I don't know what will become of the Fix Housing First coalition's plan to get Congress to try to jumpstart the economy with an adrenaline tax-credit-and-mortgage-rate-buy down package aimed at getting people to buy homes more affordably in today's market. I know it's a valiant, all-points-alert effort, and its high-level leaders are working well into the wee hours of every day to sustain its momentum even as they intensify focus on their own companies' navigation of the stormy seas of the housing crisis.

What I have learned is that there are very good men and women fighting very committedly to move the cause forward. Their collaborative efforts will likely have positive outcomes, whether or not they're precisely the immediate mission of the group, which would be a lame-duck stimulus plan that would result in 2009 home sales.

There are several issues that make the effort uncertain in light of the realities of a lame-duck agenda and one that has yet to take complete shape as a president-elect focuses on key staffing. Allowing for a moment that Congress might see past the self-serving nature of the initiative toward the actual merits of the idea, questions about the proposal would have most to do with the wisdom--or lack thereof--of continuing to build new homes when absolute vacancies of the for-sale or for-rent variety are so abundant. Home builders, simply, must focus on selling--not building--homes as the pre-dominant feature of their DNA for today and the future. They must start the hard way, selling against foreclosures and work their way toward one goal: undersupply.

Also, assuming that at the end of the day, the most palatable plan any Congress, lame-duck or incoming, can consider will have a strong free-market nature to it, efforts to get Fix Housing First traction would probably involve improved self-management of future production, capacity, pricing, so that a business model will more precisely revolve around skills in operational, manufacturing, and marketing and sales than in notching gains in real estate lot values. This is hard to do, and as one Top 10 home builder CEO told me recently, the likelihood that builders will resist the temptation to make land gains part of their growth model in the future ranks right up there with the odds that a big drinker will resist drinking enough to avoid a hangover.

What I'd like to see in the effort is greater evidence that the Fix Housing First lobbying coalition encompasses the direct interests of not just publicly traded home builders. It would seem that the assumptions central to stimulating demand for home purchases--new or not--is a) trying to put a floor on home prices, and b) trying to make it more affordable for those who are able to buy and sustain paying for home to do so.

Underlying these assumptions is that household formation continues domestically at a rate of about 1% a year, and that that factor suggests the need to add steadily to the housing stock, both for-sale and for-rent. If the economic theory at work is correct, consumers would buy homes, stabilize home prices, and begin to spend money again, freed of fear of a failing household balance sheet.

Today, home builders may have gotten a shot in the arm from a voice who may or may not have vested or invested interests in the home building arena, BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink.

Leaders of the industry need to step up their extra-secular game, reach across the industry sector aisle, and gather as powerful a coalition as they can to pursue a plan that makes sense, but could still stumble on technicalities or misperceptions as things so often do.

Question: Do private builders struggling to survive the double whammy credit and consumer lock-down that began the end of September believe that the public builder coalition 1) stands a chance of getting a proposal passed, and 2) represents inclusive interests of all home builders?