Just Housing Policy: Is There a Moral Foundation for a Homeownership Policy?

Abstract

There is no lack of social and political reasons in favor of public policies oriented toward helping people to become homeowners. In this study, we undertake a normative inquiry into the moral foundation, if any, behind those politically viable and beneficial publicly supported homeownership programs. What we want to examine is whether public support of homeownership is a question of justice or merely a matter of beneficence. In particular, we have reviewed three different portrayals of homeowners: homeowners as right-holders; homeowners as stakeholders; and homeowners as decent citizens. Our position is that it would do more harm than good to defend homeownership as a matter of basic rights; instead, homeownership can be justified by developing Bruce Ackerman's idea of stakeholding and the notion of asset-building as championed by Michael Sherraden. To conceive homeownership as what people deserve as stakeholders as well as a form of lifelong asset that people can rely on when encountering risks and contingencies provide sufficient ground to render public support of homeownership.