Obama Neglected an Awful Lot of People in His Big Housing Speech

If you are not interested in strengthening the cornerstone of your middle-class life by owning your very own home, you may have missed Barack Obama's big speech on housing Tuesday in Phoenix. For the most part, none of it applied to you.

The president is currently on a speaking tour pitching his proposals to shore up the key pillars of middle class happiness: as he puts it, a good job, a good education, affordable health care, a secure retirement, economic mobility, and "a home to call your own." Most of these goals are indisputably universal. The last one is not. Sixty-five percent of American households own their own home today, which leaves more than a third of us in some other situation: happily renting, struggling to find affordable rent, or even homeless all together.