What if you rent the place you call home?
And again, from the Globe, an op-ed on renting versus homeowning by Nicolas Retsinas, the director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard. Among his other arguments, Mr. Retsinas states:
Although the pitfalls of homeownership are clearly visible, there are advantages (some real, some only perceived) of homeownership. Homeownership gives the person a genuine stake, physical as well as psychic, in a neighborhood. Because homeowners are not so mobile, people form stronger ties with neighbors.
Overall, I am sure he is correct, and anyone who has lived in mostly renter-occupied neighborhoods (I’m thinking of my first two years of grad school, living in the Allston student ghetto) knows what it’s like when the majority of residents feel no accountability to their property or neighbors. And I must admit that, as a social scientist myself, it can be very annoying when you tell someone about an overall statistical trend and they immediately start spewing out the two or three exception to that finding that they personally know about.
But since I’m not at a cocktail party with Mr. Retsinas, but rather here in the comfort of my own blog, I’m going to do exactly that.
Mr. Improbable and I are renters in part because we are committed to our community: a community that we can’t afford to own property in. We probably have enough money to get our own place if we were willing to move 45 minutes or so out of town, but our connections to Harvard run broad and deep–it’s where I work, it’s where we put on the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony (tickets for which are available now!), it’s where we’ve met many of our friends and colleagues. And, of course, we have our pizza guy and the great coffee shop on the corner that doesn’t have wifi, so you can actually get some damn writing done instead of noodling around on Facebook for hours, and Milo’s doggie friends, and all of that.
We love our neighborhood, and we can only live in it if we rent.
I wonder if that’s true of other people in some of the area’s high-priced real-estate markets, as well?
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15 Responses to “What if you rent the place you call home?”
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I’m a long time reader of yours in California. I agree completely with you regarding renting in order to live in the neighborhood of ones choice. I live in San Jose in a great spot with family, friends and good schools for my daughter (now in college). As a single parent I probably will never own a home, but I was able to provide a stable home for both myself and my daughter by renting a decent apartment. I have a great deal invested in my neighborhood and am proud to live here.
Our finances, and our commitment to Cambridge’s convenience, has us in the same position. Ownership for its own sake, in a less livable (and walkable) environment, holds very little appeal.
To digress, just a smidge:
Like childlessness, the reasons are combination of choice and circumstance; the exact proportion of the two is a private matter, which must vary from household to household, but it seems to be working out for us.
I try to keep a safe distance from social/media messages that either parenthood or home ownership is a Universally Good Thing. For both, of course I’m glad that other people want to, and can, but that doesn’t add up to a ‘Should’ for my life.
Playing devil’s advocate. I have rented…in atypical neighborhoods in NYC…which probably explains my insanely high student loan balance from grad school. I didn’t rent in williamsburg brooklyn. I didn’t rent in Astoria or Sunnyside queens. I rented literally on the border of Kensington/Borough Park Brooklyn and then on the border of Park Slope/Gowanus Brooklyn. Park slope is where manhattanites go to breed (I lived there, I’m allowed to say it).
While I loved the Park Slope community and my rent was extremely reasonable (2700 for a 3br/1ba, open kitchen/living room, laundry on site, small paved courtyard on the side of the building), I felt constrained as a renter. I absolutely detested my kitchen. Granted when I was apartment hunting, a kitchen was one of the things I was willing to compromise on, but still I hated it and the lack of a dishwasher. I couldn’t renovate because the property was not mine, and even if I was permitted to renovate, why would I have invested my time and money to make SOMEONE ELSE’S property more valuable?
I loved the Kensington community as well. Alas, there was absolutely nothing I could do to fix the kitchen or the bathroom. Unless I wanted to go apartment hunting (which is not a fun process) AND pay higher rent to have a decent kitchen and/or bathroom.
Perhaps if I was in a different income level, where I could afford to rent an apartment that had all the amenities I desired, I’d feel differently about renting. For now I am content to live in my mother’s suburban condo where she enjoys 95% of the perks of home ownership (she can do anything she wants inside, but can’t modify the outside appearance) without the hassle of maintaining the lawn or repainting the house, etc etc.
