HOUSING

Do You Own Your House, Or Does Your House Own You?

Reclaim your freedom

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If it takes everything you’ve got to cover insane housing costs, you probably can’t consider a life as a writer, musician or artist. Even things like teaching and social work are going to be a stretch. What can you do but cast your body into the corporate meat grinder?

I stumbled into freedom quite by accident. But first, I spent a long time struggling to understand why it’s so hard for people to afford a little patch of land to come home to each night.

Think about what it was like before we came up with the concept of private land ownership.

“This looks like a good place right here,” you would say, and that’s where you’d build some kind of shelter. It probably would only take you a few days, with the help of your extended family, to erect a simple structure.

And then that was it. You had a home, and you could devote the rest of your time to meeting your other needs.

It hasn’t always taken three decades to pay for a house.

For a time, the government gave away free land. gave 160 acres to anybody willing to farm…