Our American Screen
On HGTV, speculation, and the falsehoods of the American Dream
Like so many other Americans, I was raised on home improvement TV. My parents religiously recorded episodes of Flip or Flop, House Hunters, Love It or List It, Million Dollar Listing, and Fixer Upper, and we often spent a night each week in front of the television, eating dinner and fast-forwarding our way through the hours of home renovation shows that had begun to clog up our DVR. If my parents were watching TV and couldn’t find anything interesting, my mom often took control of the remote and tuned into channel 665 – HGTV HD.
Love It or List It, a long-standing favorite of my parents, is the first home improvement show I can remember watching. In each episode, the two hosts, Hilary, an interior designer, and David, a real estate agent, meet with a family that has issues with their current home. After hearing what the family is looking for, Hilary is given a budget to make repairs to the family’s existing home, with the hopes of having them stay put, while David is given a budget to help the family look for a new home. Hilary often faces a number of challenges, like unexpected issues with the existing house that eats up her renovation budget, but she reliably makes at least some of the changes the family was hoping to see. While the renovations are underway, David takes the family on tours of newer, often larger homes in and around their neighborhood. At the end of each episode, the family returns to their current home to see the renovations Hilary has done, and learn how much their home has increased in value before deciding if they are going to stay in their current home or move. Oftentimes, David will show a family a nearly perfect home that is slightly outside of their budget, but the increased value of the family’s current home brings this once unthinkable price point within reach.
Promotional Image for Love It Or List It
In my family, part of the Love It or List It ritual was guessing which option the homeowners would choose. Both of my parents consistently (and more often than not, accurately), guessed that the family would choose to sell their house and move into a place that was bigger, better, and more expensive. I often guessed that the family would choose to stay in their homes, as I was easily swayed by the impressive renovations Hilary managed to pull off with a limited budget. But what I didn’t understand as a 10 year old was that Hilary’s role was not so much to convince families to stay in their fixer-uppers – it was to raise their property values, so they could sell their homes to the highest bidder. In essence, Hilary is helping families turn bigger profits on their homes, so they can move into the property of their dreams — just one example of how HGTV makes regular Americans believe they can aspire towards domestic bliss and financial solvency.
My parents are far from the only people who watch HGTV religiously – in 2016, the year of the Trump-Clinton election, HGTV garnered more viewers than major news networks like CNN. In a time where it felt like American society was collapsing in on itself, millions distracted themselves with visions of gleaming hardwood floors, an open floor plan, and rustic, sliding barn doors. In times when the world feels like it’s spinning out of control, HGTV feels safe, comfortable, and warm to many of its American viewers – who wouldn’t want to escape into a world where your home always looked nearly perfect, and your biggest concern was if the third bathroom you’d been hoping to add to your house is within your renovation budget?
In the United States, homeownership has always been a status symbol. For the first several decades of American history, certain states restricted voting rights to property-owning white men, with the state of North Carolina not abandoning this practice until 1856. In those days, owning property meant that you had power to make decisions about the direction of the country, a right that was withheld from the multiracial, landless working class.
Of course, homeownership was not broadly accessible back then – between 1890 and 1930, the homeownership rate in America was around 47%. Of course, marginalized Americans faced many more hurdles when trying to purchase a home, as racial covenants in property deeds restricted African-Americans, Asian Americans, Jews, and people of Latine origin from owning property in neighborhoods across the country. While these covenants are no longer enforceable, they can still be found in many property deeds, a living example of the many ways the American Dream has been violently stripped from the hands of communities of color.
When the American government became actively involved in subsidizing homeownership in the years following the Great Depression, only White, middle class families could expect to benefit. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation, a public agency established by the Roosevelt administration to provide (white) Americans with government-backed mortgages, played a central role in this process. For white families, HOLC was a lifeline – the corporation purchased mortgages that were subject to immediate foreclosure, and then reissued these mortgages with long repayment periods to ensure families could make their housing payments.
On the other hand, Black families were systemically locked out of government-subsidized homeownership programs, as HOLC created lending risk maps in hundreds of cities, where predominantly Black neighborhoods were redlined, or systematically identified as “too risky” for mortgage lenders. While the federal government was helping white Americans build decades of generational wealth by backing their mortgages, it deliberately prevented Black Americans from benefitting from these same initiatives. The American Dream has always been built on a foundation of white supremacy.
But the racism that is baked deeply into the American property system hasn’t stopped Americans from striving towards homeownership – and why would it? American society is still fundamentally oriented towards the needs of homeowners – you can write off interest payments on your mortgage to lower your taxes each year, but no similar benefit exists for renters. Plus, homeownership still has an outsized role in the American psyche – it has come to symbolize stability, financial responsibility, prosperity, and personal success. A 2022 study commissioned by the polling firm YouGov confirms this – 74% of Americans rated homeownership as the most important symbol of prosperity, above having a successful career, a family, or a college education. Perhaps most importantly, however, we have been spoon-fed decades of propaganda that promises us we will be able to sell our homes for more than we bought them for, making housing a valuable asset for the families that scrape together enough money to buy.
