Being pro property, primarily in the form of land, in the US is linked to virtue. A republic eventually is founded on the virtue of its citizens, not laws or paper. So property owners, as steak holders in society, are thought to be better behaved. Yeoman farmers are independent and self sufficient which makes them less likely to be manipulated into abusing power. Moving towards a manufacturing/finance society changed that equation dramatically and now all the incentives are towards self-interested manipulation. Virtue has become a public facade, not a private goal.
Being pro property, primarily in the form of land, in the US is linked to virtue.
The US is a post-apocalpytic nation. Literally. The indigenous people and cultures were so badly wiped out by a variety of factors (some with European fault, some without) as to leave a sense of an untamed wilderness (actually, there were probably advanced agrarian societies over every inch of the US at one time) and an abundance of land. I think much of the appeal of zombie/apocalyptic fiction in the US comes from a longing for a future (like our semi-imaginary past) of open land.
When land was (or seemed) effectively free, the "obviously virtuous", positive-sum thing to do was to find unused land and bring it into productivity-- rather than to squabble for allocation of an existing resource as people did in the cities. Hence the association of the rural frontier with positive-sum virtue and urbanity (and Europe, at that time) with zero-sum congestion. So more specifically, it was a rural style of land ownership (in "new" land) that was associated with virtue.
Of course, the frontier closed, and over time we became urban (suburbia is extremely-low-density and often dismal urbanity) like everyone else.
Land doesn't matter as much as it did, except in major cities. A landed gentry has been replaced by an educated (sometimes in name only) and connected one, and urban land is only worth so much on account of the people it is (implicitly through locality) connected to. That's why Manhattan and Silicon Valley real estate are so ungodly expensive: because ambitious, smart people move there, so they're good places to set up a business and tap local talent. We are the reason for the value that justifies the price, and for thanks, we get royally fucked-over by the landlords for it.
I have no issue with small-time landowners and the notion of owning one's own home, and any land reform policy that I'd support would have to have an exemption (around $500,000 seems reasonable) under which it doesn't apply. However, I definitely don't think the association of land ownership with virtuous stewardship applies to large-scale urban housing ownership. It's classic medieval rent-seeking, nothing more.
