I’m enough of a hippie environmentalist to believe that land cannot be owned, and the very concept is insulting to the planet itself, but let’s leave that aside and talk socialism and economics.

I think the “American dream of home ownership” is, frankly, based on fear.

People are afraid if they lose their jobs or get old or sick and can’t pay rent their landlords will evict them.

People are afraid their landlord will harass them, or demand extra money from them, or otherwise extort them under the threat of eviction.

People are afraid if they have a medical crisis or extended period of unemployment they’ll end up broke, and want equity in a home as insurance against poverty.

And people are afraid their children will be broke or homeless or living in a slum and want to leave their children equity in a home to protect them as well.

And this is all a result of capitalism. This is because we treat basic shelter as a privilege the poor have to earn by working instead of a basic human right. And we don’t trust government to provide us with the basic right to housing, and we don’t trust government to protect us from abuses by landlords, and we don’t trust ourselves to be able to pay constantly increasing rent if we get fired or get sick, so owning our own home is the only way to protect ourselves from homelessness.

And American capitalism, in particular, enforces the fear of homelessness by abusing and brutalizing and dehumanizing people experiencing homelessness, so that the average American believes homelessness is one of the worst fates someone in America can endure. And it is. Because we make it that way.

Anyone who doesn’t own their own home in the US is at far greater risk of homelessness than someone who does. And the fear of homelessness is the fundamental drive behind American idealization of home ownership. And that is sick and wrong and unfair.

In a socialist society where housing is a human right and guaranteed to all, where people have no fear of losing their homes because they trust their government to ensure their basic right to shelter, where people don’t fear landlords abusing their power because apartment buildings and housing complexes aren’t owned, but managed, by committees which themselves are monitored by government to prevent abuses, I think home ownership would be not only unnecessary but irrelevant.

Because what does owning a home represent, in America, except shelter and security and protection? And if all that is guaranteed to you by right, what need is there for personal ownership?

In a perfect world, owning land would be as unnecessary and foolish as owning the air we breathe or the water we drink.