When USA Today wanted to speak to a housing market expert on the rise in the housing vacancy rate, it turned to Nicolas Retsinas, the head of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. This was an interesting choice since Mr. Retsinas is perhaps best known as one of the people who denied the existence of a housing bubble in 2003 and encouraged low and moderate income families to buy homes. Some of the assertions that can be found in this publications are: "More importantly, it takes concentrated job losses - the likes of which have not been seen during this business cycle - to drive down home prices;" and "Moreover, when house prices deflate, they do so slowly."
--Dean Baker
