Former FHA chief Frank Cassidy on JPMorgan Chase housing pledge

JPMorgan Chase’s newly announced commitment to U.S. housing through 2035 drew qualified praise from former Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Commissioner Frank Cassidy — but also a warning that money alone cannot solve the nation’s housing shortage.“Money isn’t the problem, supply is,” he told HousingWire. “There’s no shortage of capital looking to invest in housing, the biggest bottleneck isn’t financing. It’s the government process and the red tape and the bureaucratic tax to build. If it takes five years to approve a project, no amount of Wall Street capital can fix that. So we have to make it easier to build by modernizing zoning, permitting, environmental reviews and all these outdated regulations.“Capital really flows where the opportunity is, so we need to create more opportunities to actually build.” JPMorgan Chase announced Monday that it would deploy more than $750 billion into housing over the next decade as part of its American Dream Initiative. The bank plans to finance one million affordable housing units and help 500,000 customers buy homes — including 200,000 first-time buyers. Cassidy, who left the Trump administration in June after serving as FHA commissioner a...