You don’t need a lawn to have equity. There a plenty to frameworks that can offer equity in these recently legalized multi-family dwellings. Condominiums, duplexes, townhouses to make a few.

I didn't argue that. But in my experience in the south, that's what goes up.

I'm suggesting we should be more active in calling for condos and townhomes instead of apartments.

Good point. Thank you for clarifying. The legalization of multi-family homes would not prevent this trend but zoning for owner occupied units seems like a reasonable policy to shift the outcomes.

Renting has some benefits over owning. Particularly if you are in a stage in life where it's valuable to change your city.

In America, we have policies that subsidize owning over renting, like the mortgage interest tax deduction. I don't think we need more policies to make renting more expensive.

I think that any delay of a solution needs to be weighed against the massive inequity of letting the status quo continue.

The status quo is of ever increasing unaffordability, means ever increasing displacement and gentrification. There's a cost for waiting for a perfect solution. Adding more housing now reduces rents for all compared to not doing anything, so even if it's not the perfect solution, we must start enacting parts that help.

Refusing to take any action is in itself an endorsement of the bad outcomes that are happening right now.

Taking away ownership isn't what this would do though? Honestly I don't even understand how you came to that conclusion.

In the US, condo/apartment ownership is very rare by volume compared to rental apartments. I'm saying that rental apartments should not be the substitution of choice for single-family homes.

There are pros and cons. Renting can be a great choice. If you cash out refinance your house often as many do, then an apartment probably was the better long term choice.

You know people can rent single-family houses and buy apartments, right?

Of course he does. The point is that paying rent to landowners forever is also not a great condition, which should (somehow?) be addressed as well.

Nobody's trying to "take away homeownership". The goal is to make homeownership cheaper. (Apartments are a kind of home.)

"Buying apartments" is not something that happens for most places in the United States, so no. Condos and townhomes exist, but are not what I call the norm compared to houses and apartments for rent.

I know people can rent single-family homes, but I am also against institutional home-ownership. My point is that living-quarters ownership should be more universal.

>Nobody's trying to "take away homeownership"

When houses come down and apartments go up, they are. When companies holding hundreds of millions of dollars of capital buy houses during a recession and say "millennials don't want to own homes anyway, we're doing them a favor", yes, they are.

Why is this? In Australia, buying an apartment is an extremely common thing, it’s not as common as buying a house but still a normal thing.

30 million Americans own apartments; 40 million rent them. So yes, buying apartments is absolutely something that happens in the United States, and will happen more if the prices come down.

What are you calling an apartment?

I know of no one in my life, acquaintance or otherwise, who has equity in a unit of housing in a building with a large number of units. And if someone does, that's typically called a condo, which at least in my 2 million person city is not common compared to houses or rental apartments.

Your anecdotes aside, "About 30 million Americans live in co-owned homes, including 1 in 5 homeowners in metropolitan areas."

Source: https://archive.is/eFvQJ , under the heading, "Condos of all kinds, everywhere"

Ah, so "condos". Like I was asking you. Thank you for the source.

People are being fact weenies to your post, but your point is fundamentally sound and showcases foresight. Some new construction is rent-only because its corporate backers rightly assume it will let them wring residents for all they're worth. If things continue to trend this way, then merely building more is not a sustainable solution to the housing squeeze.