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  • 科目:英语
  • 题型:阅读理解
  • 难度:中等
  • 人气:223

Homeownership has let us down. For generations, Americans believed that owning a home was undoubtedly good. Our political leaders hammered home the point. Franklin Roosevelt held that a country of homeowners was “unconquerable.” Homeownership could even save babies, save children, save families and save America. A house with a lawn and a fence wasn’t just a nice place to live in or a risk-free investment; it was a way to transform a nation. No wonder leaders of all political types wanted to spend more than $100 billion a year on subsidies and tax breaks to encourage people to buy.
But the dark side of homeownership is now all too apparent: Indeed, easy lending stimulated by the cult(热潮)of homeownership may have caused the financial crisis. Housing remains a drag on the economy. Existing-home sales in April dropped 27% from the prior month, worsening fears of a double-drop. And all that is just the obvious tale of a housing bubble 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 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 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 of cities and kept renters out of the best neighborhoods. It fed America’s overuse of energy and oil. It made it more difficult for those who had lost a job to find another. Perhaps worst of all, it helped us become casually self-deceiving: By telling ourselves that homeownership was a pathway to wealth and stable communities and better test scores, we avoided dealing with these frightening issues head-on.
Now, as the U.S. recovers from the biggest housing bust(破产) since the Great Depression, it is time to rethink how realistic our expectations of homeownership are—and how much money we want to spend chasing them. Many argue that homeownership should not be a goal pursued at all costs.
Political leaders wanted to spend money encouraging people to buy houses because _______.

A.owning a home was undoubtedly good B.homeownership was unconquerable
C.houses could save families and America D.homeownership could shape a country

The underlined sentence in Para. 2 means _______.

A.homeownership has quite a lot of bad effects
B.the result of homeownership is much worse than it appears
C.the existing-home sales will keep decreasing in the U.S
D.there might be another housing breakdown in the U.S

It can be inferred from Para. 3 that _______.

A.it is hard for Americans to get a home loan
B.it is the way to wealth to have one’s own house
C.homeownership has made many people out of work
D.many Americans choose to live out of urban areas

What is the author’s attitude towards homeownership?

A.Cautious. B.Puzzled. C.Favorable. D.Optimistic.
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Homeownership has let us down.