patrick.net

People consider renters as "the poor little people" even though that's not always the case. Also, if you rent, you haven't bought into the American Myth that owning a house is the pinnacle of acheivement in our society and your life will somehow be better and more stable.

It's an interesting phenomenon because in parts of the country where renting is more common than owning (major cities) there is no stigma in the community. There is stigma when it comes to credit checks, etc.

It's a CLASS distinction. America likes to pretend it's egalitarian but it is not. Renters are clearly lower class in our minds, and only home ownership can vault you into the "middle class". It doesn't matter if you are an unemployed layabout who lets the property go to seed and beat your spouse and children. You are "middle class" if you've managed to get a bank somewhere to give you a NINJA loan. I like having no debts, money in the bank, and good savings/retirement plans. All our friends however who own homes you can see still have kind of a pitying look about them, about when are we going to "make it".

Well, in my neighborhood the rental houses are often poorly kept up compared to those that are owner occupied. In one rental house, they put the garbage cans out 2 days before pick up! The law says your not supposed to put it out until 6:00 P.M. the night before pick up. The rental houses stand out like sore thumbs.

HousingWatcher says

In one rental house, they put the garbage cans out 2 days before pick up! The law says your not supposed to put it out until 6:00 P.M. the night before pick up.

Oh the horror! Do go on...

I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in a neighborhood of townhouses. Almost everyone owned. There were a few who rented. People claimed that the renters were somehow "dirty" and didn't "take care of their own places like the house owners did."

Actually, I think it had more to do with the class distinction as Vincente mentioned in his post above. Really, if I was honest about it (being originally a suburbanite) there were some extremely dirty house owners who got cited by the homeowner's association for violations all the time. I don't honestly think that there was much of a difference.

And, our neighborhood was considered "the wrong side of the tracks" because we lived in attached housing. Even though most people owned in our neighborhood, most of the rest of the village lived in detached housing. The people who lived in detached housing considered themselves to be of a higher class than the people who lived in my neighborhood just because we lived in attached housing (townhouses or rowhouses).

And the police treated us like we were lower class claiming that there were more calls from our neighborhood than in other parts of the village and that somehow this meant that we were a "bad element" in the village. What they failed to take into account is that our neighborhood was more highly densly populated. Therefore there would be more calls per square mile than in other parts of the village that had lower population density by definition. When statistics were finally gathered and parsed to show that our neighborhood didn't have more calls per 100 people than other parts of the village rather than concentrating on the area of the land, attitudes of the police department changed only slightly.

It is interesting how we Americans have learned to create class distinctions where otherwise there would be none.

Vicente says

It’s a CLASS distinction. America likes to pretend it’s egalitarian but it is not. Renters are clearly lower class in our minds, and only home ownership can vault you into the “middle class”. It doesn’t matter if you are an unemployed layabout who lets the property go to seed and beat your spouse and children. You are “middle class” if you’ve managed to get a bank somewhere to give you a NINJA loan. I like having no debts, money in the bank, and good savings/retirement plans. All our friends however who own homes you can see still have kind of a pitying look about them, about when are we going to “make it”.
“Eagles are dandified vultures” - Teddy Roosevelt

Truth.

@Vicente

"It’s a CLASS distinction. America likes to pretend it’s egalitarian but it is not."

Best quote of he week!

jaded says

What’s the deal? Considering everyone at some point rents, how is it possible that people magically turn into better people as soon as they buy a house or take out a mortgage.

Well put. I view myself as always having owned, but it's true. I rented for two brief stretches in my 20s. I suppose it would be difficult to find someone who has never rented.

I don't know where the bias against renters comes from, but it is real in the midwest. Here, some of it is because tenant occupied homes tend to be older, smaller, and cosmetically less maintained. These are sometimes viewed as the kind of home that an owner does not want to live in; the kind of home a buyer is moving UP from. Lawns are weed ridden and have bare spots because no one fertilizes. Flowers may not be planted. Tenant does not want to invest in grass that he does not own. LL does not want to invest in grass where he does not live. Interior and exterior painting would be deferred for same reason. LL will likely fix stuff that breaks, but he will do so to a standard that meets his needs, not the tenant's needs or desires. 'jus sayin.