[WS:] I agree with the principle. However, housing prices in the US are grossly overvalued due to inefficiencies in the housing market - a version of Baumol cost disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol's_cost_disease if you will, produced mainly by the idiocy of the American dream (everyone "has to" have a suburban home, which prevents efficiency increase by higher density housing). According to the Census data, the average price of the new home at the peak of the bubble (2007) was $313,600 - 6.5% average annual growth since 1963! If the housing prices kept with the inflation (average 3.4%) the average housing prices in 2007 would have been about $84,000 (sic!).
I just see no useful social purpose being served by inflated housing prices. It is like giving subsidies to typewriter manufacturers to maintain prices at certain level in the advent of personal computers. Far from serving any social purpose it does disservice to public interests. A better use of the public resources is heavy investment in transit infrastructure and high density housing - and let the American dream meet the fate of the typewriter.
-- Wojtek
"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."