[dionidium]

> even foreclosed homes have some value.

Homes can go to zero. Homes can go to below zero, which is why there are land banks all across the Rust Belt with thousands of properties they have trouble giving away.

> On a subjective level, home owners have better finances, more say in guiding their communities, and many other advantages.

Of course, because we live in a society in which nearly everyone is convinced that it's better to own a house, so anybody with enough resources to own a house chooses to own a house. And because most of those folks have an even dimmer view of apartment-dwellers than you've displayed here, they use zoning to literally separate themselves from those lower classes, to fairly predictable outcomes.

[AnimalMuppet]

> Homes can go to zero. Homes can go to below zero, which is why there are land banks all across the Rust Belt with thousands of properties they have trouble giving away.

Could you give some reference(s) on this? I'd love to see a bank that was trying to give away property, and to find out why they couldn't (and to see if I could find a way where the property would have positive value to me).

[dionidium]

The Land Reutilization Authority in St. Louis holds about 12,000 unwanted properties:

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/lra-owns-the-st-lo...

The LRA usually ends up with these properties when they fail to receive any bids at the regular tax auctions. Fewer are falling into their hands, recently, because the hot housing market is driving folks to look at things they previously wouldn't have, but properties still routinely go unwanted:

https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/fewer-...

St. Louis is the market I'm most familiar with, but similar land banks exist in cities all across the country.