PPI President Will Marshall and PPI Senior Fellow Jason Gold critique the Republican candidates failure to address the country’s lingering housing crisis at the Las Vegas Sun:
If the Republican presidential candidates have any ideas for solving America’s housing crisis, they aren’t sharing them with the voters. Since leaving behind February primaries in Nevada, Florida and Arizona, the GOP’s final four have virtually dropped the subject.
That’s puzzling, because housing remains a top concern for U.S. voters. Some 12 million homeowners remain underwater and 4 million are delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure. The ongoing drop in home prices is the single biggest drag on economic recovery. As catastrophic as it is to lose a job, the percentage of Americans who are unemployed is actually exceeded by the percentage of Americans who have either lost significant wealth from their homes or are drowning in “negative equity.”
Yet the primary debate has fixated on such evidently more urgent issues as contraception, Obamacare, gas prices, Obamacare, porn, and, of course, Obamacare (which doesn’t actually take effect until 2014). Why have the Republicans clammed up on housing?
