Homeownership Symposium - Reexamining the Social Benefits of Homeownership after the Housing Crisis

William Rohe, Mark Lindblad

HBTL-04: The purposes of this paper are, first, to present a conceptual model of how the housing crisis and ensuing recession might impact both interest in and the social impacts of homeownership.  A second purpose is to review the limited empirical evidence on how, if at all, the recession and housing crisis have altered interest in homeownership or altered its actual impacts. A third purpose is to provide an updated review of the literature of the social impacts of homeownership, most of which was conducted before the recession.  Fourth, we will draw some preliminary conclusions on how the recession and housing crisis may have altered the social impacts and what additional research is needed on this important topic.  In this paper we focus on five social impacts: psychological health, physical health, parenting and children’s academic achievement and behavior, social and political participation, and neighborhood/social capital.