I’m probably more invested/connected to the condo community than the town in question….since the town views our condos as the slums, when clearly that is not the case. Most of the people living here are working/middle class or retirees, who want to OWN a house but either don’t need something that big due to a lack of children or don’t want to maintain a yard. But that’s another discussion for another day….
“why would I have invested my time and money to make SOMEONE ELSE’S property more valuable?”
This is actually critically important when talking about the physical property. I think Retsinas’ mistake is in transferring that assumption from the physical to the social…since renter’s can’t update/care for the property, they therefore don’t care about/add to the community they live in. Completely untrue. And property owners do not by definition care about their communities – think about slumlords or developers who build crummy stuff for quick sale. I was shocked to find out that one particular developer owns a significant land base of the town I’m in, and I know his obligation is to his own bottom line, not the long-term health of the community.
I’m in a town I could never in a brazilian years afford to buy in (avg. home price is over $800,000). I work closely with some town government bodies, and they definitely do not take renters seriously. (or bizarrely, they just assume that if you are involved in town politics, you must own property.) I have to earn my political cred other ways, by being such an enormous and committed presence in town I can’t be ignored. But it’s a small enough town that I can be a loud presence. I work with every schoolkid in town, am a member of one town committee, partner with many town organizations and events, speak up on town discussions…there’s no question that I’m committed, probably more so than half the home owners. I worry tremendously that rents will keep going up, I’ll keep having to move, and eventually won’t be able to stay. Unlike Cambridge, there are not many renters here though (rentals are very, very, very hard to find). I think in Cambridge where rents are more stable because the supply is so much higher, it’s just as easy to rent. In a town like mine, where rentals are at a premium, it’s rough going to try and be a long-term renter. (massive grumbling about the stupid, useless MA Affordable Housing Law…)
To Robin and others who rent in a place where you have the feeling of true community: is your town walkable?
I wonder how much one’s transportation mode affects this whole issue. Here in Austin, Texas, tons of condos are being built downtown…not sure about the number of rentable apartments. There’s a concerted effort to make the downtown area more residential. That’s why a Whole Foods was built there too, so that residents would have a place to buy groceries (even if they’re expensive, but then, the condo rates are outrageous as well – $500,000 to $1 million). I think the hope is that downtown will become more walkable, and that it will turn into a community like the one where Robin lives.
My husband and I just moved into a house we bought after renting the previous 8 years or so. Out of all the places we didn’t own, I felt the greatest sense of community in my dorm on campus. I walked everywhere and was surrounded by people doing the same. By walking, I was able to take in the details of my surroundings, to stop and read notices, and I was much more likely to see a friend (or classmate) than if I had been driving.
But, just before moving into our house, I realized that for the first time in my life, I’d have real neighbors – people I could live next to for years, even decades. I grew up out in the country, as opposed to a suburb or urban area, and neighbors were far apart. So I’m excited about establishing neighborly relationships that could help us and them in times of need, and from talking to a few of them, we’ve learned that this whole street is interested in maintaining the more traditional know-your-neighbors community. We didn’t have that in our apartments because the complexes were located in the parts of town that require a car.
My hypothesis (and not at all original one) is that being forced outside for extended periods is what creates a community. Like back in the ol’ days when people didn’t have TVs, computers, or even air conditioning. They sat outside on shaded porches to feel the breeze and to derive their entertainment from observing the world around them. Here in Austin, daytime temps rarely fall below 100F, so we stay indoors with the comfort of our a/c’s most of the time (aside from being stuck to our computers).
My degree is in geography, so this sort of question really intrigues me.
“why would I have invested my time and money to make SOMEONE ELSE’S property more valuable?”
The mortgage interest deduction sort of forces renters to, doesn’t it? The Massachusetts tax deduction for renters helps a little, but there’s still a tax bias in favor of owning.
Stupendousness, my sister lives in the Houston suburbs. Her neighborhood became a neighborhood during the five-day power outage in a hurricane a few years ago, when they had to go outside, and share their food.
