Housing Reform Talks: Finance Should Not Be Political
July 17, 2015
Housing finance and housing policy should be clearly separated, said Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-TX, speaking on a Bipartisan Policy Center GSE reform panel with Rep. John Delaney, D-MD, in Washington, DC, on July 16. “We should detach the financial piece away from the political process,” he said, adding that the market should determine how many houses and apartments to build, not the government. Neugebauer and Delaney agreed that reform needs to happen and that today’s housing finance system is largely controlled by the federal government. “The government’s role is to provide liquidity to the market and be more predicable like the banking system, which I’m a big supporter of,” said Delaney. “Then there’s the role of pricing risks, which I’m not a supporter of. The government has its roles mixed up.”