I’m enough of a hippie environmentalist to believe that land cannot be owned, and the very concept is insulting to the planet itself, but let’s leave that aside and talk socialism and economics.

I think the “American dream of home ownership” is, frankly, based on fear.

People are afraid if they lose their jobs or get old or sick and can’t pay rent their landlords will evict them.

People are afraid their landlord will harass them, or demand extra money from them, or otherwise extort them under the threat of eviction.

People are afraid if they have a medical crisis or extended period of unemployment they’ll end up broke, and want equity in a home as insurance against poverty.

And people are afraid their children will be broke or homeless or living in a slum and want to leave their children equity in a home to protect them as well.

And this is all a result of capitalism. This is because we treat basic shelter as a privilege the poor have to earn by working instead of a basic human right. And we don’t trust government to provide us with the basic right to housing, and we don’t trust government to protect us from abuses by landlords, and we don’t trust ourselves to be able to pay constantly increasing rent if we get fired or get sick, so owning our own home is the only way to protect ourselves from homelessness.

And American capitalism, in particular, enforces the fear of homelessness by abusing and brutalizing and dehumanizing people experiencing homelessness, so that the average American believes homelessness is one of the worst fates someone in America can endure. And it is. Because we make it that way.

Anyone who doesn’t own their own home in the US is at far greater risk of homelessness than someone who does. And the fear of homelessness is the fundamental drive behind American idealization of home ownership. And that is sick and wrong and unfair.

In a socialist society where housing is a human right and guaranteed to all, where people have no fear of losing their homes because they trust their government to ensure their basic right to shelter, where people don’t fear landlords abusing their power because apartment buildings and housing complexes aren’t owned, but managed, by committees which themselves are monitored by government to prevent abuses, I think home ownership would be not only unnecessary but irrelevant.

Because what does owning a home represent, in America, except shelter and security and protection? And if all that is guaranteed to you by right, what need is there for personal ownership?

In a perfect world, owning land would be as unnecessary and foolish as owning the air we breathe or the water we drink.

This community looks like it’s just about stealing what you want, while using the plight of the poor as an excuse to steal nail polish.

I think you are disingenuous here. You are using arguments and motivations from different people and just mix them together because they where posted in the same online space.

My opinion as the mod and the one that started the community does not represent everyone participating here.

The word ‘Property’ has a particular meaning in Socialist theory, and it makes a distinction between personal property (stuff that you own for your own use) and private property, which includes things like the means of production (think factories), natural resources, etc.

Tl;dr version.

Long version:

In a private property system, property rules are organized around the idea that various contested resources are assigned to the decisional authority of particular individuals (or families or firms). Thomas Merrill (2012) calls this ‘the property strategy’ and contrasts it with bureaucratic governance or the management of resources through group consensus. In a system of private property, the person to whom a given object is assigned (e.g., the person who found it or made it) has control over the object: it is for her to decide what should be done with it. In exercising this authority, she is not understood to be acting as an agent or official of the society. She may act on her own initiative without giving anyone else an explanation, or she may enter into cooperative arrangements with others, just as she likes. She may even transfer this right of decision to someone else, in which case that person acquires the same rights she had. In general the right of a proprietor to decide as she pleases about the resource that she owns applies whether or not others are affected by her decision. If Jennifer owns a steel factory, it is for her to decide (in her own interest) whether to close it or to keep the plant operating, even though a decision to close may have the gravest impact on her employees and on the prosperity of the local community.

Though private property is a system of individual decision-making, it is still a system of social rules. The owner is not required to rely on her own strength to vindicate her right to make self-interested decisions about the object assigned to her: if Jennifer’s employees occupy the steel factory to keep it operating despite her wishes, she can call the police and have them evicted; she does not have to do this herself or even pay for it herself. So private property is continually in need of public justification—first, because it empowers individuals to make decisions about the use of scarce resource in a way that is not necessarily sensitive to others’ needs or the public good; and second, because it does not merely permit that but deploys public force at public expense to uphold it.