The Great Financial Crisis, COVID-19 and other events have helped bring about a housing supply shortage and affordability challenge today, leaving homeownership out of reach for many Americans. While there is agreement that a problem exists, no solutions have emerged to effectively remedy the situation, but many in the housing finance system hope public policy may be able to lead the way forward. Dennis Shea, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center's J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, talks about initiatives currently underway and his thoughts on what policymakers can and must do to address current home affordability problems.
Transcript:
Spencer Lee (00:09):
Good afternoon and welcome to the Arizent Leaders Forum. I'm Spencer Lee, a reporter at National Mortgage News, one of several publications in the Arizent family coming to you from our offices in New York City today. Our topic this afternoon or this morning, depending on where you are, is tackling housing affordability through public policy, a big subject to chew on. And with us, our guest today is Dennis Shea, the executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy, part of the Bipartisan Policy Center, based in Washington D.C. And before we get to all the little wonky details that I think most people are tuned in here for, I wanted to welcome Dennis. Welcome to you, and invite you to sort of introduce yourself, talk a little bit about your experience in housing policy, and also if you could tell us a little bit about the BPC and the Terwilliger Center. I think many in our audience might not know about the work you do.
Dennis Shea (01:08):
Sure. Well, thank you Spencer for this invitation and thank the Arizent family for inviting me into this virtual home. Much appreciated.
(01:19)
The Terwilliger Center was founded two years ago at the Bipartisan Policy Center as a result of the donation by a housing philanthropist Ron Terwilliger. And our mission is really very, very simple: to promote housing affordability on a bipartisan basis through public policies. And so we focus on rental affordability as well as the affordability of homeownership. We are housed within the Bipartisan Policy Center, which is a think tank established about 16 years ago by four former Senate majority leaders, including my former boss. I served as his deputy chief of staff and counsel. That's Bob Dole. And so they thought, in their years after serving as majority leaders, that a place like the BPC was essential, where Republicans and Democrats could come together, talk about issues and potentially find solutions.
(02:20)
The BPC has been in the housing business almost since its inception from 2011 to 2013. There was something called the BPC Housing Commission, which convened for a couple of years and issued a report called Housing America's Future: New Directions for Housing Policy for National Housing Policy. And it was established in the wake of the financial crisis that collapsed the housing market. And one of the lead issues or suggestions that they came up with was a reformed housing finance system, a new system where Fannie and Freddie would gradually shift to a different system with the new regulator.
(03:10)
But of course, and it was the basis of the Corker-Warner legislation and the Johnson-Crapo bill, which some of the listening audience may remember. But we did that. We've been focused on health and housing, senior housing, so it's great to rejoin. I joined the Terwilliger Center two years ago when it was founded. It's great to join forces with someone like Ron and with the great people at the BPC.
Spencer Lee (03:39):
Well, again, thank you for being here and thank you to the Terwilliger Center for the work you do. Bipartisanship. It's seems to be a tall task right now. That might be an understatement, but one issue where there does seem to be support from across the aisle is in housing affordability and increasing supply. And so we have a lot to tackle.
(04:03)
Before I get to my first question though, I wanted to let the audience know we do have some Q&A available. If you have a question, feel free to type it in that chatbox you see on your screen. We'll hopefully be able to get to a few of those questions toward the end of this discussion. I also wanted to pull out some data we have just to underscore how timely a topic this is. In research our parent company, Arizent, conducted at the end of last year, sort of an outlook for 2023, a wishlist among the mortgage industry, 80% ranked affordable housing as a major issue needing prioritization in 2023, wanting government officials, whether that be local or federal, to address it. Almost half, or 49%, said the number one challenge for mortgage lenders will be finding qualified home buyers. Now, I know the Terwilliger Center has its own American Housing Plan Act, I think that's what you call it, incorporating a bit of legislation that's been introduced and proposed already, but could you give us an idea of what that's all about, maybe the elevator-pitch version?
