My hometown of San Francisco has the unholy problem of a mansion shortage and mass homelessness. AI money is driving house prices to record highs, our mayor has declared a rent emergency, while in New York City housing affordability has become so acute as to become a rare bipartisan concern. This unreality of the real-estate market has heated up both local and national politics. But as Joshua Specht argues in his new book, Property Values, a history that runs from the rent wars of the 1840s to the crash of 2008, the rise (and fall) of the American homeowner has always been the hottest of political potatoes.
The American ideal of land ownership originated in John Locke’s promise of individual self-realization through hard work. Hence the Homestead Act of 1862 and its 160 acres as both the carrot and stick of American citizenship. But as with most things Lockean, it was better in theory than in practice. The ups and particularly the downs of American history are, indeed, entangled with the crises in real-estate — from the collapse of the small farmer in the 1890s to the subprime 2008 crash. Today, that crisis can be seen on the streets of San Francisco and New York City. And for all the supposed abundant intelligence of AI, even Silicon Valley doesn’t have the magical tech to fix either my hometown problem of mansion shortages or mass homelessness.
Five Takeaways
• The Lockean Laboratory. Europe had the theory that democracy needs landowners; America had the land to test it. The Homestead Act’s 160 acres — and the dispossession Specht calls apocalyptic.
• Awake! Arouse! The forgotten Anti-Rent War of 1839–45: Hudson Valley tenants issued their own declaration of independence, tarred and feathered the rent collectors, and won at the ballot box.
• From Land to Lawn. The small farmer collapses in the 1890s; the Depression finishes him. The New Deal’s answer is the thirty-year mortgage — and the suburb as proof of prosperity.
• Levittown and the Mob. Redlining, restrictive covenants and a crowd outside the first Black family’s home — the formal and the violent feeding each other, with effects still visible in American wealth.
• Limping Along. “You kind of had to participate in the madness.” And the bailout with nothing for homeowners is what broke faith on right and left alike. A policy, he says, is not a politics.
About Keen On America
Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.
Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow
Buy Property Values: press.princeton.edu
Chapters:
00:00:31 Introduction: a mansion shortage in San Francisco
00:02:15 Why the coasts cost so much — and why South Bend doesn’t
00:03:55 Colonial origins: land taken, land distributed
00:04:30 The theory Europe couldn’t test
00:06:02 America as a Lockean laboratory
00:06:29 The Homestead Act of 1862
00:08:04 Was it a success? The historians change their minds
00:09:39 Resentment in the East — and the safety valve
00:10:49 Who benefited: race, immigration and Nicodemus, Kansas
00:13:53 Was there always a crisis?
00:16:24 The Anti-Rent War: Awake! Arouse!
00:19:04 Jacksonian producerism or Mamdani populism?
00:20:35 The 1890s: when the farmer model broke
00:22:19 Urban ownership and the first suburbs
00:24:03 The Depression: Grapes of Wrath and the foreclosure prayers
00:26:26 The New Deal, FDR and the thirty-year mortgage
00:28:35 When homeownership became democracy
00:31:01 Levittown: the assembly line and the mob
00:39:08 Liquidity, securitization and the road to 2008
00:42:04 Was the real mistake the bailout?
00:43:07 Who actually lost their homes
00:45:19 Fifteen years on: limping along
00:47:59 A generational crisis — and an inheritance divide
00:50:50 Abundance, deregulation and why a policy is not a politics
00:52:39 Think like a nineteenth-century American