undermining the housing market...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development over recent years had the goal of making more low-income and minority families into home-owners. Ok, not a terrible goal, although as a country we tend to overestimate the benefits of homeownership.

Unfortunately, in so doing, HUD helped fuel the subprime mortgage crisis. HUD forced Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to buy a lot more of these subprime loans AND to count these subprime loans as a "public good".

Read for more details here. Not all HUD's fault of course - but this didn't help.