Free Republic

A plan to squeeze most residents of the San Francisco Bay Area into multifamily housing offers a test case of whether land-use bureaucracies nationwide, encouraged by the Obama administration, should be allowed to transform American lifestyles under the pretext of combating climate change. Currently, 56 percent of households in the nine-county Bay Area live in single-family homes. That number would drop to 48 percent by 2030, under a high-density development blueprint called Plan Bay Area, recently enacted by the Association of Bay Area Governments and the region’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission. Plan Bay Area has already drawn several legal challenges, and...

As the discussion intensifies in Washington DC about the future of housing finance, the forgotten player in the government guarantee debate is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s presence in the multifamily housing market. President Obama suggested recently that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac be wound down while preserving the 30 year fixed-rate mortgage for borrowers, but didn’t mention the government’s role in multifamily housing. So now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator, FHFA, is seeking guidance on potentially shrinking their multifamily exposure. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is seeking public input on strategies for reducing Fannie Mae and Freddie...