LIHTC Archives

Names can outlive their purpose and their original meaning. Though the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, a cluster of mutually distrustful principalities with a largely symbolic head of state known as the Holy Roman Emperor maneuvered under that rubric for a thousand years after its 800 AD founding by Charlemagne before it was put to sleep by the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Such may yet be the fate of two venerable concepts, Fair Market Rent (FMR) and the Area Median Income (AMI). 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting impacts on the economy and financial markets, as well as the Federal Reserve’s raising of short-term rates to stave off inflation, interest rates and construction costs have risen dramatically, resulting in funding gaps that many multifamily affordable housing developers in the four percent LIHTC space have had difficulty filling.

Developers of Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects are used to the concept of complicated capital stacks for their deals.

A U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas recently granted an injunction to extend the Community Reinvestment Act final rule’s effective date, April 1, along with all other implementation dates. Here’s what you need to know about the case and how it will impact LIHTC investment.

Against a backdrop of rising rents nationwide and a lack of housing supply in major cities, suburbs, and rural areas, leaders in Washington, DC are devoting significant time and attention to addressing the affordable housing crisis. President Biden, in his March 7th State of the Union address, called for Congress to enact his plan to “build and renovate two million affordable homes and bring…rents down.”

Since 2018, the City of Baltimore, the Housing Authority of Balti-more City (HABC), planners, architects and developers have been working on a comprehensive redevelopment of a large public housing project near the city’s famous Inner Harbor.

As challenges continue to buffet the low-income housing market, an increasing number of states are implementing their own versions of a Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). According to a recent Novogradac report, 17 states have added completely new state tax credit programs since 2013, resulting in a total of 29 states and Washington, DC having unique LIHTC incentives.

The prospects are changing for combining solar energy production and affordable housing.

Launched through federal legislation in 2012, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has leveraged over $19.3 billion in construction investment to improve or construct over 174,000 public housing units and 53,000 Section 8, tax credit and market-rate apartments co-located in these public housing communities.

Two proposed changes in tax legislation pending in Congress could increase the number of new and preserved affordable rental homes coming to market in the next ten years by over 200,000, according to consulting and accounting firm Novogradac.

It would be nice if affordable multifamily housing could be financed all in one shot, but it never is.

In a three-decade career, Shaun Donovan has had a profound impact on shaping the public policy debate over addressing America’s affordable housing crisis.