I have been both. My salary is not such that I’m likely to become a property owner on my own in New England, but when I lived in the midwest, I owned a little house I adored. But I adored the house, not the neighborhood, as there was no real neighborhood — there were houses and people, but no community.
I currently live in a six-unit apartment building. The owners do not live in this town and do a reasonably lousy job of maintenance (I use the peeling paint to give directions). But I know the neighbors in 5 of the units, as well as the people across the street, and this is more of a community than I had when I owned.
Honestly, it has not been the norm for me — I haven’t known this many of my neighbors since the dorm days. But I really like it. Whatever intangible things happened to create this little community, it made my move out here much more interesting and personal.
Good comments, everyone!
Carolyn–yes, yes, yes on the societal messages. If there is one thing that makes me feel like I’m not a grownup, it’s the fact that I don’t own my own home.
magicbean–This: “I think Retsinas’ mistake is in transferring that assumption from the physical to the social…since renter’s can’t update/care for the property, they therefore don’t care about/add to the community they live in”–is a brilliant point. That is precisely the mistake he is making.
I also like your observation that it’s assumed that “involved” people own property. I’m encountering this in other domains, too … being on boards or involved in organizations in which there’s the assumption that you can pay the full dues, make the big contributions, etc. I’m willing to have those awkward conversations about what I can and can’t afford, but I wish I didn’t have to.
Stupendousness, good question! Yes, I do walk everywhere–and our feeling of neighborhood commitment has really amped up since we got Milo, too. I walk to work, and nearly every business I patronize regularly is locally owned and within a 20-minute walk of my house. Not because I’m so incredibly virtuous about supporting local businesses and being green, but because I’m lucky: there’s a good video store, gym, salon, liquor store, bookstores, pizza places, coffee shop, etc. right there in my neighborhood.
(A couple of anecdotes on shopping locally: remember when all your friends suddenly got Netflix, like when all your friends suddenly joined Facebook? Mr. Improbable got uncharacteristically enthusiastic about Netflix after hearing a number of friends raving about it, and suggested we join. “But we *like* going to the video store,” I pointed out. “Oh. That’s right. We do,” he replied.
Also, we are blessed with not one but two good pizza places in our neighborhood, one of which has been around for decades and one of which is relatively new. So every time we go to the new one, we feel really guilty like we’re cheating on our regular pizza guy, and take a roundabout way home so he won’t see us walking past his shop with a pizza box from another restaurant.)
It’s not that I’m looking for granite countertops and stainless steel. I just wanted my sink to be angled normally. It wasn’t at a 90 degree angle, which meant all the space behind the sink was practically wasted (which is annoying when you have so little counter space as it is).
And the bathroom in my first place was ugly as heck…but a renter is constrained. I ask what use it is to love the community but hate aspects of your home? I couldn’t even deal with the pests on my own…I had to wait for the landlord to call someone in at the first apartment. The second apartment had a service that came every month which was nice.
Really the only community I ever felt invested in, if a child can be invested, was the Army base I lived on for 3 years. Looking back, that was the ONLY place we knew all the neighbors. When the chain came off my bike and I went flat over the handle bars a quarter mile away from the house, someone in their yard picked me up, brushed me off and walked me and my bike home. If I could find the Army base sense of community and combine it with the ability to take down walls and redo kitchen sinks, that would be the best of both worlds.
“I ask what use it is to love the community but hate aspects of your home?”
That’s pretty much how I live, Veronica. Our apartment is nice in many ways, but there are a lot of problems with it, especially in the kitchen and bathroom areas. Our landlord, who lives in the building, is great about repairs and renovations, but the place is just flat-out OLD, with a lot of rooms that are not being used for their original purposes (there was never supposed to be a kitchen in the attic) so short of a total overhaul, there’s only so much he can do.
For me, the community makes it worthwhile. And freedom from having to drive.
And the ability to delude myself that, sure, I’m the queen of one-pot meals now because I *have* to be, but if I had a really GOOD kitchen, I’d be turning out spectacular four-course meals every night.
