The ups and downs in housing markets over the past two decades are without precedent, and the costs - financial, psychological, and social - have been enormous. Yet Americans overwhelmingly still aspire to homeownership, and many still view access to homeownership as an important ingredient for building wealth among historically disadvantaged groups. Eric Belsky and Jennifer Molinsky have assembled a team of specilaists to reexamine the goals, risks, and rewards of homeownership in the wake of the housing bubble and subprime lending crisis. Contents Introduction: Low-Income Homeownership at a Crossroads Making the Case for Home Ownership as a Policy Goal: Homeownership, Wealth, and the Production of Racialized Space; Is Homeownership Still an Effective Means of Building Wealth for Low-Income and Minority Households? Was It Ever?; Reexamining the Social Benefits of Homeownership after the Housing Crisis Supporting the Home Buying Process; To Buy or Not to Buy? Understanding Tenure Preferences and the Decisionmaking Processes of Lower-Income Households; and Developing Effective Subsidy Mechanisms for Low-Income Homeownership.Contents Introduction: Filling the Void Between Homeownership and Rental Housing Balancing Affordability, Access, and Risk; Standards, Loan Products, and Performance: What Have We Learned?; The Evolving Role of State Housing Finance Agencies; Mortgage Default Option Mispricing and Procyclicality The Government's Role in the Evolving Mortgage Market; Rethinking Duties to Serve in Housing Finance; What Role Has the Government Played in Creating a Dual Mortgage Market in the Past and How Likely Is One to Emerge in the Future?; The Role of Mortgage Finance in Financial (In)Stability Sustaining Homeownership; Protecting Homeowners, Post-Purchase: Lessons Learned; and The Home Mortgage Foreclosure Crisis: Lessons Learned.
Eric S. Belsky is managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and coeditor of several Brookings/JCHS collaborations, including Moving Forward: The Future of Consumer Credit and Mortgage Finance and Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the Unexamined Goal. Christopher E. Herbert is research director at the Joint Center, where he conducts housing policy research and oversees the State of the Nation's Housing and America's Rental Housing report series. Jennifer H. Molinsky is a research associate at the Joint Center. Prior to joining the center she was chief planner for long-range planning in Newton, Mass.
