It’s the benchmark of success, a milestone of responsible adulthood, a time-tested way to amass wealth for you and your progeny. Homeownership, we’re told again and again, is a status that every right-thinking person should aspire to — the white-picket-fence-fronted embodiment of the American Dream.
But what if it’s also a little overrated?
For generations it has been taken as a near article of faith across the country that ownership is both the financially and socially superior way to inhabit a home and that public policy makers should always promote it. California legislators and housing advocates spent this past year enacting sweepingpolicies aimed at making it easier to build housing of all kinds. This coming year, many of them indicate that they plan to focus specifically on providing more plentiful paths to homeownership…