Hi George,

Thanks for sharing your deep experience in the market and this information with me. I think you’re correct that since the Fair Housing Act of 1968, race has not been an explicit criteria in these decisions (though sadly, based on the research I cited, in many markets in the US race-based discrepancies in loan approval rates still persist even amongst renters of equal income, education, loan amount, etc.). The reason I was outlining the pre-1968 race-based policies (FHA’s explicit policies from roughly 1930 to 1968) was to highlight one of the main causes of the racial gap in homeownership and wealth (i.e. because wealth gets passed down through generations), which in turns means that even race neutral policies (and problems like our housing shortage) today do have racially disparate impacts. To one of the points I think you’re making here, I do appreciate the market forces that exist and the fact that government intervention often creates unintended consequences and entirely new problems. That’s why the solutions I’m focused on are mostly about reducing costs and streamlining processes so we can build housing to match job growth. If we really don’t want more housing, we should stop supporting job growth (obviously that’s not my stance, but either way, our public policy ought to be intellectually honest about the need for housing when we green light commercial development). Only the private development market can solve a housing gap of this scale and to a large extent, government needs to rethink how it interacts with that market. Please let me know if you think there’s a better way out of this mess! Thanks again for the feedback, George. I appreciate it and hope you’re well.

Best,
Matt