Dennis Shea (05:14):
Sure. It's tough to do the elevator pitch, but I'll try to keep it concise. I mean, we view the housing affordability challenge through three lenses, the lack of affordable supply, the need to preserve the existing affordable housing stock and the need to help families, help households whose incomes simply don't match and will not match housing costs. So through demand-side supports. So last year, past couple of years, there is something called Build Back Better. There's a huge amount of spending, housing investment in housing programs in Build Back Better. But it was a partisan package. It was done through the reconciliation process, and ultimately, all those housing, that housing spending was removed. As an organization, BPC does not support reconciliation as a process for policymaking, whoever's in charge because it's inherently partisan. But we said, in the wake of that, look, there's a lot that can be done in each of these three areas: supply, preservation, demand-side supports that is truly bipartisan, that has bipartisan support. So we canvassed the scene here in Washington, came up with a couple of new ideas as well and said, look, this is a comprehensive package — supply, preservation demand-side help. It is bipartisan. Everything here has a bipartisan pedigree, and if it were enacted comprehensively, it would make a meaningful difference, an appreciable difference in housing affordability in our country, we think at least. So that's what the American Housing Act, it's a comprehensive plan. We're shopping it on Capitol Hill.
(07:10)
Various pieces of it have been introduced and actually have moved forward in some respects.
(07:18)
And I think your point, Spencer, at the beginning about the poll, we've done polling as well through with our partner Morning Consult survey firm, and it shows really strong bipartisan support for many of the initiatives in the American Housing Act and more generally for Congress to tackle the issue of housing affordability because housing costs, high housing costs are affecting not just the coasts and the big cities, but rural America all across the country, blue states and red states. And I think Republicans particularly are hearing more from their constituents about the need for action on housing affordability.
Spencer Lee (08:03):
Yeah, we see the data every week. 2023 hasn't seen home prices decrease that much, if at all, and it's nationwide. But of the different segments that you address, probably I suspect for our audience and our coverage, we focus a lot on single family, affordable single-family housing. And I'm wondering what are a few of the initiatives out there, whether they're in your act or elsewhere that you think holds potential for increasing affordable housing, single-family housing supply and could quickly add more.
Dennis Shea (
Well, let me just say that. Yeah. I think it's important for people to understand that rental and single homeownership are part of the same spectrum. So if you increase affordability of rental housing, that, I believe has positive benefits on the homeownership side of the market as well. But on the single- family side. Some of our suggestions are, for example, the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which has got strong bipartisan support in Congress That would provide new tax credits, create new tax credit to incentivize private investment in the rehabilitation and construction of entry-level homes for sale in distressed communities., and it would be targeted to lower- and moderate-income families. If that bill were enacted, we estimated it would create about 500,000 new homes over the next 10 years. I mean, local zoning regulations — you could have restrict in many places that restrict construction to the traditional single-family home, but there are opportunities for ownership that are excluded at times by these restrictions.
(09:56)
So we support efforts to liberalize some of these local zoning regulations to allow greater density and greater diversity of housing types. I mean, on the demand side, we support something called the LIFT Act, which is basically, it was introduced by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, but conceived in part by the people like Ed Pinto at the American Enterprise Institute, which is sort of a right-of-center organization, which would allow homeowners to build up equity faster. It would basically say, through a subsidy by the Treasury Department of interest rate costs and origination fee costs, to take a 30-year FHA mortgage and allow that the same payment over 20 years before it's paid off. So it'd allow homeowners to build more equity. There are other ideas in Congress. Senator Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat has proposed a $15,000 a year tax credit for first-time homeownership that has not generated bipartisan support. I mean, there are other ideas around down payment assistance that also have not generated support among many Republicans. But I think we're focusing on the supply side mostly, and our main sort of home ownership supply idea is the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act.
Spencer Lee (11:30):
I'm glad you brought that up. I think one topic in this discussion that sometimes gets overlooked is preservation. Was that act introduced this year? How long has it been around?
Dennis Shea (11:45):
The Neighborhood Homes has been introduced in both the House and the Senate? I'll tell you something, Spencer. About seven years ago, I was working for Ron Terwilliger. I was helping out with his foundation. We're having a conference in Detroit, and I was putting together the programming for the forum. And someone called me up and said, could I have an opportunity to present on something called the Neighborhood Homes Investment tax credit? And I said, oh, that's interesting. What is it?
(12:15)
And I got on a website, I looked at it, I said, okay, you can come and present. And lo and behold, I think it's maybe six years ago, this is a leading idea in the housing policy space. This is something that has legs, that has traction. It's been introduced in both the House and the Senate and is bipartisan. So I hope it gets enacted this year. This a possibility. But it just shows you that an idea — it's great for people to think about ideas because an idea — you put it on a piece of paper, you put it on the website, and look, it's gets socialized on Capitol Hill. It gets introduced as legislation. Now it's one of the leading supply side housing policy initiatives in Congress.
