Since March 2020, it’s become clear that people who live in freestanding houses are not only less likely to test positive for COVID, but demonstrate better overall health by a number of metrics. The structure of a freestanding home reduces virus transmission.
Apartments, condos, townhouses, row houses, and other homes which have shared crawlspaces, attics, and walls create paths for airborne pathogens. If a neighbor’s cooking can be smelled, then particles and vapors are being communicated from one living space to another. A virus can easily be among those things transmitted.
By contrast, a neighbor might cough and sneeze in one house, but if the next house is separated by several feet of grass, trees, and breeze, the chances of a SARS-CoV-2 transmission is nearly nonexistent. Freestanding single-family homes demonstrated their health benefits during the pandemic.
In addition to saving lives, however, home ownership is an important instrument in the effort to achieve an aspect of societal equity. Families who own a house are economically more resilient. Children who grow up in a single-family dwelling do better in school, are less likely to run afoul of the police, and are less likely to be obsese.
Some observers have asked whether home ownership might be a substitute for affluence in general. Could it be that the benefits attributed to home ownership are actually simply the benefits of wealth?
Further analysis, however, reveals that the smallest and most humble single family dwelling yields both the health and economic benefits which the grandest condo cannot give. A very modest house reduces virus transmission and bestows educational and social benefits, while a lavish upscale flat in an urban center does not.
Both for reasons of public health, and for reasons of social equity, zoning boards and local city councils should encourage the construction of single family dwellings more than condos and townhouses. This would especially benefit ethnic and racial demographic groups who are traditionally underrepresented in home ownership.
If local governments encourage “affordable housing,” but that housing isn’t freestanding houses, then those demographic groups will not be able to access the full benefits of home ownership. If society can increase the percentages of people who own a single family dwelling on its own piece of land, then that is a step forward for equity, equality, and justice.
