"In the last few years we've created 1,205 units of housing," Menino said proudly of Boston's efforts to address the growing shortage of available and affordable housing in America. Last year Menino formed the Housing Strategy Advisory Group, which has recently released Leading the Way: A Housing Strategy for Boston. The report maps a three-year strategy to create 7,500 new units of housing, rehabilitate 1,100 vacant public housing units, preserve 10,000 affordable units, and use $45.5 million in land and other resources to obtain $2 billion in private and government financing. Menino said on Monday, however, "You can't ask cities to do it all alone."

"This is a partnership," he said of the joining of mayors and mortgage bankers. "We have to set an agenda for the new Congress and whoever wins the presidential election; we can't expect the private sector to do it all. This is a good beginning, a good catalyst." He added, "We need to focus on how cities create housing." Menino drew on a popular Dickensian dichotomy when he declared, "These are the best of times economically; these are the worst of times economically."

"The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer," he explained. "Urban areas are the economic engines for states. We have the jobs, but if we don't have the housing," he said, the economic edge will be lost. "This is about urban survival," he added.