ST. LOUIS/ Behind The Headlines -- "The nation's long-standing commitment to expand ing homeownership opportunities for all Americans is facing its most serious challenge -- a series of smart growth initiatives that are effectively pricing most new homes beyond the reach of entry-level buyers," report Wendell Cox and Ronald Utt of the Heritage Foundation. "These initiatives, which attempt to limit a community's growth and development through such regulations as growth boundaries, lower population densities, 'downzoning,' impact fees, construction prohibitions, and land set-asides, all have the effect of raising home prices in ways that have a dispropor tionately negative effect on lower-income buyers," Cox and Utt complain. "The result," they predict, "will be the reversal of one of America's greatest public policy successes -- a historically high rate of homeownership."

According to Cox and Utt, "Throughout U.S. his tory, most Americans have lived as tenants, renting a room, apartment, shack, farm, or house from a land lord. Up until the eve of World War II, America's homeownership rate never exceeded 50 percent," they emphasize. "The federal government made its first formal commitment to the goal of encouraging homeownership in 1934, when Congress enacted the National Housing Act, establishing the Federal Hous ing Administration (FHA), which in turn created FHA-insured mortgages. The purpose of the act," Cox and Utt explain, "was to aid in the recovery of the private housing industry by reducing the financial risk of investing in mortgages and by encouraging the adoption of a new type of mortgage instrument -- the fixed-rate, long-term, level-payment, and fully amortized mortgage."

Innovations pioneered by the FHA and postwar prosperity combined "to push America's homeowner ship rate to a record 55 percent in 1950," say Cox and Utt. They note that "the rate went above 60 percent in 1960 and since then has been inching its way higher to new records, reaching 67.7 percent in the third quarter of 2000."

Cox and Utt discuss ways to "achieve the same goals of quality communities and still preserve indi vidual choice, property rights, and reliance on market based solutions." They urge the President and Con gress to "review the activities of executive branch departments and eliminate programs that undermine property rights and market-based solutions. Agencies recently exhibiting coercive anti-growth strategies," Cox and Utt contend, "include the Environmental Protection Agency, the Small Business Administra tion, and the Department of Justice." They charge that the EPA "has used its enforcement powers under the Clean Air Act to force some communities to limit road-building and to channel future growth into high density forms of residential housing even though all evidence indicates that dense development yields dirtier air."

Cox and Utt advise state and local governments to "refrain from implementing coercive and costly growth control mechanisms that limit freedom of choice and raise house prices beyond the affordable range of the entry-level buyer." Instead, they recom mend "reforms and remedies that encourage flexible and creative alternatives to traditional development patterns, harness the power of the competitive market, and respect property rights and individual choice."

Duplantier is the author of Politickles: Limericks Lampooning the Lunatic Left (Merril Press, 2000), available at The Conservative Bookstore and other online locations.

Published by permission.