An analysis of the growing affordable crisis in America is delivered in the article below by a housing industry executive, Bridge Capital Markets Group’s Managing Director Inna Khidekel.
Of course Khidekel looks at the problem from the perspective of the housing industry. It’s not perhaps neutral, but it’s an important viewpoint. The lion’s share of all housing, both affordable and unaffordable, is financed and built in America by this countrywide collection of private corporations.
Khidekel’s begins by considering progress to date: why the crisis is getting worse, how little wiggle room the housing industry has to do anything but build more luxury housing, and how government supports to date are but a collection of bandaids that do not even pretend to keep up with the problem.
She then looks forward to imagine possible advances in 2019.
Aside from a little corporate puffery for Bridge Capital, Khidekel is even-handed in her evaluation of progress (or lack thereof). She is quite prepared to criticize private developers where she believes it is due, as well as praising non-profits for the contributions they can make to alleviate the crisis. Read more in: Multi-Housing News: Affordable Housing: What to Expect in 2019
Should we believe this sober industry analysis about the lack of meaningful progress last year and earlier? Or the limited prospects — no brighter than tiny sparks — of the coming year?
If so, there is an inevitable conclusion. The housing industry, with its shareholder allegiances and profit focus, cannot by itself begin to keep up with the affordable housing crisis. And the available collection of subsidies, grants, tax credits, etc., whether local, state, or national, currently allow the housing industry to barely nibble at the margins of the problem.
America needs a proper war on housing unaffordability, with the mobilization of any or all resources necessary to win the many battles ahead.