Spencer Lee (13:11):
Another topic that I've been interested in, especially recently, I wrote an article about it. Sort of giving it a shoutout,. You should all go read it if you're a subscriber. But manufactured housing.
(13:22)
I think the FHA, I believe just either opened an office for manufactured housing or maybe they just adopted it from another agency. But there is a focus on the potential of manufactured housing providing some solutions. There seems to be a concerted effort right now looking at prefabricated homes. And what do you think about the efforts out there? Can this help increase supply, provide a solution?
Dennis Shea (13:53):
Yeah, absolutely. I'd say manufactured housing is a very important form of housing supply. It is regulated pursuant to a HUD code. It was highlighted in the Biden administration's housing supply action plan as an area of focus. I know Fannie and Freddie have in their duty to serve targets, have increased purchases or targeted increased purchases of manufactured housing loans. The problem with manufactured housing is that it's traditionally financed through personal financing mechanisms rather than a conventional mortgage. And a conventional mortgage usually is less costly and has a better more favorable loan terms. So trying to figure out the financing. I know there's a lot of thinking going on at FHA, FHFA, Fannie and Freddie about how to improve financing for manufactured housing. Let me also say different from manufactured housing is modular housing or offsite construction of housing, which is typically regulated, not at the federal level, but at the state and local levels.
(15:13)
And there's a lot of activity going on in that space. It's very interesting. We had our housing supply summit last month, or actually in June here in Washington D.C. and we had one company present called Vessel Technologies. They're building modular multifamily housing based in New York and New England. So you basically build most of the parts in a factory and you bring the parts together onsite and then you put them together there. And it appears that it costs less because less time on site, more efficiency in the factory. So we're hopeful that — there's been a lot of talk about modular offsite factory built housing for many years, but hopefully that will take off. And there are issues like 3D printing. I mean, we also had a 3D printing company at our summit, provider of services and technology for 3D printers. So you're beginning to see some homes being built through 3D printing processes, which are done very quickly and onsite and actually look quite attractive, are quite attractive. So that's another potential opportunity for lower costs and improved affordability.
Spencer Lee (16:43):
In doing research for the story. I learned a lot about modular constructions. It's just a real interesting trend that to keep an eye on. Now you mentioned technology that is a focus. We try to focus quite a bit on technology usually in regards to the home lending process, sometimes the secondary market process, but we haven't thought that much about it in terms of increasing housing supply. You mentioned 3D, I think it was 3D printing. Is there anything else out there that really could move the needle? AI's been in the news a lot lately, seems to be sort of like the flavor of the season, flavor of the year, but maybe it's a stretch to say it can help assist with affordable housing. But what about technology's role?
Dennis Shea (17:33):
Well, I think technology's potential to play a huge role, not just in the construction technologies, but about processes. I have not spent a lot of time on or time at all on AI and housing affordability, but I have presentations that have been made to me about how AI could help more finely, and actually more broadly, promote access to credit with better predictive models. So I think the jury's out. We'll see. I think there's a lot of — the issues like of modular and 3D, they've been out there for a few years now. So I remember at the summit someone turned around. I think this is really going to happen this time. I mean, this is for real. We're not, we're going to go beyond talk and hope and actually produce some new supply through these technologies. So we're always on the lookout. Mass timber is another area of technology that we've explored. So we're always on the lookout for new technologies to promote, to examine, and potentially to promote these opportunities to improve housing affordability.
Spencer Lee (18:47):
Well, that's interesting. Mass timber. I haven't heard much about that. So thanks for the tip. I'll do some research.
Dennis Shea (18:53):
Oregon. Northwest, go to the Northwest. Your part of the country, your neck of the neck, the woods,
Spencer Lee (18:59):
Yes, where I am originally from, the Pacific Northwest. Right. So yes, you mentioned in terms of modular housing, I wanted to pivot a little bit towards some of the challenges. And in dealing with modular housing and in general, manufactured housing, zoning issues are always a challenge. Different regulations across cities, across the country. Is there is, what efforts are being made there on government level? Is there a one-size-fits-all package? Could there be a federal?
Dennis Shea (19:33):
Well, let me just mention before we go to that question mean modular. We did a report with APTT Associates, which highlighted the difficulties of building modular housing in rural communities, which can be found on the bipartisan policy.org website by APTT associates. And rural communities need affordable housing, but there's not economies of scale to attract that type of investment. So if I'm a modular housing manufacturer, I need to build a factory. I need to, if I'm not going to go there and build a factory and just to build three or four homes a year, I need to have some economies of scale. So our paper suggests a couple of ideas about how to build or create, invest in this factory, in these factories and create great demand that produces economies of scale.
