Designation of historic districts is increasingly used as a tool to revive or halt the deterioration of central-city neighbourhoods. While historic designation is generally thought to have a positive impact on property values, evidence on this issue is mixed. One limitation of previous research is that it typically focuses on historic neighbourhoods in one city and thus bases its conclusions on a very limited sample. This study expands upon previous work by examining the effects of designation on property values across a larger set of cities. The study employs hedonic regression models to estimate housing prices in historic districts and comparable neighbourhoods in nine Texas cities. Results suggest that, in most cases, historic designation is associated with higher property values.

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Historic preservation contributes greatly to housing and economic development. Historic preservation has produced almost 250,000 housing units through use of the federal historic rehabilitation tax credit. Additionally, heritage tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry, and preservation projects help further community revitalization.Historic preservation also has a downside. Preservation's growing popularity may dilute its imperative and market prowess, and some argue it is used to thwart new development. Preservation requirements may impede affordable housing production and displace area residents. These undesirable consequences are not givens, however. Preservationists are working to become more flexible, and we suggest ways to practice historic preservation while mitigating some of its negative consequences-for example, tax credit changes, more flexible building codes, and a ''tiered'' system of designating historic properties at varying levels of significance.

America's housing and mortgage markets are undergoing a dramatic transformation, as urban reinvestment and attempts to tap underserved markets of new homeowners alter historical processes of redlining and discrimination. This article synthesizes findings from case studies of private lenders, lender consortia, and nonprofit community organizations that are active in underserved markets and analyzes the strategies these organizations use to attract and qualify mortgage applicants and retain new homeowners.The case studies reveal a diverse array of strategies designed to address market imperfections related to information, discrimination, and household financial characteristics. Although these strategies expand homeownership opportunities, challenges remain. They reflect inherent tensions between the industry trend toward standardized, efficient business practices and the customized, often expensive programs needed to address the multiple obstacles to homeownership and community development faced by underserved households and communities. They also reflect the historically unequal distribution of risks and rewards in America's central socioeconomic institution-homeownership.

This article presents an empirical analysis of mortgage innovation as a vehicle to enable renters, especially those from traditionally underserved populations, to realize homeownership. It examines the financial and underwriting criteria of a typology of mortgage products, from those adhering to historical standards to some of today's most liberal loans, and develops synthetic models to account for all direct purchase costs. These models are calibrated using 1995 data on renter demographic and financial characteristics from the Survey of Income and Program Participation.Compared with historical mortgages, today's more innovative loans increase the number of renters who could hypothetically qualify for homeownership by at least a million and expand potential home-buying capacity by $300 billion. Certain policies could greatly expand the potential gains. Nevertheless, even the most aggressive innovations can play only a limited role in efforts to deliver the material benefits of homeownership to underserved populations.

At a time when the overall homeownership rate in the United States is at a historic high, many groups still face severe hurdles in realizing the American dream. The public, private, and nonprofit sectors are working to address these barriers, and this article examines one nonprofit's activities. Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) is a civil rights and housing organization providing homeownership and other services to Asian Americans, a group that often faces language, cultural, credit, and financial difficulties in achieving homeownership. AAFE addresses these challenges by providing aggressive outreach through housing fairs and neighborhood publications; it offers homeownership education and counseling in a variety of languages and settings, secures multiple housing subsidies and develops affordable housing, and educates lenders on the employment and credit practices of the Asian community. AAFE thus helps tailor the complex web of activities required to expand homeownership to traditionally underserved-especially immigrant-populations.

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This paper considers the evolution and patterns of federal low-income 1 housing policies and programs over roughly the past half-century. It begins with an overview of the multifaceted involvement of the federal government in housingonly one aspect of which is its intervention in the low-income sector. This is followed by an overview of federal low-income housing policy from the New Deal to today. The underlying assumptions and approaches of these policies are then considered with respect to such considerations as the government's presence and role, its targeting of assistance, and the selection of subsidy levels and vehicles. The paper concludes with a brief review of the implications of the historical record for future policy.