Nest & Egg Wealth Building Model

Ever since the Federal Housing Administration invented modern home ownership in the New Deal ear, the American home has been lauded as a critical pillar of middle class wealth building. Many Americans were cut out of this early opportunity on the basis of race, and as the decades went by the median home value increased at three times the rate of median income(1). Homeowners focused on property values for their wealth, and became resistant to new and affordable housing, giving strength to NIMBYism and contributing to a housing shortage.

Today, housing affordability is a major crisis. Even the middle class families are spending an ever increasing amount of their budgets on a home, while what used to be an accessible mechanism for upward mobility has instead become an insurmountable barrier. A fundamental contradiction: ever rising property value builds wealth for some while also excluding others from wealth building, is the surest sign of a broken system. What is our assumptions about the American nest egg are all wrong?