Housing Crisis

There has been much recent discussion of a “housing crisis” in the US. This course will explore why housing seems to be a particularly problematic sector of the economy. These same problems appear not only in the US but in much of the developed world. Why is that? What does it mean to say there is a housing crisis? What factors cause housing to become more expensive? How big is the problem in the US? What policies might help us reduce the cost of housing? We will explore these questions from both a political and legal lens and an economic lens.

Dennis Sheehan, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of finance at the Penn State University Smeal College of Business. He previously taught in the business schools at Purdue University, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Georgetown University and received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley. Dennis is happily retired in his hometown of Newport.

Arthur DeAscentis is a principal and manager of the Law Firm Bogle, DeAscentis & Coughlin, P. C., a firm he co-founded in 1989. His practice covers a broad range of real estate, land use, development and preservation mill development, affordable housing initiatives and financing for landowners, developers, institutional and personal investors. He is the former Chair of the Zoning Board of Appeals for the City of Fall River and was a member of the City’s Master Plan Committee and its Zoning Ordinance Subcommittee and has served on the Mayo’s Task Force on Homelessness. He began his legal career as a legal services staff attorney providing representation to low-income people, with a concentration in public housing and institutional mental health issues. A graduate of Syracuse University, receiving his AB in 1974, Arthur received his JD from the School of Law at Western New England University in 1979. Arthur grew up in Newport and now lives in Bristol.