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The federal role in providing affordable housing takes various forms, but is mainly focused on subsidies or underwriting for private sector housing. Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprise that purchases mortgage shares and pools them for resale as security investments, is a major conduit for this. In September, the corporation announced a new Social Impact Bond (SIB) product that focuses on multifamily properties, using the proceeds from loans to finance affordable housing.

On April 29, 2016, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation designating May 2016 as Older Americans month. Shortly thereafter, the White House held a meeting with affordable housing and senior advocates to celebrate the proclamation and consider what else the Obama administration could do to make housing more affordable for seniors.

Before the emergence of the Coronavirus advocates for the federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit, known as the Historic Tax Credit (HTC), were seeking several important legislative changes. HTC developments, like many other construction-related tax credits, have struggled during COVID-19 due to statutory and regulatory deadlines, decreased investor appetite and construction delays, adding new reforms to the wish list and making others now more important than ever.

Conservatives often find themselves with two conflicting impulses on housing. They support open markets and property rights and are thus sympathetic to the cause of weakening zoning laws and encouraging construction of different building types.

Barack Obama famously told House Republicans in 2009 that “elections have consequences.”  While we do not know what the results will be once the polls close on November 3 (or even when we will know who actually won) we do know that this particular election will be very consequential.

In response to the myriad of presidential tweets, op-eds and administration actions, we thought it was time to set the record straight on fair housing. The duty to affirmatively further fair housing was enshrined into law in the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968. We, as a country and as a government, have yet to live up to the ideals of that law’s provision, despite our unchanged obligation to do so.

Since the 1930s, nearly all cities and towns have implemented some form of zoning to separate uses. Retail is put apart from housing, which is put apart from offices, and so on.

Any business or industry as affected by government regulation and legislative decision-making as affordable housing has a vested interest in engaging elected officials and encouraging its constituent voters to exercise their rights.

This is the motivating statement behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s housing policy plan, and he has made clear that it is a central and essential part of his presidential candidate platform.

One major difference between the current recession and the one that occurred a decade ago is that major depository institutions are financially stable and providing much needed capital to the communities they serve.

Apparently God, at least, doesn’t mind having low-income neighbors. That’s the implication of a new initiative called YIGBY (Yes in God’s Back Yard), which is using church land to build affordable housing while getting around the usual litanies of NIMBY objections.

In 2008, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison named Matthew Desmond took up residence in a rundown trailer park on the South Side of Milwaukee, and later moved into a Black neighborhood on the city’s North Side, where he roomed with an African American security guard he’d met at the trailer park. His goal was to document from every angle and perspective the pervasive effects of eviction and chronic housing insecurity.