(20:29)
But to your question, Spencer, about regulatory barriers. There are regulatory, local zoning issues can limit the type of diversity of housing. They can say no modular homes, no manufactured homes in this community.
(20:53)
I know the Biden administration, and this is something we support, just released a follow-up to the housing supply action plan, which would create a $85 million grant program to assist localities who are wishing to reform their zoning laws to assist them in that effort, to allow more diversity and more density and different types of housing. But a lot of, in many cases, local communities don't have the skillset or the resources to put together a sensible and realistic plan. So the purpose of this grant program is to help in that effort. So that's something that we support.
Spencer Lee (21:44):
Now, is there anything being done — have you seen in your research in talking to people across the country — is there a city or a local government that is doing something really interesting that might provide a roadmap or template that others can follow?
Dennis Shea (22:00):
Well, we we're going to have put out a paper shortly highlighting a number of different communities that have done some exciting things. We released a video recently, which highlights what Minneapolis is doing to support affordable rental housing through zoning reform and other initiatives. But also we have highlighted what Utah, a red state — Minneapolis is a blue — let's say a blue community in Utah's sort of a red state where they have a very forward thinking Governor Spencer Cox. And they've passed legislation which authorizes the accessory dwelling units, the construction of accessory dwelling units on single-family properties. So we think that is a very positive step to increase housing supply. A number of communities, as we all know, I mean post-Covid world, our home has now become our place of employment and at least for part of the week. And there's about, I think 12.5% commercial vacancy rate in the United States and downtowns and many large cities are really, really struggling.
(23:29)
So there's a lot of action at the local level in places like New York and Washington, D.C. and elsewhere, which are trying to figure out how do we promote the transition, the conversion of unused commercial property to affordable housing, which could be single-family home, owned property. And there are a number of barriers like zoning barriers are really an issue. Permitting issues can be served as an obstacle. So I hate to be such a big, big promoter of the , the Terwilliger Center. But we just put out a paper, which is on our website right now, just put it out this morning, which highlights the obstacles and the opportunities with respect to the conversion of commercial property unused commercial space to affordable housing.
Spencer Lee (24:30):
Well, it's your job to promote the Terwilliger Center, so that's fine. But I did see that headline
Dennis Shea (24:37):
Thank you for the permission,
Spencer Lee (24:40):
But I did see after ,what you talked about, what the Biden administration came out with last week. That was kind of a headline I saw about potentially converting office space to affordable housing. So that's something to keep our eye on. Now, I know, I think primarily, you can correct me if I'm wrong, the Terwilliger Center's focus has been more on supporting legislation that congressmen and women bring. But do you have any hand in shaping legislation out there that you and trying to bring to Congress' attention?
Dennis Shea (25:17):
Yeah, one thing we're trying to put forward is the idea that this is maybe not a big concern to this particular audience, but affordable LITC program, low income housing tax credit program, which has been our most successful affordable rental production program, about 3.7 million affordable rental homes have been created since 1986 when the program was first created. But it creates, the program establishes, helps support finance through private investment, the construction and rehab of affordable rental homes. But the affordability restrictions, which are typically about 30 years in most jurisdictions, these properties are now moving out of the 30-year affordability periods. So what do you do about making sure they are preserved in the affordable rental stock? So we're working on that.
(26:24)
We have proposed that for new low-income housing tax credit units, that the affordability requirements be in perpetuity. Typically it's 30 years at the federal level, which is the baseline. But states have a lot of flexibility. Some say 40, some say 50. I think Vermont is in perpetuity. So we say establish an perpetuity standard at the federal level, and we don't believe that would really inhibit private sector investment in the tax credit properties if there's an in-perpetuity standard. But there might be other things you need to do with that, including making sure there's financing available, because these homes will need rehab and upgrade if they're going to remain in the housing stock. So that's one issue that we've worked on.
Spencer Lee (27:19):
Now just looking at some of the legislation that's been introduced in over the past few years, I mean, there is a lot of bipartisan support. I've seen some of the sponsors, co-sponsors of the bills, some sometimes odd bedfellows, so there is bipartisan support on this issue. I know Congress is on recess right now, so we won't see anything in the next five months, next five weeks or so, five months, maybe five months. But we won't see any results until at least the fall. But given that there is support from across the aisle, what holds back these initiatives?
