The Gentrification Question

In response to Adam Serwer's piece on how Washington, D.C., has changed over the last decade ("A City Divided"), reader Nick Sementelli writes: "As a white, young professional who has successively migrated east over my six years in the city (from Georgetown to Shaw to Bloomingdale), I'm squarely in the center of the 'gentrification' phenomenon, and I'm eminently familiar with both the tensions these changes foster and the confusion/guilt my peers and I struggle with in how to approach them.

Raj Date, a veteran of the financial sector who founded and led the Cambridge Winter Center for Financial Institutions Policy, will be joining the Treasury Department shortly as a senior adviser to Elizabeth Warren, who is heading up the administration's efforts to implement the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

"The policy question is to what extent the private market can provide that form of insurance or guarantee on its own, or whether this is fundamentally a role for government. ... I believe there is a strong case to be made for a carefully designed guarantee in a reformed system, with the objective of providing a measure of stability in access to mortgages, even in future economic downturns. The challenge is to make sure that any government guarantee is priced to cover the risk of losses, and structured to minimize taxpayer exposure."

Today, Dave Weigel considers the GOP and their views on financial reform:

Republicans don't like being smeared as doing Wall Street's bidding when they slow down passage of financial reform. That makes sense; Democrats are going overboard when they make that claim, and the public record shows that the party is willing to stage a fight to make Republicans look back. But can't the GOP engage on the merits of the bill without walking up and down the street with a sandwich board that reads "The Bailouts Are Coming"?

Under the Obama administration, officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development have said they want a more balanced housing policy for low-income families that doesn't neglect renters just to expand homeownership. That goal was reflected in Obama's budget, and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found today that the president's proposed increase in funding for vouchers in the program formerly known as Section 8 would be enough to renew all vouchers for those who currently hold them:

Most immediately, the proposed 2011 budget for the Department of Housing and Urban Development calls for a 5 percent reduction in its budget from last year, which in turn was a 9 percent increase from the year before. In the introduction, Secretary Shaun Donovan writes that last year's increase was necessary because of the declining economy and because the agency had been neglected.This year they had the ability to make more targeted reductions and increases, he said.