Time to Vote!

Being election day, here is an article that reminds us how important the policies of our next president will be to help stimulate the housing market.


A Vote for Homeownership
Four former secretaries of the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently told the Urban Land Institute’s fall conference that whoever wins the race for the White House should pursue policies that do not scale back the American Dream of homeownership. “The American Dream is to own a home. I’m not foolish enough to believe that every person ought to own one. But if they aspire to that dream, we should do everything we can to help them,” said Alphonso Jackson, who stepped down as HUD secretary in April. “To tell people they don’t have the opportunity — and they are working hard every day at it — that is just wrong.” Henry Cisneros, who served as HUD secretary in President Clinton’s cabinet from 1993 to 1997, was the man at the helm when the President announced a goal of putting a record percentage of Americans into their own homes. He said he does wrestle with the questions “did we push too hard” and “did we go too far?” “Some will ascribe the seeds of the current problems to this policy,” he said. “I don’t accept that. But there is the shadow of a question that does hang over this drive for homeownership.” The homeownership rate peaked at just under 70% in the late 1990s, but has fallen off since. “The policy…was right. But it got hijacked,” Cisneros said. He blamed mortgage brokers and start-up funding companies — which leaped into the no-documentation, no-money-down, subprime market and carved up those loans into mortgage securities that fed worldwide demand for the 12% returns or more they paid — for the bulk of the problem. “They crossed a common-sense line. To blame that on a candidate for homeownership isn’t right," he said. (http://www.marketwatch.com/) MarketWatch (10/29/08); Steve Kerch