Who Needs the Mortgage-Interest Deduction? - New York Times
Cited in the Freakonomics Blog at http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/03/20/writing-for-money/ which is worth the read in its own right.
While the history is long, the take away is that such deductions are not going anywhere and if they did go away the housing market would adjust negatively to reflected most buyers reduced buying power.
