[jvanderbot]

A key difference is illustrated in TFA. To maximize fraction of people owning a home, you dislike people renting or living with a homeowner. A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes. Or perhaps they could buy two homes, one for each. Or they could by two homes and rent a third to actually live in - same metric value.

To maximize fraction of homes with their owner living inside, you focus on the ownership _and_ the lifestyle choice. A family living together is the best use of land in this case. A family renting a side room to a college kid is still the best use of land. If every home were lived in by its owner, you could still have 90% of your population renting and not building generational wealth.

[pavon]

> A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes.

No, if you look at the first example explaining how the two metrics are calculated, it is clear that both spouses are considered homeowners for HPOP.

[saghm]

> A key difference is illustrated in TFA. To maximize fraction of people owning a home, you dislike people renting or living with a homeowner. A spouse that marries a homeowner, for example. It would be "better" if they broke up and owned their own separate homes. Or perhaps they could buy two homes, one for each. Or they could by two homes and rent a third to actually live in - same metric value.

Or they could... both own the home? Independent of the rest of your argument, this is a pretty weird hypothetical case to illustrate your point. Joint property ownership is way more common than any of the "alternatives" you're suggesting, so it's hard to take what you're saying seriously when you've dismissed the obvious way that this would work for the overwhelming majority of married homeowners.

[jvanderbot]

Yes, we're not talking about reality, we're talking about the measures of it. A metric would fall down on corner cases, so identifying the corner cases is how you determine if a metric is a good one.

"% people owning homes" is maximized by joint ownership, as well, but the corner cases are interesting: It is lower with big families living together or when anyone rents.

On the other hand, the "% homes lived in by owner" metric falls down in a much more realistic way: When there are fewer homes and they are lived in by owners, you can still have 90% of your people renting apartments while this metric hits 100%

[saghm]

I feel like this could just as easily be accounted for as "are you paying rent to the person who owns it or not?", which rules out family members.

[jvanderbot]

Yes, that would be a new metric, though, wouldn't it?

What's the goal - defend A vs B?