New US homeownership measure puts people first • Hacker News Board

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#31

Post by CuriouslyC » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #22

Aurornis wrote: post #13

TL;DR: Instead of measuring the percentage of homes that are owned by people who live there, they want to measure the percentage of adults who own a home. Feels like an apples and oranges situation. The two numbers each have their own value but they’re measuring different things. One is calculated based on the number of houses, the other is a measured based on the population of adults or households. Both measures hav…

Both also make the assumption that owning a house is good. Renting should be just as good.

If houses are capital, renting can never be just as good without de-incentivizing renting via legislation, which in reality will result in a massive rental shortfall, since nobody is going to maintain rental property when they could just invest their money in another asset.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#32

Post by giancarlostoro » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 12:59 PM UTC

pmnelson wrote: post #23

Another similarly flawed measure is household income ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... ), which is used frequently as a measure of socio-economic class. Under this measure, a single adult making $90k and a household of two adults and two children making $90k combined are treated equally, which has always struck me as quite stupid.

If both parents work they're also easily spending roughly 30+ grand a year on daycare alone. The DCFSA can help, but its tapped out at 7500 atm, which is cute, but unrealistic. A real daycare following all the best standards is not cheap, its like a second mortgage. I can see a major difference in my daughter coming back from daycare, I mean she knows things I don't think I knew when I was her age...

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#33

Post by GodelNumbering » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:02 PM UTC

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that.

It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately affects people's sense of content and wellbeing. Also, doesn't help that laws and government policy heavily favor home owners (perhaps because home owners vote at a lot higher rate than renters)

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#34

Post by redwood » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:04 PM UTC

Everything in the study makes perfect sense. However one thing that's not discussed is change in culture and expectations. For example the United States is probably the only country where there's a general expectation that grandparents parents and adult children all live in separate homes... and most other countries multi-generation living is the norm. And perhaps some of those norms are starting to float into the United states. On the other hand no doubt the fact that people are not able to live to the traditional American norm is contributing to malaise. Still it feels a little simplistic to characterize everyone's goal is having their own home.

Maybe a way to handle this better would be to look at the size of the home because if a home can easily fit multiple generations it feels like a very different situation. Also it's somewhat arbitrary who happens to be the owner on the deed not to mention key questions like whether or not the home is truly owned outright versus largely in debt to a mortgage

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#35

Post by saghm » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

ajross wrote: post #26

estearum wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory behind it is that 1) economic growth generally accrues to land values so distributing land ownership is one way to distribute wealth and 2) people generally treat the things they own better than the things they rent or consume. Incentivizing ownership is more closely aligned with objective (1) while owner-occupancy is more closely aligned with objective (2). These don't work in the presence of capital's ou…

> distributing land ownership is one way to distribute wealth Right, so you want to know how many people own homes, not how many homes are "occupied" by an owner[1], which is at best a proxy, right? Sounds like you're agreeing with me but just getting the sides of the argument mixed up? [1] As the article points out, a single person can in fact "occupy" more than one home!

It's also a pretty dubious metric for wealth equality anyhow. If 100% of people owned their own home, then some fraction owning additional ones that no one lived in wouldn't really matter; the value of them would surely not be as high in a world where there was no renting or homelessness, and even if it was, I'd still take that over the alternative where every home is occupied by an owner but there's still not enough to go around for everyone.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#36

Post by AbsurdCensor » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:05 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #32

pmnelson wrote: post #23

Another similarly flawed measure is household income ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United... ), which is used frequently as a measure of socio-economic class. Under this measure, a single adult making $90k and a household of two adults and two children making $90k combined are treated equally, which has always struck me as quite stupid.

If both parents work they're also easily spending roughly 30+ grand a year on daycare alone. The DCFSA can help, but its tapped out at 7500 atm, which is cute, but unrealistic. A real daycare following all the best standards is not cheap, its like a second mortgage. I can see a major difference in my daughter coming back from daycare, I mean she knows things I don't think I knew when I was her age...

> If both parents work they're also easily spending roughly 30+ grand a year on daycare alone.

