Democratic Governance Depends on Stable, Affordable Housing
A population that cannot afford to stay in one place cannot build civic associations, and a society without civic associations cannot resist concentrated power.
The crisis of affordable housing has severed the ties that the country’s founders thought necessary for democratic governance. (Jeff Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Before Americans imagined a democracy 250 years ago, they demanded land — the material independence that made civic life and resistance to tyranny possible.
Thomas Jefferson believed that landownership was the foundation of a healthy republic, empowering citizens to act independently rather than rely on the will of a landlord or employer. For Jefferson, independence was not only an economic condition but a moral one. (Albeit only for white, male Europeans, and not North America’s indigenous peoples, from whom they forcibly took the land.)
He wrote, “Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds.”
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