Cuba’s government is taking steps to address the country’s housing crisis, brought on by a struggling economy and years of storm damage and neglect.

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VIDEO: Cuba’s crumbling housing crisis

The Trinity Housing Association is to be asked to return £835,000 of public funds that it used to buy a house and grounds from the County Down developer Ken Campbell.

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Trinity asked to return £835,000

Signals economic, housing-market recovery.

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U.S. Sees Home Sales Jump

Facing opposition to a new studio near his Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas pulled the project, but said he would bring low-income housing there, further inflaming neighbors.

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George Lucas Retreats From Battle With Neighbors

Housing groups warn that problems in Britain’s housing market are not being fixed, on the day that figures on new house building are due.

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Housing market ‘not being fixed’

SEATTLE — President Obama will announce new figures Friday showing a dramatic spike in the number of Americans taking advantage of federal programs designed to help struggling homeowners and stabilize the lagging housing industry, administration officials said Thursday. Read full article > >

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Obama to tout success of mortgage refinancing

I’m just back from the Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting in Omaha, where billionaire Warren Buffett and 25,000 of his closest personal friends gather each year to talk money. The 81-year-old Oracle of Omaha and his 88-year-old sidekick, Charlie Munger, are still going strong and still preaching the gospel of value investing. “We’ve been students of other people’s folly, and it’s served us well,” Buffett observed, seemingly for the billionth time. (Multiple conflicts — Buffett is a former director of The Washington Post Co., and Berkshire owns a large share of The Post Co. — make me less than perfectly objective, it should be noted.) Read full article > >

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The ‘folly’ of the U.S. housing bubble

Here’s what the Loop’s reading Monday morning: Sorry, Dad — Mitt Romney has plans to nix the agency his father once led. The former Massachusetts governor said at a private fundraiser that he would eliminate some agencies and combine others — and he singled out Housing and Urban Development — which his father once headed — for elimination, our colleague Rachel Weiner reports . Read full article > >

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Romney might nix HUD; Clinton lets her hair down; and a working woman flashback (read-this roundup)

The nation is facing a highest-class public housing conundrum: what to do with executive mansions now that more elected officials are politely refusing to inhabit them.

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When Governors Reject the Mansions

Foreclosure filings fell during the first quarter of 2012 to their lowest levels since the housing market began its collapse nearly five years ago, according to new data from the firm RealtyTrac . The number of foreclosures during the first three months of this year was the lowest quarterly total since the final quarter of 2007. The numbers show that, in March, foreclosures were filed on just fewer than 199,000 properties, a 17 percent decrease from a year earlier and the first time the monthly total has dipped below 200,000 since July 2007. Read full article > >

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Foreclosures reach lowest quarterly level since late 2007, RealtyTrac data show

March saw some improvements in Northern Ireland’s housing market in March, a new survey suggests.

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Housing market sees improvements

The wreckage left by the housing collapse is well known: The unemployment rate in the construction industry is more than17 percent. About 1.4 million workers in the field are unemployed. So: Are unemployed construction workers worse off than the rest of the jobless? Read full article > >

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Fed economists disagree over construction jobs’ lesson on economy

He is the most powerful federal employee you’ve never heard of. Edward DeMarco has slowed the economic recovery with the stroke of a pen. His actions are costing taxpayers tens of billions of dollars, forcing millions of homeowners to lose their homes, and contributing to the falling housing prices that are a brake on the recovery. Read full article > >

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The man blocking America’s recovery

Four years after the onset of the financial crisis — in March 2008 Bear Stearns was rescued from failure — we still lack a clear understanding of the underlying causes. Hundreds of studies and books have given us an increasingly detailed picture of what happened without conclusively answering why. Conventional wisdom has advanced competing theories: Wall Street types took too many risks, encouraged by lax government regulation; or pro-homeownership policies eroded mortgage-lending standards and created the housing bubble. Read full article > >

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Long-term understanding of the U.S. economic crisis

DETROIT — A new rule took effect this week barring those who own or operate U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-funded housing from asking about an applicant’s sexual orientation or gender identity, an Obama administration official announced Friday. Read full article > >

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HUD rule aims to cut discrimination