UEPI News and Commentary

What is a housing "crisis"?

Colleagues and Friends:

What constitutes a housing "crisis"? Do we face a housing crisis when home prices are spiraling upward (as they did between the mid-1990s and 2006) or when they are tumbling downward (as has occurred during the past two years)? Or both? The problem is that, under both scenarios, the gap between incomes and home prices persisted beyond what any reasonable society should allow. Why? Don’t blame builders, or bankers, or landlords, or homeowners. They were doing what we expect them to do—maximize their returns. We face this crisis because the federal government has let “market forces” and greed dominate the nation’s housing. Speculation and boom-and-bust cycles will persist until they are reigned in by government. Government is necessary to make business, and markets, act responsibly. Without it, capitalism becomes anarchy. Without clear groundrules, every segment of the housing industry—builders, banks, brokers, landlords, investors, and others—becomes so short-sighted and greedy that they don’t see the train wreck coming around the corner. The major housing problem facing the U.S. is the gap between what people earn and the price of housing. We can’t solve the problem unless we deal with both wages and housing costs. Drawing on a number of studies and recent trends, I discuss this topic in a column on Rooflines, the blogsite of the National Housing Institute.  I refer you to my column, but also encourage you to go to Rooflines' homepage, look at the diversity of topics discussed there, join the conversation yourself, and become a regular Rooflines reader.

Obama and urban policy; Moyers on inequality and LA labor; Dumon on responsible business practices

Friends and Colleagues:

My column in today's Huffington Post focuses on putting the nation's long-neglected cities and metro areas  back on the political agenda.

Next week, Barack Obama will be addressing the US Conference of Mayors annual meeting, while John McCain has so far not accepted the USCM's invitation to speak. To win the White House, Obama has to both increase turnout in cities and capture more than a majority of suburban voters. My article, which draws on a Brookings Institution report released this week, suggests how an Obama Administration and the next Congress might address the challenges and potentials of America's metro areas, cities and suburbs alike. The U.S. has many serious problems that are disproportionately located in cities and older suburbs, but these are national problems and require federal solutions. We can't have a strong national economy without healthy metro areas.

Mortgage Meltdown; Baseball Steroid Scandal; How Unions Help the Economy; Edwards; NCLB; What the Dems Should Do On Jan. 2008; Fun With Alan Greenspan

Friends -

Here is a hodgepodge of articles (only one by me) on different topics that might be of interest:

A Progressive Agenda for "Housing the Working Poor" and other issues

Friends - 

The current (Fall 2007) issue of Shelterforce magazine, published by the National Housing Institute, explores strategies for promoting a progressive housing agenda in a Democratic-controlled Congress and White House after January 2009. It includes my cover story, "Housing the Working Poor," and a critique by Barbara Sard of the Center for Budget & Policy Priorities. In addition, Greg Squires of George Washington University offers a proposal for building a more robust fair-housing movement. PLUS: In “Struggling in the Crescent City,”  learn how a burgeoning network of local grass-roots organizations has taken the lead in rebuilding homes and neighborhoods two years after Katrina hit New Orleans.

With the majority of Americans now in favor of reducing poverty and dealing with the growing economic insecurity of middle-income families (including the accelerating wave of foreclosures, loss of health insurance and pensions), the time is right to advance progressive policies for achieving social and economic equity into the mainstream of American politics. Housing activists are strategizing with their political allies on how to move this agenda to center stage in the 2008 presidential debate.

Happy MLK Day

Many of you have seen the LA Times' 4-day series last week criticizing the United Farm Workers.  In response, I wrote this op-ed, published in the Sunday LA Times (yesterday), criticizing the paper's general coverage of labor and workplace issues.

On a positive note, the NY Times Magazine yesterday ran a great cover story on the growing "living wage" movement around the country, focusing on ACORN staffer Jen Kern.
And Holly Sklar has a great article about Dr. King's views about economic justice and labor on the TomPaine website.

The new (Winter 2006) issue of Dissent has my tribute to Rosa Parks.

CommonSense last week published a tribute to civil liberties and housing activist Frank Wilkinson by Jan Breidenbach and me.  It was also published in The Nation as part of Katrina Vanden Heuvel's column.

Also in The Nation, I recommend "A Top Ten List of Bold Ideas" by Gar Alperovitz and Thad Williamson. Even if you don't agree with all of these ideas it is important for progressives to create a positive forward-looking agenda, not just be against things.

Something to be against, though, are the huge tax break for the wealthy, including that part of the homeowner deduction that goes to the richest folks with the biggest homes. My article in the current issue of Shelterforce examines President Bush's tax reform task force and its recent recommendation to reform what I call the "mansion subsidy":

Finally, I recommend a new report by Columbia University economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes, who estimate the cost of the war in Iraq at $2 trillion - four times more than the Bush administration's projections.

Frank Wilkinson's Legacy

The obituaries for Frank Wilkinson,  who died January 2 at 91, primarily focused on his role as a leading opponent of McCarthyism, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and government spying on citizens. In 1958,  Wilkinson was one of the last people ordered to prison for defying HUAC.  He appealed his contempt citation all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5 to 4 against him. After spending nine months in federal prison in 1961, Wilkinson through the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation, spend more than a decade fighting to dismantle HUAC, which was finally abolished in 1975. Wilkinson also fought the FBI.  He sued the FBI to obtain its files on him, eventually getting 132,000 documents,  which revealed that the agency had been spying on him for 38 years. A federal judge order the FBI to end its surveillance of Wilkinson.