Of course the Thatcher privatisations are very relevant, particularly as this is an issue which Greater London is only just now coming to terms with. Two large positive impacts of home ownership are long-term security and equity. It became fairly apparent, fairly quickly that the Thatcher government unloaded the houses mainly due to the tremendous burden of upkeep associated with buildings with only a 30 – 40 year lifespan. In many cases the values of these units actually dropped over the years after privatisation – apparently because large numbers of people were moving out, and no-one really wanted move in. It is not so much of a secret that people don’t want to be segregated. But it is dirty that they are forced into it, both at school, at home and in life.

Many of these buildings are now being demolished with owners being forced out. So home ownership gave them neither security nor equity.

This is an important point. It is not just the responsibility of home ownership – it is the power that goes with it and the freedom it affords. Without the power and the freedom, responsibility becomes burden.

One might assume then that the thesis here is that poor people (but not the wealthy) need to own their property to care about their neighborhood (and hold a better job, stay out of the drug trade, etc), but that version of the story is mildly insulting and/or patronizing to the poor. Homeownership can be a strong motivation to save, and lots of people would otherwise lack the financial discipline to invest their money, but this isn’t limited to the poor.

His “A Dollar and a Dream” idea would be great for current NYCHA residents on the LES, and would forever shut out the neighborhood to the non-wealthy after that. I’m sure many current NYCHA residents would leverage massive equity, sell their properties to yuppies, and move out of the neighborhood. The LES and Alphabet City would be quickly transformed into a more affluent neighborhood, and the poor would be increasingly marginalized from Lower Manhattan. Don’t think yuppies will live in mid-century “Towers in the Park” construction? Look at the change that’s been going on in Stuy Town for a little while now: the middle income old ladies are quickly turning over their rental units to young professionals when they pass away. The land along Avenue D is just too valuable to stay remotely affordable without income-restrictions on the housing. And the projects are the biggest reason it’s viable for “young creative types” to move to the LES/Alphabet City — they’re smart enough to know that crime is at an all-time low and don’t care about the stigma that might come with an Avenue C address in more staid circles.

Also, “doubl[ing] their money every 40 years… the norm in the middle of the 20th century with more responsible home ownership”? In the long run real estate has appreciated at about 1% when adjusted for inflation. It’s good that this recession has made trumping home ownership less popular but I feel that we still haven’t learned our lesson. Homeownership largely only works as a means of lifting people out of poverty when in the context of unsustainable housing cost increases fed by artificial demand– which the root of what caused this housing crisis. Yet we’re still looking at this old idea again? Have we learned nothing?

New York has always been a city of renters and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. And Manhattan has always been about new people. It’s always been a place where immigrants and migrants move to “make it.” That’s being threatened largely by rising housing costs, which Conley seems to be suggesting should be encouraged. Giving the current crop of NYCHA residents a leg up on the housing market doesn’t solve the problem in the long run. But furthermore, there are lots of examples in the US of poor communities with high homeownership rates. The Pre-Katrina Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans, for instance. It was still a community of poor, uneducated people without access to better education or jobs. I agree that “the single most powerful of the effects of school is your peer group” — but that’s where places like the LES today hold promise for the economic integration of the children of wealthy people in the increasingly expensive private housing market, poor blacks and Latinos in the projects, and Asian immigrants crowding over from Chinatown. Some of the zoned elementary schools in gentrifying neighborhoods are among the places where these mixes happen most frequently — unfortunately by high school NYC offers parents the “choice” to segregate their students to the school of their choosing (not that it’s not the economically rational thing for them to do).

As to the racial angle to all this: racial and ethnic minorities were denied access to homeownership for so long that I understand the yearning of project kids to own a house with a white picket fence. But both the Clinton and Bush administrations were hell-bent on increasing the black and Latino home ownership rate without addressing the underlying cause of it. Low homeownership rates for these groups are a symptom of the problem. They aren’t the heart of the problem itself.