Amidst a lot of anger and outrage directed at a proposed development in Northeast Austin proposing to provide transitional housing…
Category: National issues
National issues encompasses housing topics we are seeing on the federal level. This includes focusing on agencies and topics like HUD, U.S. Congress, civil rights, fair housing advocacy, and work from other states and our national partners.
The toll from Hurricane Dolly is not in and we’re not prepared for a low income housing disaster
At this hour we still don’t have a full account of damage from Hurricane Dolly which hit Brownsville and the…
Bo McCarver’s weekly housing news compilation – 7/23/2008
My friend and fellow houser Bo McCarver has agreed to share with the Texas housers blog the housing related stories…
Recalling the prehistory of public housing in Texas
Watch our interview with Professor Fox on the origins of public housing in Texas. A number of years ago Karen…
Just how crazy can the WSJ editorial page be? Check out the attack on the housing trust fund.
On July 8 the Wall Street Journal editorial page let loose on the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund in an…
When housing advocates sell out bad things happen
I’ve been complaining about it for years, Now that the New York Times has said it maybe folks will take…
The effect of the Fannie/Freddie meltdown on affordable housing
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shares are falling like a rock. The Bush Administration is said to be working on…
The Texas mortgage industry needs to take a hard look in the mirror
After reading Richard Bitner’s new book, Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider’s Tale of Geed, Fraud and Ignorance I…
The voice of consumers is missing in judging subsidized housing
Low income tenants are seldom consulted about the quality of housing that the government builds for them. I have long…
Nonprofit FHA downpayment assistance scheme nets 19% Texas defaults
I’m sorry if this makes me sound like an affordable housing hertic but this bothers me. NPR reports there are…
Housers need to shun “over-opinionization” and appreciate the big picture
One of the occupational diseases of working in affordable housing is overspecialization leading to “over-opinionization”. This malady infects housing practitioners…
State of the Nation’s Housing – it’s getting worse
I know I have been mostly blogging about problems lately. All of this negative housing news can be depressing. I…
A honest critique of media foreclosure prevention pablum
My friend and sometimes colleague Robert Doggett eviscerates an example of the typical advice story the media dishes out to…
National fixes for post disaster housing programs
I have posted the testimony I presented to Congress regarding how the federal government can betterprovide long-term housing disaster assistance…
Understanding the role of GSEs, HUD and affordable housing in the subprime crisis
A page 1 story in the Washingtom Post Tuesday laid a major part of the blame for the subprime lending…
At least we are better off than Mississippi and Alabama
Watch my testimony before the Subcommittee on Housing and Community Opportunity of the House Financial Service Committee, or, better yet,…
FEMA and HUD: not who you would want to depend on to throw you a life preserver
The House Financial Services Committee called HUD and FEMA to testify about when the lead federal agencies for hurricane relief…
We have not learned the lessons of Katrina
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina we wondered what we could do to help. We settled on four things: 1)…