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

October 29, 2021

Reducing Land Use and Zoning Restrictions

By David Reiss

The White House hosted an event today on Reducing Land Use and Zoning Restrictions. While the event was pretty short — an hour or so — it had a bunch of heavy hitters presenting, including Professor Edward Glaeser of Harvard. … 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