Depends on how old the kids are, because at least in most cases, daycare costs are for a very short period of time compared to the the overall life of the child. And the average in most states is wildly all over the place.

We absolutely should be focused on free childcare, or ideally ways that parents don't need childcare to begin with, but I don't think that has a lot to do with household income. Hell, at that point, why as well talk about transportation costs, as it's different in a single household vs a two parent two kid household, and different still depending on where you live.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#37

Post by AbsurdCensor » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:06 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #22

Aurornis wrote: post #13

TL;DR: Instead of measuring the percentage of homes that are owned by people who live there, they want to measure the percentage of adults who own a home. Feels like an apples and oranges situation. The two numbers each have their own value but they’re measuring different things. One is calculated based on the number of houses, the other is a measured based on the population of adults or households. Both measures hav…

Both also make the assumption that owning a house is good. Renting should be just as good.

Renting isn't 'good' though in many metrics. Ownership is, and that's what the push should be for, rather than promoting basically a monthly subscription to have a roof over your head.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#38

Post by saghm » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:08 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #27

ajross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If however you care about the housing development decisions that will incentivise owner occupancy Genuine question: who, precisely, cares about "incentivising owner occupancy" as a policy goal? What interest does that serve and why should the government prioritize maximizing that metric? Basically right now we measure "what fraction of homes are occupied by an owner" and not "what fraction of people live in their o…

A key difference is illustrated in TFA. To maximize fraction of people owning a home, you dislike people renting or living with a homeowner. A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes. Or perhaps they could buy two homes, one for each. Or they could by two homes and rent a third to actually live in - same metric value. To maximize fraction…

> A key difference is illustrated in TFA. To maximize fraction of people owning a home, you dislike people renting or living with a homeowner. A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes. Or perhaps they could buy two homes, one for each. Or they could by two homes and rent a third to actually live in - same metric value.

Or they could... both own the home? Independent of the rest of your argument, this is a pretty weird hypothetical case to illustrate your point. Joint property ownership is way more common than any of the "alternatives" you're suggesting, so it's hard to take what you're saying seriously when you've dismissed the obvious way that this would work for the overwhelming majority of married homeowners.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#39

Post by rayiner » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

This isn’t “putting people first,” it’s baking in the cultural assumption that adults live separately from kin. Consider the examples:

> Housing unit 1. A couple owns their home. The woman’s parents live with them.

> Housing unit 2. A couple owns their home. Their son, a recent college graduate, lives with them.

> Housing unit 3. A man owns his home. A friend lives with him.

> Housing unit 4. A couple owns their home. Their two young children live with them.

> Housing unit 5. Three roommates rent their home. The owner lives elsewhere.

> As illustrated in Figure 1, these five housing units are home to 14 adults. Because four of these five housing units have their respective owners as residents, the owner-occupancy rate—the measure traditionally viewed as the homeownership rate—on the cul-de-sac is 80 percent. However, because only seven of the 14 adults are actually owners of the homes they live in, the HPOP is much lower, at 50 percent.

I think 1, 2, and 4 should all count as “owning their home.” The new measure is also a recipe for confounding attempts to compare the metrics over time, as demographic change brings in cultures that embrace multi-generational living. So what seems to be a drop in homeownership rate could instead reflect a growing and aging sub-population where the cultural preference is for parents to live with adult children instead of separately.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#40

Post by xyzelement » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:11 PM UTC

Perhaps this measure is useful to something but I find it directionally annoying as I don't think "higher is better" as it would be with the more traditional metric.

Here's an example from the page - a couple and the wife's parents - a couple and their college grad son

In this example the two couples (4 people) are counted as home owners and the 3 others (wife's parents, the son) as non owners - so the ownership rate is 4/7 = 57%.

On the traditional metric that scenario would be 100% because roughly each family owns its home which is good.

Now look at what would have to happen for the new rate to move to 100 - the wife's parents and the son would need to move out and buy separate homes. In other words the metric "punishes" living with family even if that's what you want to do.

I find the traditional metric is more useful. If I am a renter that indicates the desire to have a separate place - so it makes more sense to "ding" the ownership metric.