patrick.net

I think this is meaningless. Correlation is not causation, but there may even be an indirect cause. So what ?

Home ownership may be associated with (RELATIVELY) higher income levels, and businesses probably prefer to locate in areas where there are a lot of people hungry to work for low low pay.

Heraclitusstudent says

Oops...

I think the idea is about RELATIVE rates of home ownership. That is if you compare two regions, the one having the higher home ownership numbers, will likely also have the higher unemployment.

This does not imply that if the entire country raises it's home ownership level that that causes unemployment. Yes, that did happen, but that's because of a housing and financial bubble that popped, and questionable mortgages, etc., and the deleveraging process that still isn't over.

So does this apply vice-versa. Now that homeownership is decreasing, employment rate should go up?

Sounds like the author has mental issues.

APOCALYPSEFUCK is Shostakovich says

Mortgage ownership is the mainstay of the RAPE AMERICA campaign to reduce every last American to a whimpering terrorized dog, chained the piles of debt and subject to whatever financial violence the rentier and financier classes feel like inflicting on them.

Fuck the houses! Burn them! Burn the mortgages! Fuck debt-prison America and fuck the banksters and their criminally insane government!

You've hit at the crux of the problem, which is they are not "homeowners" at all, they are mortgage payers, that may one day pay off that mortgage and be given the "title" to that home. Where, if they fail to pay a yearly "tax" (rent to the government) they are quickly kicked to the curb. Local Gubs gotsta get theirs!!!

ForcedTQ says

You've hit at the crux of the problem, which is they are not "homeowners" at all, they are mortgage payers, that may one day pay off that mortgage and be given the "title" to that home. Where, if they fail to pay a yearly "tax" (rent to the government) they are quickly kicked to the curb.

The goal of banks is to come up with a mortgage that you pay your entire life and never fully pay-off except by selling it to the next "tenant" before you die. And with taxpayer guaranty too.

In essence, they want to rent real estate they don't own.

Nonetheless, with this kind of article published in the NYT, it seems there are now some actual political opponents in DC to the real-estate mafia.