Emily Badger is tired of renting:
Both [housing researcher Arthur] Nelson and [Richard] Florida have floated the idea that we need some kind of hybrid rental/homeownership model, some system that decouples “renter” status from income class, while allowing professionals who would have been homeowners 20 years ago to live in a comparable setting without the millstone. Maybe we allow renters to customize their homes as if they owned them, or we enable condo owners to quickly unload property to rental agents.
Short of putting us all in houseboats, I don’t know what these hybrid homes would look like, how they’d be paid for or if anyone will be willing to build them. But I suspect the trick lies outside of the architectural and financial details, that it lies in removing that fear of the approaching property manager, that lack of control over a dying dill plant. It lies in creating a feeling of ownership without the actual deed.
Earlier coverage of renters as second-class citizens here.
(Image from Thomas Doyle’s Distillation series.)
The Dish 