How did the ‘American Dream’ morph away from its beginnings as a celebration of self-actualization and achievement — something captured by the term “Be Best” (to steal Melania Trump’s slogan for a current youth initiative)? It certainly didn’t begin as a dream of detached single-family home-ownership.
And yet here we are, some three quarters of a century after “being best,” and still lusting after the twin virtues of cozy shelter and profitable investment wrapped up in a suburban bungalow.
For those infected by American exceptionalism, it may be something of a shock to discover that other countries also dream the “fill-in-the-name-of-your-country-here dream.”
The Australian Dream . . . The Canadian Dream . . . The Irish Dream. There is indeed some argument that the Irish dreamed the housing dream earlier than anybody — way back in the 1930’s when rural social housing renters were encouraged to buy their council houses. That was years before Margaret Thatcher’s “right to buy” program in the United Kingdom encouraged the lowest classes to convert their life of rental into a council house purchase in order to climb aboard that capitalist sky’s-the-limit ladder of success, shelter and profit all rolled into one.
And yet, viewed two decades into the the twenty-first century, some eyes see that so-called dream as nothing but magnificent scam — still ongoing — perpetrated by developers, real estate agents and other denizens of the housing industry.
“Right to buy,” yes, but not apparently to keep. Some 40% of homes lost to councils through purchase are on the rental market and subject to the largely unfettered greed of private landlords.
One set of eyes that doubt the shining glory of home ownership belong to Dublin City Councillor Éilis Ryan, who describes a more down-to-earth history of would-be homeowners jigging helplessly and without profit to a housing industry tune. In Village: Right To Buy Means Right For Landlord To Buy You Out. The article covers far more ground that the narrow focus of its title.
