effervescent already even when it literally breaks the law.
meanwhile to working class person, "wanting to own a house" means wanting a place to live that you can't be fucking evicted from. it means a home that you can reasonably expect to stay for longer than a year or two.
i don't want to be "a homeowner." i want to live in a place surrounded by people who live in that place, all of us rooted and safe, where we can build something that lasts. i only want to own a house insofar as it puts something solid and heavy under my feet, and keeps the rain off my head. the perversity of ownership is inescapable and its logic is a cancer on society
And the government should take unoccupied housing, clean it up, make sure it's up to snuff, and then sell it at the cost of a used car.
