In Michael Ledger-Lomas’s review of Joshua Specht’s Property Values, the American dream of ownership is not a timeless preference. It is a political settlement built through Indigenous dispossession, public mortgage guarantees, and racial exclusion—one that teaches people to defend an appreciating asset rather than a shared world.
- The independent small farmer became the suburban mortgage payer; federal policy helped make that transition possible.
- Redlining and exclusionary development made racial segregation part of the machinery of property valuation, not an accidental blemish on an otherwise neutral market.
- California’s Proposition 13 protected incumbent owners while weakening public services and shifting burdens onto newcomers.
- Homeowners later treated government as an intruder, forgetting the public support that made their investment viable.
Ledger-Lomas does not simply endorse Specht’s account. He questions whether its materialist explanation sufficiently captures racist violence, and whether its proposed answer—denser cities with more opportunities to buy—escapes the ownership trap at all.
The strongest alternative arrives at the end: dignified nonmarket rental housing, with security detached from income or asset appreciation. The useful distinction is between property values and public values. A rising sale price is not a measure of a flourishing neighborhood.