Trading (Blog) Spaces: My neighborhood is better than your neighborhood

 This week Michael Dahl freshens up Housing Sense with his take on the mortgage-interest deduction. Check out the HOME Line Policy Blog to see what I've done to their space. 

My wife and I try to be good homeowners.

We shovel the sidewalk. We pay our taxes. We have a good relationship with our neighbors and look out for one another. And, every year, we put money aside to do some major home repair or improvement. This year, we replaced our downstairs windows. Last year, we went from fixing a leak to totally replacing our roof. All in all, I think we are pretty responsible.

Of course, all those repairs and improvements are made easier by a handy annual tax deduction we get called the mortgage-interest deduction.

Not familiar with the mortgage-interest deduction? I won’t get too mired in the details, just know that (according to a New York Times article from a couple years ago) each year over 37 million households don’t have to pay $2000 annually in taxes (on average) because they own and have a mortgage on their home.

So, sometimes, the government covers my home improvement costs. Is that fair? I’ll let you be the judge. But here’s a bit more to ponder:

• over half of the benefit is taken by just 12% of taxpayers, or those with incomes of $100,000 or more;
• the deduction applies to debt of up to $1 million;
• the deduction counts on first and second homes; and,
• a home is anything that has something resembling a bed, a bathroom, and a kitchen … in other words, some cabins and boats qualify.

All this gets me thinking about renters and the quality of their homes and communities. I hate it when I hear some people “trash talk” renters and how they are to blame for the poor quality of their neighborhoods. Wait second. I (and I presume most of my neighbors) get an annual gift of roughly $2000 from the federal government. Sometimes we use that gift to improve our homes. That’s a lot of home improvements in neighborhoods made up primarily of homeowners.

Renters? They get nothing.

Michael Dahl is the Public Policy Director at HOME Line. Catch his updates about local and federal housing policy and tenant advocacy at www.homelinemn.org/blog/. HOME Line provides free legal, organizing, education and advocacy services so that tenants throughout Minnesota can solve their own rental housing problems. The organization works to improve public and private policies relating to rental housing by involving affected tenants in the process.