Right and Proper(ty)
There seem to be about two issues that get overlooked when trying to deal with the American city. The first is the importance and intractability of public education, which I’ll leave for later. The second is the massive emphasis on fee simple ownership.
Other than all of the privacy, space, and education issues that have driven the development of the suburb full of single-family houses, the phenomenon has also been driven by a desire for a certain kind of property right. Fee simple ownership, that is eternal and uncontested ownership of an entire parcel of land and improvements from the center of the earth to space, has inserted itself deep into the psychic DNA of the country. With roots probably going back to the homestead act and maybe as far as the founding, the idea of “owning property” is seen in certain circles as the end-all and be-all of lifestyle decisions. Why?
No one understands better than I do the desire to own a piece of land in the original homestead sense. There is an image of independence and self-determination that runs back to Jefferson and beyond. However, that’s for a fairly sizeable plot of agricultural land. A farmstead, where it is in fact possible to sustain one’s family, improve the property, and perhaps most importantly, reap the income from its exploitation, is a real democratic asset. It’s worth remembering that until very recently most wealth was directly a product of the land and control of land was control of an income source. This idea of independence of livelihood and freedom from the feudal arrangement of the Old World was an economically significant thing to the individual; enough of one for Jefferson and Franklin to revise Locke in the Declaration.
This is not the same thing as owning a suburban plot of less than an acre. What, exactly, kind of economic (and thereby political) independence can you reap from a few hundred feet of ground? A garden? Sale of a little fill dirt? For that matter is a plot that is too small for a septic system really independently owned at all? You’re always hostage to water supply and basic disease-preventing hygiene.
This isn’t to argue against private property, owning things, or even this particular form of ownership – only to say that it’s not absolutely obligatory in every situation, and especially not in an urbanized area. The main problem with the whole fee-simple single-family thing (other than land assembly, eminent domain, and labor mobility,) is the insidious effect is has on our politics.
The franchise is supposed to extend to all adult citizens regardless of age, sex, or class. What we’ve seen is the institution of a two-tier system of citizens’ rights. As so many towns and cities have become filled with row after row of single-family houses owned fee simple, a de facto property requirement has crept into the election rolls. There is a division in the minds of many in suburbia between the “owner” and the “renter” as if they were different species of being. Having a “rent house” on the block is seen as tantamount to infection, multi-family buildings are zoned into ghettos (thereby concentrating and perpetuating stereotypes,) and citizens . . . and that’s their proper name, citizens . . . become “homeowners” when there is a local political issue at stake.
If there is anything the great speculative meltdown should have taught us it is that it is neither necessary nor healthy for everyone to be required to participate in a real estate swindle in order to become full citizens. If the respect of the community, social acceptance of one’s children, and the ability to have a voice in how your democracy runs its affairs hadn’t been seen as dependant on the deed to a tiny unproductive piece of heavily-regulated land, how many fewer bankruptcies, evictions, and devastated lives would we have? Somebody ought to picket the NAR.
. . . . . and that’s not even starting on education.
Other than all of the privacy, space, and education issues that have driven the development of the suburb full of single-family houses, the phenomenon has also been driven by a desire for a certain kind of property right. Fee simple ownership, that is eternal and uncontested ownership of an entire parcel of land and improvements from the center of the earth to space, has inserted itself deep into the psychic DNA of the country. With roots probably going back to the homestead act and maybe as far as the founding, the idea of “owning property” is seen in certain circles as the end-all and be-all of lifestyle decisions. Why?
No one understands better than I do the desire to own a piece of land in the original homestead sense. There is an image of independence and self-determination that runs back to Jefferson and beyond. However, that’s for a fairly sizeable plot of agricultural land. A farmstead, where it is in fact possible to sustain one’s family, improve the property, and perhaps most importantly, reap the income from its exploitation, is a real democratic asset. It’s worth remembering that until very recently most wealth was directly a product of the land and control of land was control of an income source. This idea of independence of livelihood and freedom from the feudal arrangement of the Old World was an economically significant thing to the individual; enough of one for Jefferson and Franklin to revise Locke in the Declaration.
This is not the same thing as owning a suburban plot of less than an acre. What, exactly, kind of economic (and thereby political) independence can you reap from a few hundred feet of ground? A garden? Sale of a little fill dirt? For that matter is a plot that is too small for a septic system really independently owned at all? You’re always hostage to water supply and basic disease-preventing hygiene.
This isn’t to argue against private property, owning things, or even this particular form of ownership – only to say that it’s not absolutely obligatory in every situation, and especially not in an urbanized area. The main problem with the whole fee-simple single-family thing (other than land assembly, eminent domain, and labor mobility,) is the insidious effect is has on our politics.
The franchise is supposed to extend to all adult citizens regardless of age, sex, or class. What we’ve seen is the institution of a two-tier system of citizens’ rights. As so many towns and cities have become filled with row after row of single-family houses owned fee simple, a de facto property requirement has crept into the election rolls. There is a division in the minds of many in suburbia between the “owner” and the “renter” as if they were different species of being. Having a “rent house” on the block is seen as tantamount to infection, multi-family buildings are zoned into ghettos (thereby concentrating and perpetuating stereotypes,) and citizens . . . and that’s their proper name, citizens . . . become “homeowners” when there is a local political issue at stake.
If there is anything the great speculative meltdown should have taught us it is that it is neither necessary nor healthy for everyone to be required to participate in a real estate swindle in order to become full citizens. If the respect of the community, social acceptance of one’s children, and the ability to have a voice in how your democracy runs its affairs hadn’t been seen as dependant on the deed to a tiny unproductive piece of heavily-regulated land, how many fewer bankruptcies, evictions, and devastated lives would we have? Somebody ought to picket the NAR.
. . . . . and that’s not even starting on education.
posted by KP | 5.4.10
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