“The Death of Home Ownership” — American Homes Are Being Gobbled Up by Corporations

If you were in charge of a country, you'd probably want to make sure that the first thing you were making sure your citizens had access to was water and food for themselves and their families and a place to live.

However, right now in America, food inflation has reached record highs, and it was easier for folks to own a home during the Great Depression

than it is today. In fact, dual-income families of two folks with master's degrees are still struggling to buy a home without having to uproot their lives and move to a completely different area.

It's hard to argue that nearly every issue comes second to food and shelter. Sure, there are probably lobbyist groups and media corporations that'll cover other issues, or try to get folks rooting for one political party or the other that may want to distract from this readily apparent problem.

There might even be politicians whose entire platforms run on hate of a particular individual or a specific party, but there's one thing that affects everybody regardless of their political allegiance and it's that they want a home that they can own and not worry about losing should they ever face economic hardship, and that they can put food on the table in said home.

But whoever is running America right now isn't doing a very good job of ensuring that this issue is being resolved. It seems as if they are ensuring the very opposite happens, especially on the home-buying front, because there's been a huge increase in the number of homes being bought by corporations.

It's something that throngs of folks are talking about, like TikToker @travelingnurse who posted about this phenomenon in a viral clip discussing corporate real estate monopolies currently forming in America.

She titled her clip "The Death of Home Ownership in America" and while it may seem hyperbolic, there are some hard stats that highlight what many may want to write off as a fear-mongering response.

The woman references another TikTok video where she mentions how "private equity firms" are buying up all of the single-family houses in the country to gain a monopoly on home ownership so properties can then be sold at artificially jacked-up rates, locking families into long-term mortgages that give the private equity firms compound returns on their investments.

Or, said equity firms can turn the single-family residences into such expensive home ownership options that some families may have no choice but to rent these units, forcing folks into situations where they are beholden to yearly rental increases until they are eventually priced out because the homes become too expensive to rent and then newer families move in.

This not only destroys the ability for long-term communities to be built over time as it prioritizes short-term profit securing, but it also eradicates individuals for the ability to build any equity or have a stake in any area, forcing people into difficult living situations.

So what are the alternatives? Are people going to start living out of their cars? That's kind of difficult to do if you've got a family. Are you going to be forced to share rent with multiple people in a single unit? Private equity firms would probably love that — packing more folks into smaller plots of square footage to maximize profits doesn't seem like something that would upset investors on an earnings call.

There are several measures legislators could take to combat the gobbling up of single-family real estate by corporations, but seeing as private equity firms have bought out America's congressional and senatorial leadership, contributing highly to their campaigns it's difficult to imagine why any of them would potentially jeopardize their relationships with these corporate entities to do something as silly as serve the people they were elected to represent.

One umbrella measure would be to ban personal stocks and investments for government employees or all kinds and ban corporate lobbying and campaign donations. For housing specifically: implementing exponential taxation fees that go directly to the township for housing stipends, or as cash refunds for renters of properties for corporate entities that own multiple residences/apartments.

The goal of the aforementioned legal tax stipulation, just as private citizens are taxed for owning multiple properties, is to make it financially untenable for real estate companies to hoard properties.

Another way the Federal government could help resolve this issue is to force any business or landlord that has rental units to give equity to its residents.

For instance: if a portion of a renter's monthly fees, let's say 25%, are put into an interest accruing fund that cannot be touched, like a deposit, that is returned to them with the adjusted rate of inflation should they decide to move out or are priced out of the monthly rent, this could be a way to help rent prices from becoming too turgid to handle.

There are numerous instances where folks have hopped on social media expressing their shock at the jump in rental/mortgage rates: with many highlighting the arbitrary rates being set for units within the same complex, and how landlords take advantage the second any type of rental regulations are lifted on a property.

Makes one wonder that if things get too bad, folks might start throwing sees of unruly plants on specific properties, or engage in some form of sabotage in order to bring the property values of specific areas down, or blast them with manure like these French farmers did to government buildings, which would make for a difficult showing.

Heck, maybe even release some invasive forms of wildlife in an area and then call PETA in to protect said wildlife if the companies that own these buildings attempt to get rid of them?

Or, we could lean on politicians to ensure that they're serving the interests of the people they swore to care for, but maybe we're too busy arguing about the TikTok ban and drag story time.