Here is an interesting Washington Times article on the affordable housing issue.
From the article:
The J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation, a new nonprofit comprising some top names in the housing industry, is aiming to get presidential candidates to commit to solutions to the affordable housing “crisis” afflicting the country, which it sees getting far worse as the nation’s demographics change.
That is great to hear that folks are taking this issue head on. They correctly point out the following:
The J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation laid out the facts in a recent paper: More than a third of U.S. households, almost 41 million in total, pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing. The government sees anything at 30 percent or lower as affordable.
And, they point out the following:
Part of the blame, according to Patenaude, goes to the government’s response to the financial crisis. First, regulators have made banks wary to make home loans for fear of government lawsuits or penalties if those loans go bad. Second, the 2010 Dodd-Frank law put new regulations on lending while also failing to overhaul the mortgage-backers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The result has been an uninterrupted decline in the homeownership rate.
Now, let us just hope that they will correctly recognize that manufactured housing, the nation’s best source of unsubsidized workforce housing, can and should be a significant part of the solution.