In recent years, HGTV’s home flipping shows have become an increasingly popular element of the channel’s programming. For example, the show Flip or Flop, starring the (now-divorced) husband-wife duo of Christina Hall and Tarek El-Moussa, was one of HGTV’s most popular shows, attracting more than 90 million viewers over its decade-long run. At the beginning of each episode, Christina and Tarek, who work in Southern California, purchase a dilapidated, inexpensive home from a bank auction or a foreclosure sale, often at a steep discount. They then spend tens of thousands of dollars renovating the home, in the hopes of selling it for a substantial profit. While the couple often faces substantial setbacks during their renovation process, such as mold infestations, structural issues, and electrical failures, they invariably are able to “flip” the homes they purchase, selling them for much, much more than they purchased them for.
In Flip or Flop, success is measured by the amount of profit Tarek and Christina are able to squeeze from the houses they renovate, not by the appropriateness of the home for families in the area. In fact, the show rarely focuses on the families who move into the homes Tarek and Christina transform, instead centering on if the renovation can stay on budget, or if the home can be sold at the couple’s desired value. As a result, Flip or Flop (and the countless other similar programs that HGTV airs on a weekly basis) teaches us to see our homes as a financial asset that can be bought and sold to the highest bidder for a profit instead of the places where we live, raise our families, and spend time with loved ones. By valorizing the exchange value we can get for our homes in the future instead of the use value we can get from our homes in the present, shows like Flip or Flop lead us to believe that we must consistently invest in our homes to make them the most valuable assets they can be.
Unsurprisingly, Tarek and Christina got into the home-flipping business immediately following the 2008 financial crisis, as years of predatory lending practices, which specifically targeted low-income, Black and brown homebuyers, finally burst the housing bubble and sent the American economy into a tailspin. Of course, Flip or Flop does little to acknowledge that the homes Tarek and Christina transform, most of which are sold at auction or through a foreclosure sale, were once owned by families, many of whom were likely victims of subprime mortgages or predatory lending. These families, who lost their homes when they couldn’t keep up with their mortgage payments, are victims of the same false promise that HGTV sells to us with charcoal gray kitchens and walk in closets – that homeownership is a foolproof ticket to the middle class.
And while the previous owners of the homes Tarek and Christina flip have to scramble to find new housing they can afford, the hosts of Flip or Flop seek to ratchet up housing costs in the communities around them, making housing more and more unaffordable for the masses. Naturally, the hosts of Flip or Flop practically never lose money on their ventures to gentrify all of Orange County, California; during the show’s first seven seasons, the couple only failed to profit on a single project.
There is a clearly dark underbelly to the house-flipping shows that have come to dominate HGTV’s airwaves – shows like Flip or Flop, which is based in Southern California, and Good Bones, based in Indianapolis, Indiana, are based on the premise that there are profits to be made by renovating the lowest cost homes in a given market. Tarek El Moussa, one of the co-hosts of Flip or Flop, justifiably came under fire in 2023 for evicting tenants of a 16-unit rent-controlled apartment complex in North Hollywood so that he could convert the property to a luxury, 138 unit, mid-rise building with just 14 affordable units.
In a now-deleted Instagram video, El Moussa jubilantly described what would happen to the development site without regard for its current tenants, claiming “I’ve been flipping houses a long time and — and this project is hands down the biggest flip I’ve ever done… On the rooftop, there’s gonna be a pool, cabana chairs. I mean, just an incredible location. An incredible building — and this is Hollywood, man. This is where everybody wants to live. So we got so lucky to find this land because finding land like this in North Hollywood, it’s literally impossible, and we got real lucky.” Of course, El Moussa had little sympathy for the people who WERE already living there, refusing to negotiate with the Hartsook Tenant Association, and angrily responding to emails from those who disagreed with his plan.
HGTV’s other home flipping shows share the obvious undercurrent of gentrification – Good Bones, a show hosted by the mother-daughter duo of Mina Hawk and Karen Laine, primarily focuses on home flipping projects in gentrifying Fountain Square. Once an inexpensive neighborhood of Indianapolis, Fountain Square has faced a rapid increase in median rents as the area has become popular amongst artists and restaurateurs. And while Hawk and Laine claim that their purpose is to “rescue” abandoned homes in Indianapolis, their actual imprint on the neighborhood has been much more mixed. As Hawk and Laine renovate home interiors, replacing rotten wood with gentrification-grey shiplap, rents in the neighborhood have skyrocketed, and property values have increased nearly fourfold. Many residents are unable to keep up with the rising costs of rent and property taxes. Families have suffered displacement from Fountain Square, and many artists can no longer afford rent in the community – the HGTVification of the neighborhood has put its price point beyond reach.
