Desperately Seeking Nuance

By WILLIAM DEVINE
October 2008
(a previous version of this piece was published here in May 2003)

For decades, we’ve been stalked by tassel-loafered imperialists obsessed with convincing the masses that buying a house buys you the American Dream.

Angelo Mozilo, for example, former Countrywide CEO, decreed in a 2003 Harvard speech that the company mission was to bring the nation “the American Dream of Homeownership.”  The speech was entitled “The American Dream of Homeownership:  From Cliché to Mission.”

In 2003 the Bush Administration entered Year 3 of its Health Care and Fossil Fuel Issue Avoidance Initiative, and also christened its plan to help minorities buy houses “The Blueprint for the American Dream.”  Congress named the Blueprint’s central legislative proposal—$5,000 grants to 40,000 families—“The American Dream Downpayment Act.”

Since the 1940s, trumpets the National Association of Realtors, the nation’s largest trade association, “Realtors and their allies in Washington and elsewhere [have] definitively associated the American dream with homeownership.”

And on the web site of Wells Fargo, one of the Administration’s nine savior banks, click “Learn About Homebuying” and Wells lectures, “Homeownership is about…fulfilling the American dream.”

At first glance, the house-equals-Dream world view reads as misguided ad copy.  Look carefully, though, and you see this view is a big reason why we find ourselves trapped in an economic vise, and why the vise could tighten.

Consider the Uptons, who want to buy a house.  Paul wants to expand his construction firm and help his aging father.  Lisa wants to write two novels, enhance the family’s spirituality and run a marathon.  Emily wants to play in the WNBA and author a comic strip.

Will buying a house constitute the Upton American Dream?  No, because for each of them, the American Dream is the sum of his or her unique aspirations.  It’s not a mass-produced item purchased off the rack.  It’s a special order good.  

Will the Uptons be prohibited from living their American Dreams until they buy a house?  No, because in America, even if you rent, you can still devote yourself to helping your father, running ten miles a day, or perfecting your free throws. 

So house equals Dream?  No, but that’s been the Official Mission Accomplished Victory Speech broadcast into our lives by the housingistas.  Result?  We fixated on real estate almost as if it was happiness itself—that is, we overvalued real estate in our minds, which drove us to overvalue real estate with our checkbooks, which slammed us into the giant-house-loan-miniature-house-value vise. 

As painful as this vise is, greater danger lurks if we give house-equals-Dream manifestoes more airtime. 

Say the Uptons buy a house.  Then say the mortgage becomes a burden, but the manifestoes warp their thinking enough that they fixate on mortgage payments, let slip away dreams for the novels, marathon and construction firm, never bother to help with the comic strip, and spend little time with Dad before he dies. 

In thirty years, they may own that house, but in quiet moments, they may sense that they lived an American tragedy.

In coming months we will have much discussion about saving people’s houses.  Some houses will be lost.  We can minimize pain and help people keep working to enrich their lives if we remember, no matter what happens to houses, that the American Dream is still available to each of us.  Only in its pursuit do we find the real payoff in being an American. 

But if we try to loosen the vise without discrediting the house-equals-Dream world view, we’ll fail because people will continue to overvalue real estate.  The consequence will be not just financial chaos but also emotional angst—especially among those who sacrifice all to save a house, and those who, losing a house, think they’ve lost all—because a life lived for real estate is a small, sad life. 

And if business and government steer us into small, sad lives, then America is finished.

So we have no need for realtors and lenders who vodka toast the house-equals-Dream world view. 

As for politicians who drape themselves with house-equals-Dream clichés, so as to appear to be doing vital work while in fact shirking vital work, they should become ex-politicians.   

Clichés kill.  The right to own real estate is fine, but the Constitution’s framers never intended it to be our raison d’etre.  To survive, we must pursue the dreams that we conceive ourselves.