【正文】 e same effect in Britain. In other words, ownership can sometimes be worse for a neighbourhood than renting. A shelter— for your money Lastly, and perversely, the decade of obsession with expanding home ownership may actually have reduced neighbourhood stability. Nicolas Retsinas, the director of the Joint Centre for Housing Studies at Harvard University, suggests that, until the crash in 2021, Americans were ing to see their homes as financial investments rather than as places to live. That is true in other countries. Negam mortgages in America and buytorent arrangements in Britain were based on the assumption that houses were primarily investments. As a result, people seem to have started to buy and sell homes more frequently. Between the mid1990s and mid2021s, the number of new houses sold almost doubled in America, from just over 600,000 to over in 2021. Perhaps that made labour markets more mobile, but it was certainly not what policymakers were aiming for when they set out to increase home ownership. Their efforts in the past few years seem to have weakened, though not destroyed, the best arguments for treating home ownership as something to be encouraged: that it increases people’s savings and creates better neighbourhoods for everyone. But perhaps you should not be surprised by that. As Adam Smith wrote in “The Wealth of Nations” two centuries ago, “a dwellinghouse, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitants.” 自有住房 是避難營(yíng)還是重?fù)?dān)？ 自有住房帶來(lái)的社會(huì)利益中看不中用，而且經(jīng)濟(jì)成本高昂 。 and it benefits future generations because, it turns out, the children of homeowners do better at school and have fewer behavioural problems than children of renters. On the face of it, the evidence for these claims is strong. In America homeowners are less likely to move than renters, so areas with a lot of homeowners are more stable. According to the 2021 American Housing Survey, homeowners stay where they are for about nine years whereas renters move every two. More stable neighbourhoods are more lawabiding. According to a study of New York City, the homeownership rate was second only to ine as an explanation for different crime rates. The link between ownership and political participation is stronger still. In America in the early 1990s, 69% of homeowners voted, pared with only 44% of renters. Homeowners are more likely to know who their representatives are。 From The Economist Home ownership Shelter, or burden? The social benefits of home ownership look more modest than they did and the economic costs much higher In a scene from the film “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a happy couple is about to enter their new home. Jimmy Stewart, whose firm has sold them the mortgage, reflects that there is “a fundamental urge…for a man to have his own roof, walls and fireplace.” He offers them bread, salt and wine so “joy and prosperity may reign for ever”. That embodies the AngloSaxon world’s attitude to home ownership. Owning your own roof, walls and fireplace, it is thought, is good for householders because it helps them accumulate wealth. It is good for the economy because it encourages people to save. And it is good for society because homeowners invest more in their neighbourhoods, engage more in civic activities and encourage their children to do better at school than do renters. Home ownership, in short, benefits everyone—not just the homeowner—and the more there is of it, the better. Which is why it is usually encouraged by the government. In America, Ireland and Spain, homeowners can deduct mortgageinterest payments from taxable ine. Yet the worldwide crash was bound up in this supposed miracle of social policy. The disaster began with defaults on American subprime mortgages, a financial instrument designed to spread home ownership among the poor. It gathered pace after the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two governmentsponsored enterprises that provide cheap home loans. As a result, the homeownership rate in America has fallen for four years, the first time that has happened in a quarter of a century. In 2021, families lost their homes or faced foreclosure—double the average before the crisis—reducing the homeownership rate from 69% in 2021 to % at the end of 2021. The number of owneroccupied dwellings also slipped in Britain in 202108 for the first time since the 1950s. Subsidised castles So attempts to expand home ownership have contributed to the wider economic crisis without succeeding in their own terms. How does that affect the