“Property is surely a right of mankind as real as liberty.” — John Adams
There is a lot of discussion going on right now about the role government should or should not play in helping citizens of a country achieve home ownership.
Government’s role as an advocate for home ownership, for example, has been criticized and labeled one of the reasons for the subprime mortgage mess — a mess, critics say, that was created by pushing something on people who couldn’t afford it.
Even now, as the government, through tax credits and the purchase of bad mortgage-backed securities helps to prop up the housing market, the wisdom of those things is questioned.
Even the notion of “home ownership” has come under attack, with “experts” saying “rent, don’t buy” and “It’s not worth owning a home.”
The thing is, even though the year 2010 finds us in quite a different position than we were two centuries ago, one of the foundations of this country is the ownership of property.
Look at the quote above by John Adams, the second president of the United States and one of the country’s Founding Fathers. He believed liberty, freedom, is a basic human right. Obviously to him, that included the right to own property.
Of course, things were different then. Adams was president in a young America, during a time not long after its citizens had relatively recently won independence from England. Those early Americans who fought for their freedom did so in part because of how strongly they felt it was their right to own property — not an easy thing for a “commoner” to do under a king’s reign in the country they left.
Back then, the founding fathers recognized it was the government’s role to protect the freedom of property ownership, and as the frontier of the New World expanded west, so did the government’s support of property ownership. It was encouraged, subsidized. After all, the ownership of property by its citizens was one of the basic beliefs on which the United States of America was founded.
Somewhere along the course of the 225 years or so between the colonists’ independence from England and today, however, that fundamental idea has gotten lost. Why? Because of a few bumps along the way?
Sure, there has been profiteering by some on the American Dream. Greedy bankers have been pegged as the enemy, with the U.S. government believed by some to be complicit, if not directly by action then by inaction when it comes to regulations. There have been instances of fraud and predatory tactics have been used on those who badly wanted the home ownership part of the American Dream.
But does that make the dream itself bad? Does that mean the government, despite the wishes of its Founding Fathers two centuries ago, should no longer back the dream?
Two-thirds of American adults are home owners, enjoying the freedoms, the pride of ownership and even some financial advantages that ownership of property provides. Owning a home is obviously important enough for 2 out of every 3 American citizens to work for that part of the dream. Many of them will probably tell you it’s the best investment they’ve ever made.
Believe what you will about how big a role the government should play in helping its citizens achieve home ownership. Love or hate the fact that the government is propping up the housing industry right now with taxpayer dollars. But don’t be so quick to attack the notion that a government should encourage home ownership.
It’s what they had in mind more than 200 years ago.
