Oversized Houses
The War On Mortgage Deductions
By Daniel Muniz

Below is an excerpt from an article titled “Prius Politics” written by Robert J. Samuelson for The Washington Post:

…eliminate tax subsidies (mainly the mortgage interest rate deduction) for housing, which push Americans toward ever-bigger homes… I support these measures, because we should implement them anyway… Tax subsidies cause Americans to overinvest in oversized homes. But practical politicians won't enact these policies, except perhaps for higher fuel economy standards. They'd be too unpopular.

As someone who grew up poor and in the barrio, I disagree with such an assertion.

By the time that my little sister was born, my mother and father had four children living in a two bedroom dwelling with only one bathroom. It was a cramped little house but that was all we had and it wasn’t much different than the other houses in the barrio of the small south Texas town I grew up in. However, my folks eventually added an extra bedroom while I was a little kid. We still only had one bathroom but we now had more space.

Our little house in the barrio didn’t have central heat or air-conditioning. In the brutal south Texas heat, we had water coolers and fans. The summers could have been uncomfortable but the heat was something we got used to it. It may not have been pleasant but it was a roof over our heads.

By the way, the kindergarten, intermediate school, and the junior high I attended in that small town didn’t have air conditioning either. At that time, only the elementary school and the sixth grade had AC.

However, my life dramatically changed during my teenage years. My parents moved to the suburbs of a city where they were able to purchase a brand-new three bedroom house with two bathrooms and a two car garage. It was a typical home, if not somewhat smaller, of the great middle class. And a few years afterwards my folks then moved into a much bigger house which had four bedrooms, two living areas and a huge upstairs family room. Of course my folks loved it although it is now far more space than they ever needed for an empty nest.

And when I left the nest, the apartments I lived in as a young man varied in size. Some were small while others were bigger. The smallest apartment I lived in was 545 square feet but I didn’t own much so it wasn’t a big deal to me. But when I got married, I naturally wanted a decent-sized house.

Accordingly, my first home was a bit larger than the first house my parents bought in the suburbs. And that house was in a great neighborhood which was in a gated community that had a green belt on one side and a city park on the other side. It was a nice place to live in but I still wanted more square footage.

As a result, the current house I now live in is a bit smaller than the bigger suburban house that my parents retired in but it also has four bedrooms, two living areas, an upstairs loft, and a small office area. Overall, it is an oversized house with plenty of space and a great floor plan.

However, it is this extra square footage that green activists loathe.

But it is this resentment that I find troublesome. I don’t live opulently. In fact, my family and I live a rather simple lifestyle with very few frills. But this bigger house consumes more energy therefore it is considered to be wasteful by eco-warriors.

The problem that I have with environmentalists and global warming activists is that for my childhood while I was living in the barrio I almost had a carbon-neutral lifestyle. We (and most of the schools I attended) had no central air in a semi-arid part of the country and my parents hung their laundry to dry on clotheslines instead of using a dryer and they washed the dishes by hand instead of using a dishwasher.

Talk about a small carbon footprint, it was easy to have one when you are poor. And all my grandparents practically had no carbon footprint because they didn’t have any appliances or electronic gadgets for most of their lives.

As for the mortgage deduction being a tax subsidy, that is a blatant lie. A subsidy is when the government gives you free money. That is not the case with the mortgage deduction because it is a tax cut, which is a reduction of what I am currently paying in taxes. I already pay out the ying-yang in the federal taxation of my income and especially in my local taxes that is based on the property value of my oversized house.

I happen to enjoy the concept of being able to keep “more” of my own money in my pocket instead of giving it to Washington DC in the form of federal taxes which is exactly what a tax cut like the mortgage deduction accomplishes. But there are some people who cannot stand the idea of tax cuts because they feel that Americans don’t already pay enough in taxes. However, I do pay more than my fair share of oppressive taxes and this mortgage deduction is a great way to keep what already belongs to me.

I do find it disturbing that environmentalists want to punish successful people. My parents grew up poor and they worked hard to get what they had so a big house was something they earned. Likewise, I love my oversized house and I will be working hard for many years in order to keep it.

One possible compromise is conservation and energy efficiency. However, too many eco-warriors only see a scorched earth when it comes to the environment so compromises are out of the question. At this point, these kinds of activists are nothing more than frauds that are part of a trendy crusade to scheme the middle class out of the fruits of their labor and I refuse to have anything to do with such hucksters.

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