Skip to main content

"Getting the bones right so the extremities can work more effectively"

How can housing policy be responsive to today’s urgent needs (e.g., foreclosures, a sluggish housing market, affordability, etc.) and simultaneously address long-term trends (e.g., an aging population, growth of younger households)?

View the full forum here.

Best to leave the current immediate issues to those so actively engaged in today’s maelstrom.

Recommend focusing on the longer term challenges of the future, as BPC’s demographic paper and others, including CRA/GMU, have well described about the homes and the renter/buyers/needers of the future—smaller, closer, more affordable and supportable.

Also recommend, as BPC Housing Commission Co-Chair Bond has so aptly pointed out, “On getting the bones right so the extremities can work more effectively.”

That includes continuing to support devolution to state and local decision making entities via such continuously improved and updated vehicles as HOME, CDBG, PHA support, Continuum of Care, LIHTCs, PABs, RHA, federal credit enhancement vehicles like FHA, and…

It also includes the challenging need to continue to provide for support at the federal, state and local levels for the most needy and challenged.

Conrad Egan is Senior Advisor for the Affordable Housing Institute.


Welcome to the BPC Housing Commission expert forum! This forum is intended to foster interactive and substantive discussion about pressing housing issues. Each month contributors from different parts of the housing sector will be invited to respond to a discussion topic. Guest posts will feature prominently on BPC’s website, as well as be shared regularly with Housing Commissioners to help inform their work.

Have a pressing question you’d like us to consider? Please leave it in the comments section. We encourage you and our expert bloggers to add comments, contributing to the national dialogue on solutions for the future of the housing sector.

Expert bloggers are not members of the BPC Housing Commission. Any views expressed on this forum do not necessarily represent the views of the Housing Commission, its Co-Chairs, or the Bipartisan Policy Center.

2012-03-31 00:00:00
Share
Read Next

Support Research Like This

With your support, BPC can continue to fund important research like this by combining the best ideas from both parties to promote health, security, and opportunity for all Americans.

Give Now
Tags