nistration also persuaded Congress to enact a program which provided an incentive for landlords, developers, and builders to rehabilitate existing decaying housing. These incentives were provided in the form of federal income-tax exemptions, as opposed to actual federal disbursements in the forms of subsidies. The Reagan Administration claimed that the rehabilitation program would result in an increase in the usable housing stock of a magnitude that would enable low-income families to be able to find housing which would be affordable with the support of federal housing vouchers.
President Reagan also vetoed a bill which would have provided interest rate subsidies for buyers of new houses, during the high-interest rate period of the early-1980s (Congressional Quarterly, 1986). This bill was intended to stimulate housing construction in an economy where new housing starts had fallen below the 1.1 million annual rate from the 1.7 million rate in the late-1970s (Council of Economic Advisers, 1989).
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