What do home ownership and the war in Iraq have in common?

Plenty, says John Coursen, the 2003 chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association and the lone civilian member of the President Bush's Middle East housing initiative.

"Home ownership is a path to peace," Coursen told the Pacific Northwest Mortgage Lenders Conference in Sun Valley, Ore., last month. "It can mean the same thing in other parts of the world as it does here at home."

The president of Central Pacific Mortgage in Folsom, Calif., Coursen said lenders in this country have a great opportunity in other countries and a responsibility to help them build their housing infrastructures.

"We've got plenty to do here at home," he told the conference, which was held in an idyllic setting that's in sharp contrast to the worn-torn Middle East. "But the industry also has a duty to look elsewhere to places where we can create a better standard of living."

In Iraq, it is not uncommon for 20-25 people to occupy 1,500 square-feet of living space, and not just in war-torn Baghdad.

"Iraq is a tremendously under-housed nation," said Coursen, who also is chairman of the California Housing Finance Agency. "Fifty percent of the population from the North to the South live jammed together."

At the same time, he added, "People in Iraq are getting up everyday to go to work, go to school, and to go shopping. They live in peril, but if they have that kind of commitment, we have to make that kind of commitment to them."

Coursen told the meeting that creating a system of home ownership and mortgages in the former dictatorship may not be as difficult as it seems.

A system of recorded land ownership is in place, thanks to Saddam Hussein, who gave government employees plots of land as a reward for their loyalty. And a real estate bank owned by the government was created by the now imprisoned dictator so land owners could build houses.

Despite Islamic law prohibiting such a thing, the bank can even charge interest, and borrowers can spend up to half their incomes on their home loans because Iraq allows no other debt.

"All of this is in place and operating with no technology and no written policies or procedures," Coursen noted.

In addition, in an effort to show that the transitional government is prepared to rebuild the country, the Bush Administration has earmarked $200 million to fund the Iraq Housing Fund under the Ministry of Government and Housing.