And while Hawk and Laine may claim that they just want to revitalize the neighborhood by renovating abandoned homes, the reality of the situation is that they are speculating on potentially valuable property – they are cheaply purchasing abandoned homes from the city, renovating them, and selling them at a profit to whatever white, college-educated family can afford them. Unsurprisingly, Hawk and Laine also founded their company in the years surrounding the 2008 financial crisis, a time when millions of low-income Americans, many of whom were people of color, found that their mortgage was “underwater”, as the value of their mortgage exceeded the value of their home. Ultimately, it is hard to ignore the speculative nature of Hawk and Laine’s project, as the foreclosure crisis put them in a position to profit off of the homes former Fountain Square residents could no longer afford.
In 2013, then president Barack Obama declared in a speech that "...the most tangible cornerstone that lies at the heart of the American Dream, at the heart of middle-class life is the chance to own your own home." But this dream has slipped further and further away for many young Americans – while nearly 80% of those over 65 years old own their home, under 40% of Americans under 35 can say the same. While (white) Baby Boomers benefited immensely from subsidized programs like government-backed HOLC mortgages and the GI Bill, millennials and Generation Z are facing a very different economic landscape when it comes to finding housing they can afford. Many millennials graduated high school or college and entered the job market during the Great Recession (which was ironically triggered by unscrupulous, speculative lending patterns), which put them on thin financial ice, forcing many people to simply accept the first job they were offered, regardless of pay. And while members of Generation Z like myself graduated high school or college into a more favorable job market, student loan debt has become an increasingly insurmountable hurdle to financial stability. Naturally, younger Americans are waiting longer and longer before they buy a home.
Ironically, however, young adults have long been a loyal section of HGTV’s viewer base, with 20-and-30 somethings making up around 55% of the channel’s fervent fans. Young HGTV viewers report liking the channel’s aspirational content, like transforming a dilapidated house into a shiny new dream home, allowing young people to fantasize about the interior design decisions they can make if (and only if) they ever manage to purchase a home. But as home prices hit all time highs, and the federal minimum wage remains fixed at $7.25 an hour, the increasingly elusive American Dream of homeownership seems to be further and further away from most young adults, even if HGTV offers a convincing escape. For young HGTV aficionados, watching hours of home renovation shows can almost simulate the experience of purchasing a home themselves, a milestone young adults are half as likely to achieve as their parents were.
Furthermore, as a television channel that centers itself on the domestic sphere, HGTV has long catered to women, who, under traditional gender roles, hold responsibilities for the maintenance and upkeep of the home. It should not be surprising that women make up 67% of HGTV’s viewership, but the channel also promotes an unattainable level of domestic perfection. Spotless, gleaming kitchens, perfectly organized closets, and spacious, clutter-free living rooms are a hallmark of any HGTV renovation project. For women, especially working mothers, who are still burdened with the expectations of maintaining the home, caring for children, AND going to work, HGTV shows can provide an escape to a world where there seem to never be any dishes in the sink. Yet in the real world, the implausibility of constantly gleaming hardwood floors and perfectly manicured lawns becomes instantly clear, though it doesn’t preclude American society from adopting impossibly high standards for the care and keeping of the home.
HGTV, then, is perhaps the American Dream’s most effective propagandist, producing hours upon hours of television that gives Americans hope that they too can drastically increase the value of their homes and sell them to the highest bidder. In shows like Flip or Flop and Good Bones, the hosts seem to always profit off of their seemingly risky home improvement projects, encouraging everyday Americans to speculate on the value of their own homes. When we want to escape from the realities of the world around us, there is no more natural comfort to the American psyche than a genre of television that promises us a world with heightened property values, spotless kitchens, and nuclear families. Perhaps some of these shows are even designed so that everyday Americans can aspire towards a perfectly curated domestic sphere, pushing people to believe that if they sink enough money into their homes, they just may ascend to some sort of perverse, domestic nirvana, one where suburbia reigns supreme, and growing property values is perhaps the only hot-button political issue. It convinces young adults that they too can aspire towards homeownership, and teaches us that curating our homes is the best way to express individualism (though HGTV shows have been shown to mute interior design). Maybe if we weren’t all so obsessed with increasing the value of our own homes, we’d be more focused on building tenant unions, organizing in our own communities, or fighting for the government to invest in dignified housing for all of our neighbors, not just the few who are wealthy enough to purchase their own homes.
In 1934, writer, architectural critic, and overall smart lady Catherine Bauer published her manifesto, Modern Housing, which focused on the failures of the American housing system in serving the needs of working families, especially when compared to newly introduced innovations in Europe. And despite the fact that Bauer’s book is nearly a century old, the last paragraph of Modern Housing rings especially true in our contemporary, HGTV obsessed society. She writes, “If only a small part of the vast energy which was once directed toward individual home-ownership were now organized to demand a realistic program of modern housing — the best dwellings that planners can plan and that labor and materials can build (and we have an abundance of all three) – then there would be an American housing movement indeed.” As we continue to struggle towards building a mass movement for high-quality, universal, deeply affordable social housing in the United States, I shudder to think of what Bauer, one of the brightest housing minds in American history, would have thought of our relationship to HGTV.