David A. Smith Author Archives

Guru David Smith joins two colleagues to present a joint concept note for a structural approach to reforming federal rental assistance in ways that can steer the discussion of HUD reform in a more productive direction.

Housing guru David A. Smith gives historic context for the current shutdown, and provides guideposts for what housers should expect in the coming weeks.

A new program from Utah-based Arrive Home aims to make home buying more accessible.

Five years after COVID disrupted real estate markets, America’s highest real estate priority is housing, and in particular, affordable housing.

On May 21, with his flair for the bombshell, President Trump, in a post on Truth Social, stated his strong interest in privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and I flashed back to October 2008.

After having chronicled how entities endure for better, for a long time, and for worse, we arrive, belatedly, at the nastiest question of them all: When an organization has gone past the tipping point and its consumption of resources exceeds the impact it delivers with those resources, what happens then? 

Entities are perpetual ecosystem changers, initially growing and sustaining, but eventually, their purpose can fade.

The journey to economic sustainability is just the beginning for mission-driven entrepreneurs, as they face new challenges and transformations.

In a story worthy of Charles Dickens, last Christmas Eve, Malcolm (Mike) Peabody, a 20th-century titan of affordable housing, died at the age of 96, all but unnoticed except for the legacy of initiatives and entities that he and his forebears have stood up over the decades. As I read his obituary, and that of his ancestor George Peabody, ‘the father of modern philanthropy,’ the thought came to me, entities endure. 

If you’ve chosen to read this essay, your work environment is governed by platform, pipeline, and portfolio and the health and evolution of this triad foretell your future as a player on that platform. 

Just as markets are the crowdsourced wisdom on values, insurance is the crowdsourced wisdom on risks.

If you own an income-producing property, you have an equity partner hiding in plain sight.  Despite never signing a document with you, your municipality owns somewhere between one-eighth and one-quarter of your property’s economics, a slice it can increase without your consent, and will own longer than you’ll own the property.