Ownership! The saga begins (Part I)

"Each year since 2002, President Bush has designated June as National Homeownership Month."

At the Big Con over the next four weeks we'll be tracking how Bush administration policies on things like mortgage regulation have turned this blessed month for brides and grads into a symbol of malign right-wing political opportunism, indenture, and debt peonage.

Happy National Homeownership Month!

Here's a taste. The link above, the homepage of the National Association of Realtors, notes that our president gave us this new national celebration in the interests of "increasing minority homeownership in America by 5.5 million by the end of the decade."

The 2004 Republican National Convention in New York was when I noticed that - lo and behold - this policy priority was nigh unto the White House's most abiding obsession. Just about every speech intoned that, thanks to Bush, homeownership, and especially minority homeownership, was at an "all-time high."

I smelled a rat, looked into the claim, and found it not just a lie, but a nested system of lies. The number of homeowners has grown every year on record. Every year is an "all-time high"; the relevant statistic, of course, is homeownership rates. These indeed rose sharply beginning in 1994 - and began leveling off starting in 2001.

But before we make of this a big political magilla, the Fannie Mae Foundation reminds us that accelerating 1990s homeownership rates were merely due to "the large number of baby boom households shifted into age groups with higher homeownership rates."

Now's when we make of it a big political magilla. What of minority homeownership rates - the issue we are to believe keeps our president up at nights? Says Fannie May, "The overhall homeownership rate 'gap' between whites and minorities widened slightly." This link has homeownership rates by ethnicity. It did indeed go up between 2000 and 2002 - by .1 percentage points. Between 2004 and 2005 it went down .9 points.

So our Bush wants minority homeownership to increase by 5.5 million by the end of the decade? Maybe, if only he weren't president, they would have gone up 10 million of their own accord.

[NEXT TIME: Do we even want minority homeownership rates to increase? Lenders do - which is where the peonage comes in. And: on the "ownership society"; with special reference to the new immigration bill.]

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