RTC's affordable housing program: Reconciling competing goals

Abstract

Congress gave the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) authority to sell modestly valued housing at below‐market prices and with concessionary financing to enable lower income families to become homeowners and to expedite sales. Nonprofits and public agencies seeking to buy properties for occupancy by lower income people also qualified for these favorable terms. Setting a precedent for future housing policy initiatives, Congress conditioned access to this special program on the imposition of permanent low‐income use and affordability restrictions.

This paper considers whether the RTC can reconcile its mandate to maximize preservation of affordable housing with its duty to maximize return on assets and minimize negative impacts on local markets. This issue is addressed through a comparative review of property disposition programs administered by three other federal agencies. The author concludes that the RTC's three goals can be harmonized and suggests criteria for evaluating the RTC's performance in meeting its affordable housing mandate.     

Kohl's chancellorship

The Kohl Chancellorship. Edited by CLAY CLEMENS and WILLIAM E. PATERSON. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998. £14.50 pb.

Deutschlandpolitik in Helmut Kohls Kanzlerschaft. Regierungsstil und Entscheidungen 1982–1989. By KARL‐RUDOLF KORTE. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags‐Anstalt, 1998.     

Protest: tradition and change

Analyses of political development in colonial Africa have largely concentrated on the role of the educated elite in the emergence of nationalist movements. In recent years some attempt has been made to fill out this one-dimensional view through the study of early and more broadly based protest movements in various colonial territories. This paper takes as its subject matter the records of riots which occurred on the Gold Coast between 1890 and 1920. These disturbances are taken as an index of non-elite protest while an analysis of case-studies indicates their significance for political developments leading to the emergence of nationalist parties.     

All the best things come to those who wait

‘A book may be good for nothing; or there may be onlyone thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?’(Samuel Johnson) This section is dedicated to the review of ideas, articles,books, films and other media. It will include replies (and rejoinders)to articles, the evaluation of new ideas or proposals, and reviewsof books and articles both directly and indirectly related tointellectual property law. In 1966, Professor Benjamin Kaplan gave the Carpentier Lecturesat Columbia University. His subject was copyright law and eachof his three lectures examined a different aspect of that subject.The first looked at the ‘First Three Hundred and FiftyYears’, the second at ‘Plagiarism Reexamined’,and the final at ‘Proposals and Prospects’. Theselectures were