We have had in this country a long term, bipartisan consensus that home ownership should be subsidized. The end result is transfers from renters to home-owners, record high homeownership rates, and many people buying homes because it's a way to make leveraged bets on asset prices at taxpayer expense. There are many people who have no business owning a home but who feel they must do so in order to not be left behind in this game of leveraged bets. The result is a toxic tangle of cross-subsidies between the real-estate and financial sectors and a whole army of various parasitical industries that has sprung up to feed on these subsidies -- everything from real estate brokers, title insurers, inspectors, appraisers, a virtual caravan of people lined up at the trough of our housing subsidies, all in the name of "helping the middle class" afford homes.
When you have such a terrible problem of mispricing and people chasing after windfall gains, the idea that the industry should be approached as a type of charity is really the last thing you want to do. If you want to give money to a poor person, then by all means do so, but that's not a path forward for national housing policy.
But doesn't the tax code distinguish between a house which houses its owner and one which doesn't? I don't think investment homes are treated tax-wise the same as normal homes. I am not aware of tax advantages being extended to investments just because those investments are houses, but maybe I am wrong?
Who has no business owning a home?
* Price to rent ratio very high, just need somewhere to live.
* Achieving ownership requires moving to sprawl and taking on a ruinous car commute.
* Ownership used to justify overspending on housing because "it's an investment."
* Need to go broke to scrape together the down payment.
* Don't reliably earn enough to pay the mortgage, and no savings.
* Don't have the temperament or the means to do maintenance.
Real estate is insane because we’re in an era where wealth is being shoveled into a few peoples hands, and we are literally printing money to extend a boom cycle for as long as possible without regard for the future. The house I grew up in Queens was purchased by my folks in 1976 for $15 and recently sold for $1.3M. My dad was a clerk for the city then, and my uncle, now a millionaire across the street was an able seaman.