A $120 Billion subsidy is a drop in the bucket, but it should go more to supporting and increasing middle income owners. Another need is quality rental options for the types of people who look to buying a home–mainly people with children–because renting simply isn’t an option or attractive. But that isn’t going to happen. Landlording is a largely unregulated industry that attracts the dumbest and most shortsighted greedy bottom feeders who tune into infomercials and “get rich quick” advice books.

One of the few good points made on this issue by the flaccid cover article in the current issue of TIME is that any rental property in an American city tends to be crap far more than owner-occupied property–especially in residential urban neighborhoods (which makes up most of Milwaukee’s housing) where you have a good base of employed, educated people. It is always the careless, distant landlords and bad tenants in those areas who get the complaints and police calls, very rarely the homeowners. Owner-occupancy really is a very solid indicator of neighborhood health and social capital–crime, blight, and decreasing value follow where homeowners are lacking.

Most people buy a home because it’s cheaper than renting over the period of time they expect to be in an area, especially if they have children, and they can count on getting their money back (if not more) if they can wait for the right time to sell.

In cities like Milwaukee, if residential neighborhoods fall off significantly in homeownership for too long without a recovery, you will see a Detroit-like endgame follow. Crime will skyrocket, and it may be the final coffin nail for MPS. The City and County have no solid source of revenue other than property tax, and they’re already in trouble. They’ll continue to raise taxes and cut services. Jobs and mobile, educate people will continue to move to the burbs or further afield.

When I say “cities” like Milwaukee I mean specifically what you can see if you map ownership against income and education, etc. Or if you just go to Zillow.com and filter out all the single family properties. In unhealthy, quite possibly doomed cities like Milwaukee, there is almost nothing over $100k in large, central swaths that cover a majority of the city and its population. The property there is either junk or the occasional rough diamond in the middle of shell casings and needles. If you look for where the $100,000s, $200,000s and $300,000s are you will see them clustered in thin fringe areas–such as the East Side where values and quality of life have plummeted with the massive increase in rental properties. Do the same thing in Forbes’ pick for lead recovery city and you will see a wide range of prices throughout 4/5ths of the city. Gainfully employed people want to live in those areas, largely as owners. Stability–in terms of order and value–follows.