How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality

Matthew Desmond, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Evicted, tells a dramatic tale of economics and survival through the mortgage-interest deduction, the benefit which encourages homeownership through tax deduction. Few people would consider this an entitlement—or the middle and upper class families that benefit from it as being “on the dole”—but that is precisely what it is. And those who benefit the least are the lower class who can’t afford homes and the middle class with modest mortgages.