Excerpts from an article on the dark side of homeownership in America:

In today’s economy, mortgages can be a millstone. That’s new. Time was, workers expected to stay with one company for decades and see a steady rise in annual income. But these days, being in the workforce is a game of constant reinvention. Workers expect to change companies, even professions, multiple times. Households are much more likely now than in the past to see income dip dramatically … For homeowners, quickly adapting to new financial realities is rarely an option. Homeownership may provide a sense of stability to families, but stability in today’s economy isn’t always a virtue. What families need in order to maintain income is the flexibility that homeownership works against….

In the U.S., homeownership typically goes with living in single-family detached dwellings. Eighty-nine percent of stand-alone houses are owned, while just 17% of apartments are. There is a logic to this: for a landlord, an apartment building provides an economy of scale that a suburban development doesn’t. But that means that a system that glorifies and subsidizes homeownership pushes people to live in suburbs, where they, or developers, can find more-affordable patches of land on which to build. Of course, it’s fine to choose to live miles from a city, but that choice comes with broader consequences. People who live in detached houses use 49% more energy … than people who live in buildings with five or more apartments … Suburban living requires driving a car practically everywhere, which in turn means that U.S. energy policy prioritizes cheap oil — whatever the geopolitical and environmental consequences….

[Tax breaks and subsidies to homeowners are not] fair: there are no blanket subsidies for the tens of millions of American families that rent either because they choose to or because they have to. Nor are these tax breaks efficient economic policy … The U.K. got rid of its mortgage-interest deduction years ago, and its homeownership rate is still higher than that of the U.S. … More unsettling yet is the way the mortgage-interest tax deduction entices people to borrow big: you get the deduction for the interest on the loan, not for owning the house or paying down the debt. … a self-described “pro-ownership guy,” recalls how his accountant once suggested he buy a larger house in order to get a better deduction … In Switzerland, one of the world’s richest nations, two-thirds of all families rent.

More here.