A clean, well-lit corner
Don the Builder doesn't care if you have a roof over your head
In 2023, I left a long-term marriage and long-term home ownership and became a renter. I’m lucky that my rent doesn’t consume more than 30% of my salary. Even though I have money set aside for retirement, it won’t be enough to consider buying a home.
I’m a good renter. I’m never late with my payments. I’m not loud. I keep my place clean. I live in a small town and many of my neighbors are from, shall we say, “elsewhere” so sudden rent hikes are less likely here than, say, Houston.
Still, I worry. What if the landlord sold the building and a new owner decided they wanted a “better” clientele. This sort of thing happens all the time. And it would be far more of a problem for most of my neighbors than for me.
This week the bi-partisan housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, got my attention. Maybe, just maybe, I thought it would be possible to become a homeowner again. Being a renter at my age makes me feel vulnerable.
I’m not asking for anything more than 800 square feet, which is what I have now. To put this in perspective, the size of a Levittown house, built on Long Island immediately after World War II, was 750 square feet. No one balked at giving citizens a small, clean, well-lit space of their own.
The way our system works, however, is that asking for so little is asking for too much. There’s no profit in building such a small stand-alone dwelling unless it’s stacked high and wide into a conglomeration of units.
So, buy a condo! If only.
Of course, the president, who ironically fancies himself Don the Builder, crushed hopes for many wannabe homeowners. He’s holding the ROAD to Housing Act hostage until Congress passes the SAVE America Act.
This means that one bill, which would be the first legislation in decades to offer real solutions for home ownership, has nothing to do with the other, which seeks to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.
This is yet another illustration of how little this current president cares about other people. It’s astounding how he doesn’t get the societal good that comes when people have good jobs and can house, clothe, and feed their families. Take vacations. Set aside college funds. They have optimism about the land in which they live.
Such jobs, such optimism, are hard to come by for many Americans. But it was not always so.
A president who cared about his people would know the truth about a high tide rising all boats. All those boats can navigate the waters of their life. All those boats can catch the fish they need and enjoy the bounties of their catch. All those boats can find their way safely to shore.
I remember when that was true for vast swaths of Americans. I want to live in such a country again.
The president, however, does not care about any other boats. He wants the best boats for himself, even if he has to get one from another country. The tide, too, exists only for him. He will insist that everyone is perfectly happy with the paper origami boats they have. They can sail anywhere they want, at any time, as long as it’s a tiny, shallow puddle.
So, the president won’t sign the housing bill, but because it was passed in Congress, it is set to become law. This will make the president angry, and he will veto the bill. Unless there were backroom threats and machinations, Congress could override the veto, but when haven’t there been machinations?
For example, Senator Bill Cassidy recently flipped his vote on the War Powers Act after a fiery backroom exchange with the president and vice president. One has to wonder how many strong arms it took to affect Cassidy’s change of heart.
A desire for one’s own shelter is basic and deeply held, but the Toddler-in-Chief is really only interested in tarting up the People’s House, building monuments to his vainglory, and amassing wealth that he can never take with him.
Joan, such an important read, that is truth telling and astute. An enamored with oneself pompous and pious president feels so pleased to hurt and disembody others’ homeownership dreams.
I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, surrounded by post-WWII and Korean War veterans building lives through GI housing programs. Our family of five lived in an 1100-sq.-ft. duplex.
My path on this issue was set early. My first job out of law school was running a tenant service. I’ll never forget the Friday afternoon a when domestic abuse victim, thrown out of her home and with nowhere to go, walked into our local legal aid office with their kids looking for help.
That reality drove my work for decades. Under Governor Robert Ray, Iowa enacted the Uniform Residential Landlord-Tenant Act to create basic protections—though the legislature has steadily dismantled them over the last decade. Later, when I was elected to the statehouse in the 1980s, I formed the legislature's first committee to study housing and homelessness. In the 1990s, the law firm I led represented homeless youth, and I eventually served on a regional homelessness board.
It is striking that housing is finally commanding widespread political attention today, but only because the crisis has expanded up the economic ladder to price out middle-class professionals. If we want real solutions, we have to remember the folks who have been vulnerable from the very beginning.