GlobeSt.com: At the MBA Summit, you came down pretty passionately on the side of multifamily housing development as opposed to single-family.

Lazio: One doesn't exclude the other, and there's an enormous need for both--especially because you have a new wave of immigration that will be fueling demand for both.

GlobeSt.com: At the same time, [fellow panelist and New Orleans Mayor Marc] Morial is right. Ownership does a better job at combating NIMBY-ism.

Lazio: That's often the case--not always, but often. One of the things I did in Congress was to allow the use of Section 8 vouchers for ownership--either to service a mortgage or to be pooled for down-payment assistance. And that's what we ought to be looking at now--we ought to be looking at ways in which tenants can graduate from Section 8 projects and buy a place. I've always said that one of our national goals should be to provide homeownership for everyone who would like to own a home. At the same time, some may not be able to maintain a home. Some don't want the responsibility. There should be options.

GlobeSt.com: And you feel there aren't enough options?

Lazio: With housing, it's a fallacy to think there is only one right answer. The truth is, we have to provide a range of options and understand that there is a continuum of need, ranging from young couples just starting out or single moms and dads who have affordability needs to seniors who want to downsize. Some will need market-rate places, and some will need subsidized places, some will need assisted-living and some will need skilled nursing, all of which we need to encourage. Frankly, the only two housing areas we are addressing successfully are middle- to upper-income homeownership.

GlobeSt.com: Is that due to a lack of interest, incentives or sufficient need?

Lazio: It's not a lack of need. We lose something on the order of 100,000 affordable housing units a year because they revert to market rate or are in such poor condition that they are no longer habitable. And the pent-up demand is 1.5 million units on the ownership side. These are all units that would be built if the economic conditions were correct--the combination of low interest rates, adequate credit financing and in some case a subsidy from public sector. In terms of purchasing power, the low-income housing tax-credit increase, which I cosponsored--only brought us back to where we were when tax credits were developed in 1986.

The good thing is that tax credits are so much more efficient than they were back in late '80s.

GlobeSt.com: How so?

Lazio: Look at the old public-housing authority, which collapsed in many parts of the country. You'd never see that with tax credit properties, in large part because they stay focused on mixed-income, which means the project is sustainable. Also, the private sector does its due diligence, rather than Federal authorities coming in and pretending to know what the community needs and wants. Finally, the private sector has its capital at risk, so it's careful about screening and security and maintenance. We should look at this model and recognize that it's largely a success. Do we redouble our efforts and put more money into tax credits? Maybe, or maybe we take some of those principals and create a program that is even more efficient.

GlobeSt.com: Outline such a program, please.

Lazio: One of the answers clearly is that the Federal government should no longer be in the business of building or managing housing. The private sector is in a much better spot to do that. The public sector's role should be to add money to make that private sector initiative a success. Increasingly this will mean credit enhancements or buy-downs or some variety of subsidy that will make a project of this sort work.

GlobeSt.com: What are some of the other answers?

Lazio: We need to do a better job of communicating the emotional part of housing to the public sector.

GlobeSt.com: "We" being . . . .

Lazio: "We" being housing advocates, people in the industry, people who care about housing. To gain the kind of attention that is required by the public sector, these people will have to increase their outreach efforts and build a better communications strategy. Is housing important to our economy? What kind of jobs and how many jobs are being created through housing? It's an enormous incubator of jobs and economic development that generates tens of billions of dollars of tax income at federal, state and local levels. That's the message that needs to be communicated by the private sector to the public sector.

Rick Lazio