I cringe whenever I hear someone boast about how “green” their 5,000-plus-square-foot home is. I say your home can’t be environmentally friendly when it gobbles up that so much space, and when it requires so much raw material to build.

I’ve always wondered if agents consider the shows allies — educating potential buyers and sellers about the housing market — or enemies, filling the heads of buyers and sellers with housing myths.

Preston is secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. In a recent story in the Christian Science Monitor, Preston predicted that any improvements in the U.S. housing market are a year away.

How’d you like to live in a house that sits atop an existing apartment building? If you want to live in New York City, you’ll soon have the chance.

From early on in this presidential campaign, I’ve been hoping for some substantive debate on the problems of the housing industry. What plans do Barack Obama and John McCain have to make sure that our country doesn’t suffer another mortgage and foreclosure crisis like the one it’s suffering through now? Unfortunately, the recent housing debate between the two candidates has been far from enlightening.

But at least the home-improvement shows are starting to reflect realty reality.

The biggest problem is HGTV, and all the imitators it’s spawned on the channels down the dial. After a week, the home-improvement shows on these channels begin to look like clones of one another. Is there a factory somewhere where they’re churning out perky hosts and spoiled couples who can’t make it another day without a double-bowl vanity in their master bathrooms?

Each day, I stumble across another story that illustrates just how serious the mortgage crisis has become in this country.

As it turns out, though, celebrities face many of the same problems as we all do, especially when it comes to their homes.

Last week, New Jersey governor Jon Corzine signed into law a requirement that every town in the state provide housing within its own boundaries for residents with low and moderate incomes.