2012北京海淀二模英语D篇阅读分析.docVIP

2010.10 homeowner [h?um,?un?] n.自己拥有住房者， 住自己房子的 私房房主 Homeownership 住宅所有率 importance and advantages of homeownership the dark side of homeownership is now all too apparent: the problems under homeownership what should we do Homeownership has let us down. For generations, Americans believed that owning a home was an axiomatic（公理的） good. Our political leaders hammered（强调） home the point. Franklin Roosevelt held that a country of homeowners（私房屋主） was unconquerable（无敌的）. Homeownership could even save babies, save children, save families and save America. A house with a front lawn and a picket fence wasnt just a nice place to live or a risk-free investment; it was a way to transform a nation. No wonder leaders of all political stripes wanted to spend more than $100 billion a year on subsidies and tax breaks to encourage people to buy.（importance and advantages of homeownership） But the dark side of homeownership is now all too apparent: Indeed, easy lending stimulated by the cult（狂热） of homeownership may have triggered（引起） the financial crisis 。Existing-home sales in July dropped 27% from the prior month, worsening fears of a double-dip. And all that is just the obvious tale（流言蜚语） of a housing bubble（泡沫） and what happened when it popped. The real story is deeper and darker still. For the better part of a century, politics, industry and culture lined up to create a fetish（迷信） of the idea of buying a house. Homeownership has done plenty of good over the decades; it has provided stability to tens of millions of families .Yet by idealizing 使理想化 the act of buying a home, we have ignored the downsides. In the bubble years, lending standards slipped dramatically, allowing many Americans to put far too much of their income into paying for their housing. And we ignored longer-term phenomena too. Homeownership contributed to the hollowing out 空洞化 of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed Americas overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for th