Back when I was growing up in the 1950s, times were tough in rural New Hampshire, which was still primarily agricultural but no longer able to compete with warmer regions of the country that had better soil, flatter terrain and fewer rocks. Folks were pulling up stakes and leaving. Abandoned homes could be bought for back taxes.
Things were improving, but only slightly, by the time I finished college after serving in Vietnam. Like many of my generation, I was burned out from opposing the war and Nixon’s imperial overreach. I yearned for a simple life, closer to the rhythms of Mother Nature.
I dropped out of graduate school in sociology twice, feeling trapped in stifling classrooms, like an insect specimen pinned to a board. Yearning for an authentic life in the here and now, I joined the back-to-the-land movement and found work as a dry-laid stonemason, building stone walls. What I needed then was a home.
My parents greased the skids for me by gifting me 20 acres near their home, which they had bought years earlier for $100 from a neighbor after she had cashed in by having loggers harvest a fine stand of white pines on the property before putting it up for sale.
In 1977, I secured a $14,000 construction loan. With the help of my contractor friends and a bunch of sweat equity, my wife and I moved into our new home just before the first snow. It was unfinished, with plywood floors and pink-insulated walls, but the wood stove made it warm enough for immediate occupancy.
We continued making improvements, transforming this physical structure of pine boards and plywood into a home, defining my sense of place — but something I could never afford to replicate in today’s market.
Home prices have skyrocketed, putting homeownership out of reach for most families. According to a recent report issued by New Hampshire Housing, “To afford the median-priced single-family home now, a family today would need to earn $182,000 annually. Only 15% of New Hampshire households earn that much.”
What about the other 85% of us? Becoming a homeowner has always been the glue that holds our country together. If that dream is dashed, it changes everything!
Throughout history, owning a home has represented a powerful symbol of both independence and security. “Owning a piece of land, no matter how tiny, appears to satisfy a primal need rooted in the search for permanent shelter from the elements.” That’s according to Lawrence Samuel in his book, “The Psychology of Home Ownership.”
Sadly, new research by economists Seung Hyeong Lee and Younggeun Yoo has confirmed that young people are increasingly giving up on homeownership. This trend has resulted in unexpected negative consequences: “They put less effort into their jobs, tend to spend more on luxuries, do less long-term saving, and are more likely to invest in riskier assets such as cryptocurrencies.”
But even worse, housing unaffordability weakens social bonds, according to social science researcher Sarah Stein Lubrano: “When housing is not something we can afford, that’s a problem of democracy.”
Lubrano goes on to say, “We’d be far wiser to notice that democracy eroded long ago, when ordinary citizens lost the stability that allows them to act together. If we want to revive democratic life in the U.S., we must start by restoring the conditions that make collective power possible — by ensuring that people can live, stay, and put down roots in the places they call home.”
My conclusion is that owning a house means more than providing a roof over one’s head or a luxury item for the privileged few — it is the material foundation of our democracy and what made us unite as a people.
Jean Stimmell, retired stone mason and psychotherapist, lives in Northwood and blogs at jstim.substack.com.