Early this week my New America colleague, Rourke O'Brien and I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post on the benefits of shared equity homeownership.  Shared equity is a unique approach to homeownership that helps bridge the large gap between renting and traditional homeownership for low- and moderate income families in high-cost housing areas.

The way it usually works is a local government or nonprofit provides funding to an eligible family to purchase a home.  In exchange for the funding the public entity receives a portion of any price appreciation in the home when the family sells it.  The public entity then uses its share of the price appreciation to help the next eligible family purchase a home.