Renting gives people who already have a home incentive to build new housing. It also allows you to live somewhere without (a) tying up all my capital + credit

Renting gives people who already have a home incentive to build new housing. It also allows you to live somewhere without (a) tying up all my capital + credit in some super-undiversified equity[1] and (b) buying a massive amount of downside risk on the local property market. The comparison with serfs is, I think, an example of the worst argument in the world[2], paying someone for use of their property seems fine to me on the face of it, and yes it's something serfs used to do, but the things we don't like about serfdom were the violent coercion and the idea that the nobility got their property illegitimately, on the other hand if I built an apartment building and then I rent the apartments to people neither of the elements that cause me to hate serfdom exist here. >Instead of making everyone homeowners, make everyone fiscally responsible so that getting a mortgage wouldn't be hard for them in the first place. >I don't entirely blame them though: building Freddy and Fannie was magnitudes easier than fixing the broken parts of American society and (lack of) education. Well, at least you don't blame them... Saying something like "make everyone fiscally responsible" is not actionable, but offering people better terms on mortgages is actionable. People also have risk preferences that just don't line up owning their own home, like wanting to live in property markets where they can't afford a home (like NY or SF), and no amount of fiscal responsibility will change that for most of these people, you either need to change their preferences (by making these place less attractive) or dramatically increase the supply of housing. [1] Even worse, for a lot of people the value of their home is somewhat correlated with their income, like if the local property market tanks it's more likely that the local job market suffered a downturn also, so that it's more likely that they've also lost their jobs, so now you might have to default on a mortgage, and also you have no income. [2] http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html http://squid314.livejournal.com/323694.html