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» VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 71 not give up on the need to move more people to homeownership. Senator Brown and your recently published a commentary about the silent housing crisis. You said that the 2016 presidential candidates should address this issue. Why do you think the crisis is overlooked by the media and underestimated by political leaders, and what are some of the things that need to happen policy-wise in housing for the nation to overcome that crisis? I think you asked some very good questions. Two hard questions. Why do I think it's overlooked? I think it's easy to take it for granted and maybe people see it as so massive a problem that they can't get their hands around it. So think we have to disaggregate it, break it into its pieces, and explain to people what needs to be done. I think that this might be a presidential cycle, this four-year cycle, in which enough people are thinking about it that we can actually put it on the presidential agenda. ey talk about the middle class, but don't relate housing to the building of the middle class. ey talk about poor people getting stuck in place, but they don't relate housing as a way to climb up. We talk about the nation being a metropolitan nation, but don't make the connection to the fact that we need a mix of housing types for our cities to be strong. So it's there, but it's just not spoken of in a way that we can disaggregate it and get to the pieces of it and drive home the message that is essential to these other strategies. We talk about inequality, but never link housing to strategies for making the country more equal, and it is essential part. at's my answer to your first question. e second, in terms of policy things, we need to be clear about changing our housing finance system, the GSEs, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so we can trust them again, we can rely on them to function. We also need to be thinking about tax reform. Low income housing tax credit has become a very, very good device for providing affordable housing, we just don't do enough of it. We need to think about housing for our aging population that wants to stay out of nursing homes and in their own homes, if there was appropriately scaled and appropriately priced housing for our elderly Americans, which are becoming such a big part of the population. We need to sit down and talk with the private sector and talk about how we boost up production, how we boost up the supply of affordable housing, and what needs to be done. What innovations in terms of smaller scale units that could be more affordable – different kinds of floor plans, maybe using new materials and focusing on energy sustainability. All those kinds of things that would make a house less expensive. COVER STORY INDUSTRY INSIGHT SUCCESS FORMUL A INDUSTRY INSIGHT

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