Case Studies Archives

In Newport, RI, where it often seems easier to park a yacht than a car, you can, and if it is a property dating back to the nineteenth century you can use Historic Tax Credits along with Low Income Housing Tax Credits to help preserve it for its elderly residents.

Piggybacking, layering multiple tax credit awards or other financing sources to make a project work, is a technique familiar to every developer of, and investor in, affordable housing.

Affordable housing developer/owners have something in common when it comes to preserving project affordability: a common problem.

Throughout its history, Worcester, MA has experienced more than its share of ups and downs. Settled and abandoned twice before it was finally resettled in 1713, it became a center of radical activity leading up to the American Revolution.

Innovation in deals using both Low Income Housing Tax Credits and tax-exempt bonds can be seen in a pair of Washington, DC affordable housing projects that tapped the two funding sources for more than $80 million using a new master parity indenture program.

Projects, like the Salvation Army’s Freedom Center in Chicago, partially financed by New Markets Tax Credits, are changing the way people think about issues, like homelessness, substance abuse and the reintegration of prisoners into society.

The question is: Why would a successful, experienced developer that relatively easily could have raised the $7.2 million needed to build a mixed-use Opportunity Zone project in northwest Philadelphia from a small number of well-heeled investors, instead go for a complex financing structure involving investments as small as $500?

Financing complex community development projects can take a lot of time and a whole lot of funding sources.

A $32 million renovation of an old courthouse in Lexington, KY, using both State and Federal Historic Tax Credits, has converted an 120-year-old structure into a beautiful multi-use boon to downtown redevelopment – and also righted a spectacular architectural fail from 50 years ago when a beautiful interior dome was sealed off and turned into an HVAC closet.

A new and disturbing trend in homelessness was taking over in Jacksonville, FL at the beginning of this decade.

When the Coffelt-Lamoreaux public housing project was built in 1953 for veterans returning from the Korean War and migrant seasonal agricultural workers, its 38-acre site on the southwest corner of Buckeye Road and 19th Avenue was considered country by locals and wasn’t even within the Phoenix, AZ city limits.

What strategies can developers use for successful affordable housing preservation of tax credit properties that have hit the 15-year mark with negative equity?