<i>The many legislative proposals to date all reflect the crosscurrents of trying to protect the taxpayer, preserve support for the thirty-year fixed-rate mortgage, and keep homeownership affordable to a wide spectrum of borrowers.</i><p>It seems to me that making housing affordable is a better goal than making home ownership affordable.<p>Any program targeted at home ownership should at least be benchmarked to actual ownership and not nominal debt based ownership. So for example, a policy that results in twice as many people taking out home mortgages but fewer people owning more than 50% of the equity in their homes isn&#x27;t encouraging ownership, it&#x27;s encouraging mortgage taking.