Dennis Shea (27:57):
Well, we're optimists at the Terwilliger Center. That's a great question, Spencer. I mean, I think we've seen more interest in affordable housing today than we have seen in the past. The first hearing in the Senate Finance Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax policy, was on how tax policy can advance affordable housing. The first two hearings, if I'm not mistaken, by the Senate Banking Committee, were on affordable housing. So there is, there's more and more interest. We have polling, which shows that people strongly care about affordable housing and want Congress to act.
(28:42)
But it's always been a problem that it's never the number one priority or the number two priority or even the number three priority. It's like it's a priority, but there are other things, other issues ahead of it in the queue with limited legislative bandwidth in Congress in legislative days. So it's our job to keep the pressure on and to remind members of Congress that this is an issue that's really of significant concern to their constituents.
(29:14)
So I think it's just to answer your question directly, just there is understanding is awareness in Congress, but it's always in the second tier or third tier of issues. And we need to get housing into the first tier of issues. And again, as I mentioned, there's just so much that can be done on a bipartisan basis. Let me just say the low-ncome housing tax credit bill that would expand the low-income housing tax credit has 151 congressional supporters. That's about a third of Congress supporting this bill, almost equally divided between Republicans and Democrats. So we've got to get this over the hill, we got to get this over the hump and get it passed.
Spencer Lee (29:59):
Well, that's a promising number. And just mentioned bipartisan. I wanted to pivot a little bit toward maybe what is National Mortgage News' bread and butter, which is home finance policy. Now, I noticed in your American Housing Act, I mentioned something about creating — and you have already mentioned this earlier in your introduction, — but about building loan programs to support sustainable home ownership for low-income borrowers to create wealth building programs. And can you explain a little bit about how that might work?
Dennis Shea (30:32):
Sure. The idea is to target first-time, first-generation home buyers, lower income. But the idea is more of a let's build equity faster. Let's build wealth faster. And through subsidy by the Treasury Department, the Treasury Department would subsidize the cost of financing, cost of fees in such a way that this 20-year mortgage project, FHA-insured mortgage product, you pay it off in 20 years at the same monthly cost as you would a 30-year. So it's accelerated a payment plan to help households build up equity more quickly. And again, as I mentioned, Senator Warner has introduced this. It was recently introduced in the House of Representatives, I believe Emmanuel Cleaver, a congressman from Missouri is the lead sponsor of it in the house. But it was also sort of a brainchild of people at AEI, specifically Ed Pinto who runs their housing program.
(31:54)
So we thought it made sense. Te uphill battles. I mean, there are other things that to deal with this issue of homeownership, affordability and getting people into homes the first time. There's been issues like Ron Wyden has a $15,000 first-time home buyer tax credit. There've been programs to support down payment assistance. I think the concern among some Republicans is that you're increasing demand without increasing supply. That's the view expressed by them. And when you do that, then you're just going to raise the price cost of housing. So that's been a concern that's been expressed with respect to those ideas.
Spencer Lee (32:47):
Those are interesting developments though. Now, I also wanted to ask a little bit about what might be a controversial topic, at least among lenders right now. I don't know if that's too strong a word, but credit score changes or changes to credit-scoring policy that were introduced, or they haven't been introduced yet. They haven't been rolled out yet, but they were announced late last year by the FHFA. I don't know if I have all my details correct, but converting it from a trimerge credit reporting system to a by merge where they'll accept credit reports from just two agencies rather than three. And also requiring credit scores, two credit scores instead of one. We've had a few op-eds in our publication about that. I think one just went up today. But we've had a few over the past several months and several articles, past and future coming out about this — near future. There's been some pushback. And I'm warning, based on your knowledge, can that move the affordability needle?
Dennis Shea (33:57):
Well, I think it's fair to say that BPC through its past housing work and the Terwilliger Center, we support additional ways to assess credit worthiness. I know the two items, the two new scoring systems, I think it's FICO 10T and bandage score 4.0, they would take into account rental payments and utility payments and telecom payments into account to assess a person's creditworthiness. I think we would support, there should be an more expansive view to assess creditworthiness if you're paying your rent. As I said before, the rental and homeownership markets are connected. They're not step separate silos. But if you're paying your rent on time consistently, that should be considered in assessing creditworthiness. Though I understand, it's not something that we have spent a lot of time considering. There's concern in industry about shifting to this new system in a relatively short period of time and what that might do with their systems management and how to manage that from a systems perspective. So we really haven't wade into that. But just as a general matter, I think it's worthwhile to look at these alternative ways to assess credit
Spencer Lee (35:27):
There are a lot of moving parts, for sure. Yeah. Now I noticed we have a couple questions in the Q&A that I want to get to. But before we get to those, I wanted to maybe touch on the stakeholders you deal with. I mean, you deal with, I imagine lenders, mortgage bankers, builders, probably whole other list of people that I'm not thinking of. But when you talk to them, what are they telling you about affordability right now? Supply? What are their concerns?
