In Case You Missed It: A Look at Recent National Housing Policy News

GSE leadership no longer expecting reform

Fannie, Freddie CEOs focus on reducing risk, expanding credit

http://www.housingwire.com/articles/35390-gse-leadership-no-longer-expecting-reform
The government-sponsored enterprises are getting back to their core mission, shaking the idea that a resolution to conservatorship is just around the corner and reshaping their business models to reduce risk to taxpayers while expanding access to credit.   That was the message from Timothy Mayopoulos, president and CEO Fannie Mae and Donald Layton, CEO of Freddie Mac, speaking on the “A Conversation with GSE Leadership” panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s 102nd Annual Convention and Expo in San Diego, California. Nearly 4,500 real estate finance professionals are in San Diego this week for the convention.

Boomers, Minorities to Drive Future Housing Demand

https://www.mba.org/mba-newslinks/2015/october/mba-newslink-friday-10-23-15/boomers-minorities-to-drive-future-housing-demand
Nearly 16 million households are expected in the U.S. housing market by 2024, which Mortgage Bankers Association economists said should lead to much greater demand for both renter- and owner-occupied housing.   MBA Vice President of Research and Economics Lynn Fisher said with an average of 1.6 million additional households per year, housing market growth over the next decade could be among the strongest the U.S. has ever seen.   "Just the sheer change in the number of people are driving the creation of new household formation," Fisher said here at the MBA 102nd Annual Convention & Expo.  In August, MBA released a research paper, Housing Demand: Demographics and the Numbers Behind the Coming Multi-Million Increase in Households, showing the housing demand surge will be driven by Hispanics, Baby Boomers, Asian-Americans and Millennials (http://mba.informz.net/MBA/data/images/15292_Research_Growth_White_Paper.pdf).

Fixing Housing Is Key to Addressing Income Inequality

http://time.com/4075819/real-estate/
We’re not having a real discussion about income inequality unless we’re talking about the serious gap between what people earn and how much of their income they must spend on rent.   As the nation’s population grows over the next 15 years, new renters will outnumber homeowners, with nearly six in 10 new households renting their homes, according to a forecast by the Urban Institute. At the same time, the number of renter households paying more than half their income on rent could rise as high as 14.8 million by 2025, up from 11.8 million this year, according to a recent forecast by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies and Enterprise Community Partners Inc., the affordable housing nonprofit where I serve on the board.

A Lot of Cheap Housing Is About to Get Very Expensive 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-21/a-lot-of-cheap-housing-is-about-to-get-very-expensive
With 400,000 affordable units expiring, housing advocates fear that owners will seek to cash in on gentrifying neighborhoods.  Urban Institute fellow Erika Poethig has a poster in her office showing 22 apartment buildings along Chicago's Lake Shore Drive. They were all built with U.S. government dollars to provide affordable housing to thousands of low-income households—and have since been converted to market-rate apartments and condominiums.  For Poethig, a former official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, those apartments are a warning. There are currently about 1.34 million units of affordable housing created by a HUD program known as Section 8 project-based rental assistance, according to a blog post published on Wednesday by Poethig and her Urban Institute colleague Reed Jordan. More than 30 percent of those units are kept affordable by contracts that are set to expire by the end of 2017.