Developing Affordable Housing Ecosystems World Wide
The story so far can be found in Part 1.
Enter the Federal government, in the person of long-time Congressman and Anthony Athanas friend John Joseph Moakley:
Everyone called him “Joe Moke”
Moakley, whom I met a couple of times, was a politician of the old Tip O’Neill school: well-intentioned, savvy, constituent focused, married to politics (a lifelong [...]
The older I get, the more I value past-tense verbs (”Yesterday I did this”) over future tense (”Tomorrow I will that”). So it was with some amusement that I read in a recent Boston Globe story that:
”Today’s announcement ensures that Fan Pier will finally become a reality,” said Boston mayor Tom Menino.
It [...]
[See also Part 1 and Part 2]
Who goes to Liverpool in January?
Other than Beatles fans, of course ….
After my Edinburgh insight and then my Bird of Paradise moment, I had been seriously contemplating creating an international affordable housing finance consultancy (pages 9-11, link in .pdf) focused in impact – making positive change. The customers, therefore, [...]
Although sustainable affordable housing is good for communities, it always costs government money to close the cost-value gap, because of the affordability paradox:
The affordability paradox
In equilibrium environments,
both land and existing property are priced based on market values
… and that is not ‘affordable’ to people below median income
Markets are always in balance …
The reasons are [...]
When rules are clear, business activity expands; it shrinks when they are fuzzy. So for a housing financial ecosystem to flourish, it needs an array of reliable — deterministic, consistent, unbiased — intermediaries who produce precise unimpeachable evidence of:
Footprint: surveys.
Ownership: title and title insurance.
Financing cost: home mortgage disclosure.
Transfer: closing attorneys.
In the US, all of [...]
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