Dennis Shea (35:57):
I mean, there is an obvious lack of supply. I mean, we had Sam Khater, the chief economist, Freddie Mac, in one of our webinars last year. And he gave this startling statistic, which we have used, cited that. In 2020, there was just 65,000 starter homes built. When you compare it to the late 1970s, we averaged nearly 420,000 starter homes a year. 420,000 a year in the late 1970s compared to 65,000 in 2022. So we have been making the point, which has been very well received by members of both political parties, that the United States has underbuilt housing by millions of homes over the past 15 years. And there are a variety of reasons for that. One, we never fully recovered from the housing market collapse, and there's not enough skilled construction workers for residential purposes in the United States. That's something that the National Association of Home Builders will tell you.
(37:11)
Land-use restrictions have really limited diversity and density of home building. Land costs are high. Regulatory costs can be unnecessarily high. The National Association of Home Builders says that compliance with regulatory costs adds 40% to the cost of a multifamily building and 25% to the cost of a single family home, just complying with the regulations. So we need to do better there to figure out. Some of these regulations clearly are necessary, but how can that be reformed? And so those are some of the things that we're hearing.
Spencer Lee (37:55):
And when they ask you for advice, what can we do to encourage some of these bills to pass? What can you tell them?
Dennis Shea (38:05):
There are various coalitions that have been formed around, for example, the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act. There's a coalition that has formed. BPC Action, our 501C4 is part of that. We're also part of the coalition. We're supportive of the coalition that supports passage of the bill to expand and strengthen the low-income housing tax credit. So I think the key thing is just to keep telling your member of Congress that housing affordability is really an important issue. And of course, it's always helpful to be precise about what you want to see happen. So if you support the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, say you need to get this passed this year, we really support it. We want you to co-sponsor, we want you todo everything you can to get it passed.
Spencer Lee (38:54):
Now of the legislation out there, is there anything you see that has the greatest potential of moving forward in this congressional session or in the near future?
Dennis Shea (39:05):
Well, I would say those two things, the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, which has 151 bipartisan co-sponsors, is probably — again, these are both supply things, supply tax policy issues — I think has the best chance. It's going to be an uphill battle, but that is the best chance. And I think right behind that is the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act.
Spencer Lee (39:28):
Yeah, I'll, I'll be keeping my eye on that. I think that Neighborhood Homes and Investment Act is really interesting. Yeah.
(39:34)
We have a couple questions here that I want to get to in our last few minutes. One of them, what state did you mention that was working on ADUs? Was that Utah?
Dennis Shea (39:45):
Utah.
Spencer Lee (39:46):
Okay. Utah. Okay. Really interesting development there. Another question, wouldn't it be more important for the FTHB? I'm not sure what that is, but to be able to purchase rather than paying off faster, reducing their payments rather than paying off faster, again, seems to have limited benefit for affordability. This might be in regards to your wealth building plan, but I could be wrong.
Dennis Shea (40:17):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we looked around for, I mean, I understand. I think the question deals with rather than building up equity, isn't it more important to get someone into the home rather than building up equity? And again, we support, we don't think it's an either-or proposition. We support sustainable homeownership. We have been big supporters of post pre-purchase and post-purchase housing counseling to make sure that the homeownership is sustainable. So I don't think it's an either or. I mean, they're both important issues.
Spencer Lee (41:04):
And with that, I think we've just about run up on time. This has been a really interesting discussion, really informative. I hope the audience out there has learned quite a bit. I certainly have.
(41:15)
It's been a real pleasure, and I want to thank you, Dennis. Thank you. Dennis Shea, the executive director of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Housing Policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center. That's a real mouthful, by the way.
(41:27)
But I really appreciate your time today. I enjoyed speaking with you. And to everyone watching this Arizent Leaders Forum, thank you for joining us. Have a good afternoon.
