Help Urged to Fulfill Dream
After all this time, is homeownership in the United States only a dream?
In reality, that increasingly appears to be the case.
For the typical young first-time buying persons and families and, certainly, for lower-income families, the odds are increasing drastically.
One recent national study indicates that 70% of renters who eventually hope to buy that mythical dream house can’t afford the down payment. But 55% of that group said they “very much” want to buy now but they just cannot hurdle that first big step.
The National Assn. of Realtors, in the study entitled “Homeownership: Key to the American Dream,” and supported by a statement from the Beverly Hills Board of Realtors and other realty boards, says:
“The down payment obstacle, along with other factors, suggest it is time for the federal government to implement programs that will help the American dream of homeownership become a reality for more families and individuals. We firmly believe housing should become the national priority it once was.”
This continuing concern about “affordability” comes in the wake of the just-ended and little noted American Home Week, touted as a “national observance of our rights to own, use and transfer private property.”
But for most members of the industry, other than acknowledging the proclamation and perhaps calling public attention to it by putting a sign or poster in their office windows, it’s pretty much business as usual. That’s out of character for a usually aggressive and promotion-minded group.
Adding new fodder to the affordability battle will be 20 papers to be published this month by the Center for Real Estate Development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., reporting on nine months of study on issues related to national housing policy.
The papers will deal with such matters as homelessness, the status of low-income rental housing and affordable home ownership, but the recurrent theme emerging from the studies by housing industry authorities points to one big target--the federal government.
The critical turning point in the national housing scene began in 1981, under the first Reagan Administration. The report, in essence, will state:
“During the past 7 years, the role of state and local governments and nonprofit organizations working with the private sector to produce housing has increased.
“While there are many impressive examples throughout the country of creative initiatives by these groups, these efforts cannot cope with the magnitude of the problem without additional help in terms of both money and leadership from the federal government.”
In an overview paper, “Housing in the 1990s” by two professors of MIT’s department of urban studies and planning, they point to the major shift over the last two decades in the role of the federal government in housing.
The height of federal involvement, according to Langley Keyes and Denise DiPasquale, was spurred by passage of the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968, setting the goal for 6 million federally subsidized housing units to be built in the following decade.
In 1973, that effort was watered down by the Nixon Administration’s moratorium on housing. Later, under the Carter Administration, there was a sustained effort to revive the plan and finally, the diminished program “became an easy target for cutting back on the federal role in housing” when the Reagan Administration took over in 1981, the professors wrote.
They also cite the emphasis in President Reagan’s Commission on Housing to let the “genius of the market economy” solve housing problems, a genius that would be realized if only it could be allowed to escape “the fetters of public regulation and policies.”
Consequently, they conclude, the dominant federal role in housing for the past 7 years has been largely to get the federal government out of the housing business.
But wait, starting Wednesday, the U.S. League of Savings Institutions, representing the nation’s primary home loan lenders, will embark on a $5-million national television advertising campaign designed to spark new interest in home buying.
The spring and fall ad campaign on prime-time TV, using both 60-second and 30-second commercials, will stress that the lending institutions are “your partners in the American Dream.”
“After years of deregulation, which have blurred our image,” the league noted, “we want to reestablish in the public view our dedication to housing and family savings. The commercials dramatically show our essential role in the American way of life.”
