http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6277344.html

I wonder if all of this mess has been created by a very popular tax policy -- mortgage interest deductibility. There seems to be a very strong bias for home ownership. It comes through clearly in the supposed basis for this cancelled city program of buying marginal mortgage recipients into a qualifying credit score.

Quoting from the article:
"Councilman Jarvis Johnson said the $3,000 grants were not a good idea but said the city needed to promote home ownership because it increases the tax base and lowers crime." Homeownership is not necessary to increase the tax base -- assessed value of any kind (homes, apartments) will increase the tax base. In fact, there is quite a bit to information out there that the best performing land use for tax generation is industrial -- generates property tax and demands few services.

So under this logic, if I filled an area with single family housing, I should have no crime? Let's see... so the safest place should be those big sprawling tracts in Clark County... Not!

There is probably a spurious correlation at work here. Typically to own a home and keep current with the mortgage you need steady "family wage" employment at a family level. It is a little hard to be involved in crime and be steadily employed. So a community that had a steadily employed population but tht chose to rent housing (be it multi- or single-family) would likely have similar crime statistics.

I think it is very hard to construct good public policy on a foundation that is shakey at best.

There is an incredibily strong correlation between home ownership and reduced crime. The more people that own their home, the more they care about the neighborhood.

When I was a renter with some buddies, we had a saying: "Nothing parties like a rental." When you rent you don't give a crap about how the yard looks, whether the house is kept up, or what's going on in the neighborhood. When you own you have a stake in the neighborhood.

"Nothing parties like a rental."

Hey! That kind of goes along with one of my sayings; "What makes the best off road vehicle? A rental car!"

I guess I have rented all of my life and never had the thought not to treat rental property with the same respect as if it was my own... it seems like a natural extension of the "Golden Rule."

I don't buy the correlation argument. If the analysis held constant income or education so that the effect of ownership could be examined independently, I would be more in agreement -- I haven't seen that analysis done. Usually we are comparing single family homes in areas of higher income with rental properties in areas of lower income. Since it is generally recognized that higher levels of education lead to higher incomes, I would expect higher education in higher income areas as well.

I am not sure that ownership translates perfectly to greater care about the neighborhood. I have struggled in my career to get apathetic homeowners to care about major public policy changes in planning in their own community ... all I have seen are yawns... of course, after the policy is set and the results show up they come screaming and yelling...

To eliminate parties in rental houses, knock $150 or so off the price of the rent for the area and select the person with the highest credit score.

You'll likely get a stack of applications a foot high with scores of 800+. Nothing is more valuable to a person than their high credit score.

As someone who had to help a friend through the court system to evict deadbeats from his rental (yup, in Clark county) I'm looking at selecting tenants where you can get them by the balls.


BTW, I've got to give credit to the county judge who was a no-nonsense hard nose -- 'if you don't pay the rent, you have no home' he said to the obviously pregnant crying woman with two other toddlers, 'you're outta there!'.

Anybody that wants to see a picture or two of my friend's throughly trashed house, email me.

Back when we rented, before we bought the house we are in, we took the same attitude as Edust.

We treated the house like it was ours.

One thing that helped was that we had a great landlord.

The house was brand new when we moved in. We had a dog and so I asked him if he'd fence the back yard. He said sure and if I'd help put the fence in, he'd knock half a months rent off! Not bad for a weekends work!

Then, after we were in the house for about 9 or 10 months, it was summer and it was warm, he called and asked if we wanted him to buy us a window air conditioner.

I said that I thought a whole house attic fan would actually be better. He bought it and together we put it in in about half a day!

When we bought our house and moved out, we paid a professional carpet cleaning company to come in and clean the carpets before we turned the house back to him.

I know there are people who just trash rentals, but I don't understand them.

"I know there are people who just trash rentals, but I don't understand them."

Because they have ZERO self-pride! I have never treated an apartment or rental house any different than a house I have owned. Part of it is personal pride, part is pride of the neighborhood.

Sadly there are some homeowners that just don't care. The people that live behind me now, their yard is just trashed, their driveway looks like a used car lot, and it makes you ask WHY.