Low-Income Homeownership: Examining the Unexamined Goal

Acknowledgments

This book is the culmination of a daylong symposium devoted to critically evaluating low-income homeownership as a business, public policy, and household wealth-building strategy. The Ford Foundation, Freddie Mac, and the Research Institute for Housing America (RIHA) provided the principal funding for the symposium and this volume. The editors are indebted to these organizations for seeing the value in an objective and rigorous examination of the goal of low-income homeownership. We are particularly indebted to four extraordinary individuals who gave freely of their considerable intellect and experience to ensure the success of this endeavor. Frank DeGiovanni of the Ford Foundation, Edward Golding of Freddie Mac, Steven Hornburg of RIHA, and Karl E. Case of Wellesley College all deserve special recognition for their wise counsel and active contribution to shaping the research questions addressed by this collection of papers. At the Joint Center for Housing Studies, Pamela Baldwin, Mark Duda, Annette Bourne, Paola Martino, Elizabeth England, and Jackie Hernandez deserve special thanks for their hard work and dedication to the project. Ann Schnare, formerly of Freddie Mac, Susan Wachter of the Wharton School of Business, and Thomas Stanton, a lawyer based in Washington, D.C., also contributed to the intellectual foundations of this effort when in its formative stages. Their presentations to an interdisciplinary study group at Harvard supported by the Provost’s Office helped sharpen our focus. Other members of xiii Acknowledgments file01 front pp_i-xvi.qxd 7/5/2002 2:08 PM Page xiii the study group who helped us develop our ideas and who were unstintingly supportive colleagues include Leland Cott of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Kent Colton, a Joint Center for Housing Studies fellow, Edward Glaeser of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Paul Grogan, a Joint Center for Housing Studies fellow, Duncan Kennedy of the Harvard Law School, Gary Orfield of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Guy Stuart of the Kennedy School of Government, Edward Robbins and James Stockard of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and Julie Wilson of the Kennedy School of Government. The contributors also deserve special praise for their excellent ideas, rigorous analysis, and their indulgence of the editors during the process of honing the chapters. They, along with the following people who commented on the papers at the symposium, have contributed to our collective understanding of the limits and potentials of low-income homeownership: Alan Schlottman of the University of Nevada, Bruce Katz and Karen Brown of the Brookings Institution, David Listokin of Rutgers University, Dwight Robinson of Freddie Mac, Ellen Seidman of the Office of Thrift Supervision, Francine Justa of Neighborhood Housing Services, Glen Canner of the Federal Reserve, Gordon Steinbach of the Mortgage Guarantee Insurance Corporation, Ira Goldstein of the Reinvestment Fund, Ira Jackson of the Kennedy School of Government, James M. Murphy of New England Realty Resources Inc., John Quigley of the University of California–Berkeley, John Taylor of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Karen Hill of the American Home Owner Education Counseling Institute, Lynn Browne of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Melvin Oliver of the Ford Foundation, Michael LaCour-Little of CityMortgage Inc., Regina Lowrie of Gateway Funding Diversity, Richard Green of the University of Wisconsin, Richard Godfrey Jr. of the Rhode Island Housing and Finance Corporation , Robert Kucab of the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency, and Stuart Gabriel of the University of Southern California. Finally, we wish to acknowledge Joan Retsinas and Cynthia Wilson for their enduring support and ever-fresh perspective and interest in our work. xiv acknowledgments file01 front pp_i-xvi.qxd 7/5/2002 2:08 PM Page xiv Low-Income Homeownership file01 front pp_i-xvi.qxd 7/5/2002 2:08 PM Page xv file01 front pp_i-xvi.qxd 7/5/2002 2:08 PM Page xvi ...