A new class of professional will evolve to suit the conditions of today’s volatile economy.

It is hard to even begin to gauge how much a complication of possessions, the notions of “my and mine,” stand between us and a true, clear, liberated way of seeing the world. — Gary Snyder

I’ve lived in dumpy apartments most of my adult life. I don’t find this situation fun. Yet I find myself in it more often than I’d like. I just can’t stand the tedium of dragging around to gape at apartment after disheartening apartment, knowing full well I’ll be ripped off regardless of which place I pick. So I take a quick look around the first place shown me and dejectedly sign the lease.

Because I also hate moving, I usually end up staying for a couple of years in whatever dump I’ve thrown myself. I figure that if you live a life of the mind, things like leaky toilets or storm windows that fail to keep out any … well … storms matter little. But I’ve subsequently come to realize that such thing matter quite a bit, and I’ve recently decided, after a stint in a real turd of a living space, that I’m going to put more thought into the next place I decide to call home. I have a big move coming up, so this life-changing decision I’ll have to make sooner as opposed to later.

Of course friends are pushing me to purchase a house. The market is a buyer’s dream, they all claim (most likely while trying to escape their own adjustable rate mortgage). The prospect of buying anything as large — and as expensive — as a house terrifies me. I hate renting, certainly; but buying seems a far more dangerous prospect, and not just because mortgage brokers tend to be shady or because the housing market looks like it is poised to plunge even deeper into the abyss of devaluation.

I consider buying a house a form of indenture, a contract  from which you can’t escape.

No, I consider buying a house a form of indenture, a contract  from which you can’t escape. What happens when San Francisco becomes boring (unlikely, but certainly possible), when the supposedly renascent rust-belt city you thought would be cool and edgy turns out to be a cesspool of corruption, or when you find yourself yearning for New York’s gray sky because life in Tucson, Arizona becomes too poky to endure? Homeownership to me means years of fixing roofs, catching mice, tearing up weeds and yelling at the neighbor’s sociopathic offspring to get off your recently mowed lawn. It means you won’t have an entire day just to stare out the window and think of all the ways the government might be cheating you and what you might do to set things right.

More than anything, however, owning a house means you’re easy prey, a hobbled field mouse out in the vast plain of the American economy, a prime target for the circling vultures that seek to peck away at whatever middle-class — or even revolutionary! — aspirations you might have had. It represents that earlier model of living — you know, the one where men came home from fighting Germans and began booming all those babies and needed someplace to house them. And Uncle Sam, more than happy to saddle these returning G.I.’s with mortgages the size of Fat Man’s blast radius, saw to it that subdivisions sprouted and that veterans didn’t have to put too much money down to grab their share of the plaster-and-lathe bonanza.

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest author Ken Kesey describes the rows upon rows of houses “punched out identical by a machine and strung across the hills outside of town, so fresh from the factory they’re still linked together like sausages, a sign saying “NEST IN THE WEST HOMES — NO DWN. PAYMENT FOR VETS.”‘ According to Kesey, the rows upon rows of identical houses are what keeps the the professional man true to his profession, without protest or the potential for rabble rousing.

Buyer's remorse: homeownership as counterrevolutionary strategy.

But when the factory-fresh home becomes an absolutely intolerable millstone, revolt seems inevitable. And it seems like more and more people are beginning to realize what they gotten themselves into; thousands of Americans have decided to jettison their mortgages and just walk away from their houses.  The February 3, 2010 edition of The New York Times reports that

[n]ew research suggests that when a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage, the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying. In a situation without precedent in the modern era, millions of Americans are in this bleak position. Whether, or how, to help them is one of the biggest questions the Obama administration confronts as it seeks a housing policy that would contribute to the economic recovery.

The article also recounts the plight of Benjamin Koellman, who in 2006 “bought a condominium in Miami Beach. By his calculation, it will be about the year 2025 before he can sell his modest home for what he paid. Or maybe 2040.” Mr. Koellman admits that he senses he has been taken for a ride: “’People like me are beginning to feel like suckers,’ Mr. Koellmann said. ‘Why not let it go in default and rent a better place for less?’”

A volatile, unpredictable economy demands a new class of nomadic professionals, a wandering, unsentimental cohort of single, childless men and women willing to follow the fluctuation of the dollar’s value like so many sharks in search of the elusive bait ball of whiting.

Indeed it might be best for homeowners like Koellmann to just walk away. But for many people, it still might be too late: they’ve created too many dependents, signed too many contacts. They’ve invested too much in a life that refuses to make a return on their investment. Even if they walk away from a house worth half of what they purchased it for, they still have car payments, insurance premiums, kids who eventually will wish to go to college and aging parents who blew their retirement savings on Botox and sailboats.

In days past (say, the 1950s or -60s) we might of been rewarded for trying to put down foundations — a warm hearth, a solid education, a happy family, a fruitful career with a reliable company, a rewarding retirement and then off into the sunset. But life’s different now, far more different than it was even five years ago. The man or woman with the fewest ties, someone who refuses to sign contracts, create dependents and make promises, is going to come out the winner in this seemingly winnerless economy. A volatile, unpredictable economy demands a new class of nomadic professionals, a wandering, unsentimental cohort of single, childless men and women willing to follow the fluctuation of the dollar’s value like so many sharks in search of the elusive bait ball of whiting. They will comprise our new middle class.

It’s a sad prospect, certainly. But we’re inheriting the wind, so we might as well let it blow us where it will.

Ylajali would love to hear from you. Drop her a line at hansengenbub [at] gmail [dot] com.