Housing Foreclosures

I recently finished reading Foreclosing the Dream, by William Lucy. The most interesting parts of this book are the first chapter and the last appendix, both of which tell us where foreclosures are (or at least were in 2008, before the foreclosure crisis morphed into an international economic downturn). These figures seem to me to debunk at least a couple of the more popular explanations of the foreclosure crisis, such as:

Myth 1: "Its all the fault of too much lending to the urban poor."

I would like to expand an ongoing debate between Reason Foundation policy expert Samuel Staley and me concerning land use policy impacts on affordability and economic stability to include two additional issues: household economic resilience and wealth accumulation.  

 As the economy continues to lumber through the most protracted period of recession since the early 1980s, the financial sector has received the brunt of the blame. It’s been easy for the planning profession to distance themselves from what seem at first to be macroeconomic trends. That view, however, is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold.