......Appearing at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Richard Green, director of the University of Southern California's Lusk Center for Real Estate, said that eliminating the mortgage-interest deduction entirely would only lead to a percentage-point decline in the nation's homeownership rate, currently at 65.9% of U.S. households.
That drop, he said, would be "hardly catastrophic." The existing deduction "moves money toward the housing sector [and] encourages people to buy larger houses," but does little to spur homeownership, he said.
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