Own or rent?

Good question. To own or rent is one of the basic questions taught in business courses across the nation. If you have a business and need someplace to conduct business, do you own or rent? It is cheaper to buy a suitable building, or better to pay rent for your digs? It's a simple economic question. One with mutiple variables, but the equations exist and solving the equation is fairly straight-forward.

The question become more complicated when you are talking about housing. Apartments are a way of life for many people. I myself have lived in apartments in the past, with the certain knowledge that they were owned by someone else. I couldn't take pride of ownership, because the apartment didn't belong to me.

Then we come to New Orleans. That great bug-a-boo of housing shortages. Especially low-income housing. It seems that the Oyster is upset that low-income folks aren't being allowed to return to subsidized housing, and links to this article. The money quote is here:

If the authorities do not open up the apartments by July 4, they pledge to go through the fences and liberate their homes directly. The group, the United Front for Affordable Housing, is committed to resisting HUD’s efforts to bulldoze their apartments “by any means necessary.”

If the government told you that they were going to bulldoze where you live, and deny you the right to return to your home, would you join them?

And therein lies the problem with apartment dwelling. It doesn't belong to them. It isn't theirs. It belongs to someone else, even if that someone else is a quasi-governmental entity. They can be evicted, they can be thrown out, they can be run off.

If I were an apartment owner that decided my property would better serve my economic situation by being bulldozed, then I would give the tenants a 30-day notice and get in touch with the bulldozers. That may sound cold, but economic realities are often cold.

Subsidized, low-income HUD housing should not be a permanent housing solution. Apartment living is good for some, but the possibility of being uprooted is one of the down sides. Every one of us has been told at one time or another, "You don't live here anymore." It's part of growing up. It's part of becoming an adult.