Real estate should rethink affordable housing

By Marcie Geffner - Inman News

There's no doubt that the current mortgage crisis has caused a lot of pain. Lenders and investors have lost their shirts. Realtors and mortgage brokers have lost their livelihoods. And home buyers, many of them first-timers or minorities, have lost their homes.

But will the lessons of toxic mortgages, blind-eyed regulators, irrational borrowers and inflated appraisals be learned this time? Or will the problems again repeat themselves and will the pain that so many have endured come again to naught?

One absolutely vital lesson that simply must be learned to turn this crisis into new opportunities is that the affordability of housing, whether it is owned or rented, should be a higher public policy priority than the rate of home ownership. That means affordable housing should be part of the solution to the current crisis.

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http://www.inman.com/opinion/guest-perspective/2008/05/19/real-estate-should-rethink-affordable-housing