Young People Need a Path to Home Ownership and Hence Wealth Creation
by John Lawrence
Kamala Harris needs to give young people hope that they too can be home owners. This has traditionally been the path to wealth creation for the middle class. When the GIs came back from World War II, they were able to get mortgages with no down payments although black GIs were not able to take advantage of this program due to redlining. This is the key to home ownership for young people today. There has to be a way to get a mortgage with no down payment. What is happening is that economic and financial forces are driving the cost of home ownership out of sight. Corporations are buying up single family homes and turning them into rentals. With nothing to stop this trend America will become a nation of renters. Renters create wealth for their landlords not for themselves. Right now there is no path to home ownership for young people except if their parents help with the down payment.
The US is becoming a nation of modern day peasants who own no property just as medieval peasants did not. They created wealth for the nobility who were their landlords. Today as home ownership recedes from reality for young people, they are looking forward to living paycheck to paycheck with annual rent increases. Even with target inflation of 2%, rents will continue to rise at least by that amount as young people are saddled not only with student loan debt but car payment debt and credit card debt. They will never get ahead as the corporatization of home ownership results in wealth accumulation for corporations and the rich. Kamala needs to address this problem so that young people have a pathway to home ownership the way returning GIs from World War II did.
President Biden has already set up the American Climate Corps. This is the existential issue of our times. Young people who sign up for a two year stint in the American Climate Corps should get a no down payment pathway to American home ownership. I would like to see Kamala implement this in lieu of making this a perk of joining the military. There are already all sorts of perks for joining the military while hardly any for nonmilitary national service. There should be pathways for young people to succeed without joining the military. Right now you can get a free college education by joining the military. This perpetuates militaristic incentives to get ahead in this country. There are no such pathways for those who want to serve their country without joining the military. There should be. There should be a pathway to wealth creation and incentives for serving America by addressing the most important and impending issue of our time - climate change and environmental justice. We need important programs to put people to work in the environmental area and in return they should get a pathway to home ownership and wealth creation. Otherwise the US will become a neo medieval society with the majority of people enhancing the wealth of the already wealthy and living paycheck to paycheck with most of that paycheck going to paying rent and interest on debt.