Creative Commons
Owning a home can change you. There are changes that you might expect—like, suddenly, you care about grand molding and the subtle differences in paint color between “Pure White” and “White Dove.”
And all those coasters you never used in your rental? You use them now. You get stressed out when someone comes over and asks for a drink because you have to track that drink until it makes it onto a coaster! Home ownership definitely strengthens your appreciation of condensation from a drinking glass.
The bad thing about home ownership is that it creates an entirely myopic fear of the unknown. It chips away at your basic sense of openness and civic good.
The American ethos is steeped in the idea of home ownership as a milestone for success—as in, if you own a home, you’re doing something right in life. We have built decades of policy around this ideal, never mind the stream of real estate-themed TV shows: Flipping Out, Property Brothers, Million Dollar Listing, Selling Sunset, House Hunters. These shows sell a certain homeownership fantasy and keep us thirsting for property.
There are obvious benefits to home ownership, including the mortgage tax break and having an actual place to live. Research shows that homeowners have a heightened level of political participation in local elections because they have more long-term financial stakes in their neighborhoods. That’s a good thing.
But the bad thing about home ownership is that it creates an entirely myopic fear of the unknown. It chips away at your basic sense of openness and civic good.
All those people who are opposing the building of a homeless shelter in the neighborhood? Yeah, those are homeowners. Whether it’s the Upper West Side of Manhattan or your garden variety well-to-do neighborhood anywhere in America, homeowners don’t want homeless shelters. Or more affordable housing. Or COVID-19 testing sites. And they will be extremely vocal about it.
These same people know that a functioning city needs all of these things. It can’t all be beautifully manicured parks, quaint cafes, and ceramics shops. In fact, the nation’s need for affordable housing and homeless shelters is dire. And that housing has to go somewhere.
But when it comes to somewhere, homeowners want it to be in some other neighborhood that they don’t care about. They are so fixated on preserving their own assets that they assume one building could unravel the entire fabric of their community. I think they are underestimating the strength of their community.
For many years, I lived a block away from a men’s homeless shelter in New York City. I would walk by it all the time. I would brunch in the restaurant next to it frequently, and I would “Hey, what’s up” the unhoused dudes who mingled in its courtyard. As a comic, I would walk by it at all hours of the day and night. As a woman, I felt entirely safe. As a neighbor, I felt entirely zen. The presence of that homeless shelter was a nonissue.
It’s possible that this shelter near my home was the best-run homeless shelter in the United States. It’s possible that my gentrified neighborhood simply tolerated it because it was from a time when the neighborhood was far worse off. It’s possible that the shelter had magic beans.
Or, it’s possible that one building couldn’t unravel an entire neighborhood. It’s possible that the homeless shelter worked harmoniously with its surroundings, that the calm of the restaurant next door and the park around the corner created favorable circumstances for people who needed help. The rest of us, at worst, ignored it and, at best, volunteered at it.
So next time you think your neighborhood couldn’t possibly survive affordable housing, a COVID-19 testing site, or a homeless shelter, instead of saying “not in my backyard,” remember that your backyard is pretty big, and it could be the key to helping people who need it. In the meantime, don’t forget to stock up on coasters.