Bush Push On Housing

President Bush on Monday set a new goal of helping 5.5 million minority families buy their own homes before the end of the decade, hoping to end what he called a "home ownership gap."

"Part of economic security is owning your own home," Mr. Bush said after touring a transformed model neighborhood of mixed-income housing in a formerly dilapidated neighborhood on Atlanta's south side.

He stood in the red dirt to help operate a machine pouring concrete for the foundation of a new home.

At St. James AME Church, Mr. Bush said, "There is a homeownership gap in America. The difference in home ownership between Anglo America and black and Hispanic America is too big."

Calling for the building of 5.5 million new homes for minorities before 2012, he said, "We have to set a big goal for America and we must focus our resources and attention on the goal."

Mr. Bush also said that this fall he will convene a White House conference to address the home ownership gap. The conference will also serve as a forum for new ideas on housing. That will help address a situation in which more than three-quarters of white American families own their homes, while less than half of black and Hispanic families do, he said.

The president challenged the private sector to join the effort to create more lower cost homes and laid out a vision of helping black and Hispanic families obtain their own homes by eliminating or easing barriers now keeping many out of the housing market. He also wants to create a new fund to help poor families make down payments.

While government can help, he said, it cannot on its own close what he called a serious and persistent "home ownership gap." Mr. Bush called on the real estate and mortgage-finance industries to join the effort in a sustained effort to create at least 5.5 million new minority home owners before the end of the decade.

Mr. Bush called high down payments a major obstacle to buying a home for low-income families.

He proposes giving developers nearly $2.4 billion in tax credits over five years to build affordable single-family homes. The White House estimates the tax incentive could result in construction of 200,000 lower-cost homes in the period.

Fresh from a family weekend at his own dream home at his Texas ranch, Mr. Bush portrayed a place of one's own as a cornerstone of healthy, vibrant communities and stable, financially secure families.

"Home ownership lies at the heart of the American dream," he said as he previewed his plans in his weekly radio address Saturday. "It is a key to upward mobility for low- and middle-income Americans."

The president toured Atlanta's Pryor Road area where new mixed-income housing developments are replacing rundown and crime-plagued housing projects and strip malls. The Villages at Carver is a new community of neat lawns, fresh paint and secure buildings. It replaced Carver Homes, an older, trouble-plagued 990-unit complex, as part of a national program to eliminate mammoth public housing projects.

While some former Carver Homes residents complain that many poor people aren't making it back to the new development, Atlanta's housing authority views it as a guidepost for the future of assisted housing.

"We've revitalized an entire section of the city in a very short period of time," housing authority spokesman Rick White said. "That has to be a success in anybody's books."