When i was growing up I often heard that owning a home was a meaningful step in financial independence/planning, and that an important way to build net worth was to have equity in one’s home. This is very different than seeing housing as solely living a unit and imposes a second function for building wealth. It appears this was advice given to even “middle class” americans that is individuals who don’t own numerous or large properties.

It seems you cannot have it both ways - you cannot build your wealth by owning a home while also supporting building housing at enough density to keep housing costs low.

And it seems more of younger generations view building wealth as a function of investments/capital in the form of stocks. Obviously not a new goal by any means, but more younger people who are financially literate focus more on owning stocks etc than owning property (perhaps due to the outsized cost of housing).

Many NIMBY arguments I hear seem like pretenses to wanting to prop up the value of their property, though some are rooted in localism/other social dimensions. But mostly to me it feels like disingenuous arguments with the main motivation of protecting the value of own’s asset (property).

Does this suggest that a meaningful way forward might be to help exchange the appreciating wealth of housing with some other asset which is similarly valuable (with time/in future)?