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Design can help play an important role in mitigating rising affordable housing insurance premiums, attendees of a recent National Housing & Rehabilitation Association town hall heard.

In early March, NH&RA held its annual meeting, a three-day symposium on all things housing, finance and tax credits. As part of the meeting and ongoing efforts in the industry, the meeting included discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Vincent R. Brown, a Cincinnati-based consultant who coaches companies and nonprofits on DEI strategies, delivered a keynote address. This topic is salient, not only with stories dominating the news but also as an ongoing issue in the affordable housing industry and the communities they serve.

Encouraging net-zero home construction is an increasingly common tool cities and states seek to reduce their carbon footprints. Buildings account for a substantial share of carbon emissions in many cities and the U.S. in general. Accordingly, several jurisdictions have introduced requirements and incentives for increasing net-zero construction, focusing on residential development. An Urban Land Institute-affiliated consortium of developers, for example, has committed to bring half of their projects to net-zero compliance by 2030.

Victor Body-Lawson’s designs go beyond the basics of putting a roof over people’s heads. The New York City architect plans housing to enhance a community’s health and financial strength as well. And he often thinks about how to house residents’ souls.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, people were told to spread out, but the pandemic’s impact on affordable housing design might have been to accelerate the use of tighter energy efficient design plans.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, the year-end legislative package passed by the previous Congress, provided big wins for affordable housing, such as the four percent Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) floor, but it also created some gray areas that will require further guidance.

Later this month marks the one-year anniversary of when our world was turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. Friday, March 13, 2020 marked the last day the team at NH&RA was all together in person at the office and the beginning of a scramble to adjust to the new reality of the pandemic world.

Tax issues are going to be a mixed bag this year, with some positive changes, like the four percent Low Income Housing Tax Credit floor, and others that are not so positive. But there’s one thing that a lot of industry observers agree on—the need for guidance from the Internal Revenue Service.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) changed some guidelines for housing. As I noted in the Housing USA column in this issue, it capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000, and limited the deduction on mortgage debt interest, two measures that mostly impacted wealthy homeowners.

In 2017, Congress passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the signature tax reform of former President Donald Trump. The law lowered income tax rates, reduced households subject to the estate tax, and generally decreased the burden that various interest groups must pay, using different tweaks and carveouts. 

2020 was a year of superlatives. The worst, the longest, the most dysfunctional, the most frustrating, the most divisive, etc.…the entire world is more than ready to put the year in the rear-view mirror. Since dashing out my last column, we even got a little bit of good news, a hint that 2021 may be going in the right direction. Two Coronavirus vaccines were approved and distribution has begun. A desperately needed emergency relief package and year-end spending and tax package was enacted after months of congressional stalemate.

You don’t often hear “affordable” and “zero-carbon” in the same sentence, because for housing development these goals are seen as being in tension. But in Salt Lake City, one progressive project is addressing both goals simultaneously, in a city that could use such outcomes.