It is certainly true for myself. I live in the North End of Boston and I LOVE it there. But I could never dream of affording to own a place there on my own and I make a decent living. So I’m okay with renting. I love the neighborhood feel to the street I live on. I love waving to the butchers every morning on my way to work. I love that the people at the little grocery store know me. I love that if I need to run to CVS, I just literally run to CVS, it’s but a few blocks away. I love that I don’t have to deal with owning a car – the T and Zipcar more than meet my needs.
But based on the comments here, perhaps I am luckier than most. I currently live in an apartment that, while smaller than I would like (I think the size is less than 450sq ft), is both beautiful and affordable. I’m celebrating my second year there but it was completely gutted before I moved in. And my landlady (who also lives in my building) really did the job right. The apartment doesn’t have a lot of sunlight, so she had lighting installed everywhere. She also installed tons of cabinets throughout the apartment (from IKEA). I wish I could attach photos. It was really extremely well designed for such a small space. There is more than enough room for what I need. I even have a washer and dryer and a shoe closet.
But I loved living in teh North End just as much in my previous, much crappier apartments. I have no desire to move someplace just to own. I would feel incredibly isolated in a suburban environment.
I envy you MissC for your ability to delude yourself into thinking you are the queen of one pot meals. Granted I am more of a baker than a chef…so crockpots are my way of cooking when I want something more complicated than pasta. I could survive with a kitchen as long as it had a working oven and a 90 degree angle sink (to think I’d care about the angle of a sink….). It’s when the bathroom is completely ugly and desperately needs an update (IE take out the shower sliding door!) that I can’t put the blinders on. There were times I wanted to take a sledge hammer to everything in my first apartment bathroom, and replace it myself even if it meant making someone else’s property more valuable and ruining my bank account.
Stupendousness – my town is somewhat walkable (definitely bikeable and lots of people do), but there are lots of physical public places where people gather. I think that does make a big difference, architecture and planning on a human scale. The book “A Pattern Language” was written in the 70s to get architects to think about human patterns – it’s mostly a cookbook of pictures and ideas, moving from large to tiny, it’s fascinating. And beautiful.
Veronica, I have to hate aspects of my home too, so I just go visit the neighbors! The walls give the barest passing nod to insulation, so I keep the heat around 50 in the winter and colder at night. But it was really nice when I didn’t have to think about the furnace when it broke this spring. We’re working on persuading the landlord to let us retrofit the useless fireplace into a wood-burning stove – any investment in time would offset my expen$$e in oil that I hate burning.
Robin, OT, but that’s a good message to BRING to the board of a non-profit, is how it shares skills and community representation among its members. A good board can make or break an organization, and while the well-heeled often are the only ones with enough time to commit to being on a volunteer board, the smart ones will understand the perspective and skills that the payless-shod bring (my board does this, so I can brag about how awesome they are.) Maybe a board member has a full-time job, but it’s in tech, or accounting, or social services, or management or whatever, something that is really valuable. Wait, did I just make the point again that money != value??
magicbean: i would have visited the neighbors….but in my first neighborhood my roommates and I were the only 20-something renters in a neighborhood full of owners or owners renting out the other side of their homes to families. We felt very out of place. I was one of the few Catholics in a neighborhood full of orthodox jews, muslims, and sikhs. I’m a conservatively dressed woman and there were times I felt naked. There was a facebook group online that joked we in our few blocks achieved the world peace that the middle east has yet to achieve.
I go back and forth about which neighborhood I liked more. The first one had mainly 2 family houses, and families, and the essentials were all on one intersection (near the subway stop no less). The second neighborhood definitely had more restaurants and bars, and I had a variety of grocery stores to choose from. In some ways it lacked something because it was all whitewashed.
However the apartment in the second neighborhood was LOADS better than the apartment in the first one…
I rented in Newton, and then just recently bought in East Boston. Since I was maybe 5 I had it drilled into me that I should buy as soon as I could afford to. It never would have occurred to me to consider a place home I did not own. Even when people asked me where I lived I would say “Newton, but we’re renting right now.” We Loved Newton, and maybe someday we’ll be able to afford a place there. But I was not going to spend a cent more than I needed to helping my landlords pay their mortgage.
For now, East Boston is my home and I’m loving it. (The $8K first time buyers didn’t hurt either)