Former HUD secretary touts affordable housing

CENTERVILLE (Deseret News) — Helping working-class and middle-class families become homeowners could be a major driver in the nation's economic recovery.

That may sound a lot like the mantra that helped burst the recent historic housing bubble in the first place, but a former housing official said this latest plan would be quite different and potentially much more successful in the long term.

Speaking in Davis County at the grand opening of a newly developed planned housing community, former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros said that extending the federal government's homebuyer tax credit and getting back to "common sense" lending practices would be a good way to help push the economic recovery forward.

"What we want to do is produce a V-shaped recovery where we rise up and stay up versus a W-shaped economy that rises and then falls back down," he said.

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