REFinBlog

Editor: David Reiss
Cornell Law School

October 28, 2024

Social Housing, Federal Style

By David Reiss

        U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) and Representative Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently introduced the Homes Act which would establish a Housing Development Authority. The HDA is based on the Social Housing Development Authority bill introduced in New York … Continue reading

July 14, 2023

Housing Supply and The Housing Crisis

By David Reiss

Opportunity Now interviewed me about how limited housing construction impacts the housing crisis: Dynamic metropolitan areas like the Bay Area, LA, and New York City suffer from longstanding mismatches between the supply of housing and demand for it. Local communities … Continue reading

April 27, 2022

Sharing Your Home with Strangers

By David Reiss

Debra Bechtel, Crystal Liu, Ernira Mehmetaj, and I have just posted Sharing Your Home with Strangers: Common-Interest Ownership and Financing Options to SSRN (as well as to bepress). The abstract reads, As the affordable housing crisis in the U.S. escalates, … Continue reading

July 10, 2019

Does Historic Preservation Limit Affordable Housing?

By David Reiss

I answer that it can in CQ Researcher’s Historic Preservation:  Can The Past Escape The Wrecking Ball? Many people fail to realize that land use policies like historic preservation involve big trade-offs. The most important one is that if you want … Continue reading

May 9, 2019

Financing The American Dream

By David Reiss

I published Financing The American Dream in the May/June 2019 issue of the ABA’s Probate & Property magazine.  it opens, Two movie scenes can bookend the last hundred years of housing finance. In Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (RKO … Continue reading

March 8, 2018

Sustainable Housing for FHA Borrowers

By David Reiss

Donghoon Lee and Joseph Tracy of the NY Fed have posted a staff report, Long-Term Outcomes of FHA First-Time Homebuyers. It opens, The Commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), David Stevens, in remarks delivered on December 12, 2009, defined the purpose of … Continue reading