> In particular, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, home equity was a very real way for middle-class Americans to accumulate family wealth, and expanding access to that at least had potential for positive impact.
This sounds suspicious to me. "Let's give people loans to buy houses and see their equity rise because we're giving more people loans to buy houses which raises the price." I think even with the best financial engineering, this scheme is basically trying to get something for nothing. There's no perpetual motion machine, and there's no way to make people wealthier by lending them money. Unless the money gets used to increase productivity - but in this case it doesn't, a homeowner doesn't have higher productivity than a renter, so that's a no go.
This sounds suspicious to me. "Let's give people loans to buy houses and see their equity rise because we're giving more people loans to buy houses which raises the price." I think even with the best financial engineering, this scheme is basically trying to get something for nothing. There's no perpetual motion machine, and there's no way to make people wealthier by lending them money. Unless the money gets used to increase productivity - but in this case it doesn't, a homeowner doesn't have higher productivity than a renter, so that's a no go.