If we don't focus on building new housing, the nation's headed for a crisis larger than the one we've already seen.

That's the warning made by First Trust Advisors Chief Economist Brian Wesbury in a recent interview with Steve Forbes.

Two recent reports suggest loan modification efforts will delay, not prevent, home foreclosures — and those foreclosures will lower home prices for the next several years.

Those conclusions come from studies issued by John Burns Real Estate Consulting Inc. and Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC.

AOL News published an opinion piece yesterday by U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and David Abromowitz, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and partner at Goulston & Storrs in Boston.

"Foreclosures dominate the news," they write, but "there's a larger and more worrisome housing crisis ahead: a looming shortage of affordable rental housing.

The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus published an opinion piece today by former VHFA Board of Commissioners Chairman Richard White.

In the piece, titled "State conservation board's work is essential," Richard writes, "It is no accident that Vermont ranks last in the country in the rate of foreclosure or that the 2004 study of Vermont's housing nonprofits had high praise for the system that Vermont has built over the last quarter century.