Curious new legislation to encourage affordable housing, Treasury Secretary Bessent’s unlikely sense of humor, and Robert Redford’s impact on Utah real estate. From the wild and wooly world of real estate, here are our Hits and Misses for the week of Sept. 15-19.
Miss: That’s Not How This Works. On the surface, it seemed the newly introduced bipartisan Saving the American Dream Act, written by the leadership of the Congressional Real Estate Caucus, would represent a much-needed initiative to address the nation’s housing affordability challenges. However, despite its noble name, this legislation does nothing except direct five Executive Branch agencies to create a task force to study the issues impacting the housing market, write a report within a year based on their findings, and then submit it to Congress. Really, that’s how Congress seeks to fix the housing market – by giving the Executive Branch one year to study it and come up with ideas? It’s no wonder that so many Americans lost faith in their elected officials.
Miss: Letting the Government Fix Things. If Congress is taking a hands-off approach to housing, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is taking an excessive hands-on approach to the subject. This week, Carney unveiled a new federal agency that will spend billions of dollars to create affordable housing for low-income households while creating new partnerships with private market developers to build affordable homes for middle-class families. Never mind that this endeavor will drive the federal government further into debt while failing to address the underlying issues that frayed Canada’s housing market, including a weak economy, an out-of-control immigration policy and a significant worker shortage in the construction trades.
Miss: Uh, What? On Monday, the Trump administration’s efforts to remove Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook was rejected by a federal appeals court. A contributing factor to that defeat could easily be traced to the Department of Justice, which sought to defend Trump’s wholly unprecedented effort to force the removal of a Federal Reserve officer with this ridiculous argument in a brief filed with the court: “If an earlier President and earlier Senate had confirmed Bernie Madoff or Charles Ponzi to be Federal Reserve Governors, it would blink reality to suggest that a later President could not remove them based on their misdeeds, regardless of whether they occurred in office or not.” Oh, so now Lisa Cook – who has never been charged with any crime – is suddenly in the same category as Bernie Madoff and Charles Ponzi? The White House is now taking this matter to the Supreme Court – who wants to bet that initiative will not turn out the way that the administration hopes?
Hit: Okay, That’s Funny. It should be noted there is at least one Trump administration official who has a sense of humor. Earlier this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent appeared on CNBC and was asked about the story regarding his in-your-face threat to thrash Bill Pulte because the Federal Housing Finance Agency director reportedly badmouthed him to Trump. Bessent good-naturedly responded, “Treasury secretaries dating back to Alexander Hamilton have a history of dueling. I think with the president’s team I turned out a little better for the Treasury’s side this time.” But do you think that someday in the future there’ll be a Broadway musical called “Bessent”?
Miss: An Underwhelming Update. Remember the American Real Estate Association, which launched in January 2024 as an alternative to the National Association of Realtors? We haven’t heard from them in a while, but they re-emerged this week announcing they have a new name – they will now be known simply as ARA – while announcing the Douglas Elliman brokerage joined the organization and its CEO Douglas Elliman is part of the group’s management board. That’s very nice, but at this point in time we were expecting a lot more from this organization. If ARA is still focused on elbowing NAR aside, it has yet to come anywhere near that goal.
In Memoriam: Tad Taube. This week saw the passing of Thaddeus “Tad” Taube at the age of 94. Born into a Jewish family in Poland in 1931, he arrived with his parents in 1939 prior to the Nazi invasion of his country. He later graduated from Stanford University and served as an officer in the US Air Force before co-founding The Woodmont Companies, a highly successful real estate investment firm. He later served as chairman and CEO of Koracorp Industries from 1973 until its merger with Levi Strauss in 1979. Taube was one of the most prominent philanthropists of the modern era, and his significant donations extended to supporting medical, educational, cultural and sports endeavors in the San Franciso Bay Area where he made his home. He was also one of the Founding Benefactors of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, and in 2004 he received the Commander’s Cross, Poland’s highest civilian medal, for his illustrious career and extraordinary generosity.
In Memoriam: Robert Redford. This week also saw the passing of actor and director Robert Redford at the age of 89. While Redford was celebrated for his motion picture career, he also had an impact on real estate market and land policies in Utah, where he made his home for many years. His celebrity status helped in his campaigns against the construction of a six-lane highway and a coal-fired power plant in the state. But he was more than a famous environmental activist – he also ran for office and was elected commissioner of the Provo Canyon sewer district in the late 1970s. But perhaps his most profound contribution was the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, which under his leadership became one of the world’s most influential and commercially successful cultural events. Thanks in large part to this film festival, Park City blossomed from an obscure regional resort into a major tourist destination and one of the nation’s most desirable real estate markets.
Phil Hall is editor of Weekly Real Estate News. He can be reached at [email protected].
Photo of Robert Redford in “Jeremiah Johnson,” courtesy of Warner Bros.
