Jacobin | Y Iwamura/Bloomberg/Getty
More US households are renting now than at any time since the 1960s. Nevertheless, owning a home outright is still widely perceived to be the sensible option. For the middle class, this partially stems from the desire to make good on the promise of homeownership — a desire made all the more acute by the destruction of pensions and the need to plan for retirement. However, the desire is also fueled by insane rental costs, as owning a home is thought to be a way to escape the viciousness of the home-rental hamster wheel. For the huge swaths of people who no longer believe they’ll ever be able to buy, the white-knuckle ride of renting feels like a permanent nightmare.