Articles Archives

New Products and Ideas in Energy Management

8 min read

“Conservation only really works when it doesn’t affect or impact the end-user’s way of life.”

National Housing Trust Funds Available

4 min read

The National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) was established as part of HERA 2008, and provides communities with funds to build, preserve and rehabilitate rental homes that are affordable for extremely low-income households. Program funds have now been released to the states.

Introducing Supertech

6 min read

A 2012 Deutsche Bank study titled “Recognizing the Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Multifamily Underwriting” analyzed 230 buildings encompassing over 21,000 units of affordable housing where energy efficiency retrofits were performed to understand how predicted energy savings stacked up to actual energy savings. The results: only about 61% of predicted savings were realized.

Sheepskin Serfs

4 min read

Everyone in America knows that student debt is out of control. Seventy percent of the Class of 2015 will graduate with debt averaging $35,000 apiece, adding to the $1.2 trillion in student loans outstanding, a debt class bigger than car loans, bigger than credit card debt.

Design Fuels Energy Savings

4 min read

The Woodlawn, a four-story, 18 unit, mixed use building in Portland Oregon, demonstrates how technological and design innovation fuel energy savings, which in turn bring tax credits and lower financial costs – and keep pushing communities into new, cost-saving terrain.

Pooling Rural Properties

4 min read

The challenge of providing affordable housing is often one of providing options to those that live in high cost metropolitan areas.

Turning Green Theory Into Action

3 min read

This month’s TCA explores an area of transaction opportunity that I am particularly passionate about. Energy efficiency and sustainability is a rare area where mission, policy, and business opportunity should align, yet there continue to be misconceptions, split incentives and other barriers that sometimes make it difficult to achieve utility efficient outcomes in the real world.

Homes to Come Home To

11 min read

The treatment of military veterans has been an emotionally fraught and politically loaded topic since the beginning of the nation. It took until 1818 – 35 years after the British surrender – for Revolutionary War veterans to receive a pension.

Talking Heads Jeff Brodsky, Related Companies

8 min read

Jeff Brodsky graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and moved to Detroit to work for the Ford Motor Company, just as the Middle East oil crisis hit in 1978.

Novogradac

4 min read

The Novogradac Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Showcase, released in January to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the federal drive to encourage affordable housing, shows the LIHTC program in action by profiling 72 LIHTC developments in 34 states and territories.

Emotional demobilization

5 min read

In central London, on the pavement at every street corner, every traffic light, every pedestrian crossing, are painted two words: LOOK RIGHT. They exist to protect us against the instincts most of us have spent a lifetime acquiring, instincts that kick in when we are inattentive, in a hurry, tired or under stress.

Going RAD

6 min read

We have two options,” an official from the Housing Authority of Baltimore City (HABC) tells a meeting of several hundred people who live in an HABC-owned building.

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