Monthly Columns Archives

If you own an income-producing property, you have an equity partner hiding in plain sight.  Despite never signing a document with you, your municipality owns somewhere between one-eighth and one-quarter of your property’s economics, a slice it can increase without your consent, and will own longer than you’ll own the property. 

Three and a half years after it began with the best of intentions, state-level programs and laws intended to help residents avoid eviction have cost many of the country’s largest, best and most ethical affordable housing owners upwards of half a billion dollars – and the total keeps rising. 

As shown in last month’s Part 1, the economically botched management of the 2020-2021 COVID pandemic precipitated the inevitable return of inflation. Though the household damage was palliated by enormous federal spending across two administrations, that cumulative largesse has now assured us that we will worry about inflation and deal with its consequences for at least the rest of the decade.

As several of the early Faircloth-to-RAD projects are completing their conversion to the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, practitioners are also starting to better understand the legal “nuts and bolts” of how to close a transaction and ensure a smooth transition from Faircloth-to-RAD.

Inflation is not a single force but a swarm of costs that appears in scouts and attacks from all directions.

The last scalable change to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s program compliance was around the time of America’s bicentennial. It’s certainly a different world today. And you’re not alone in wanting to understand its impact.

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, in a rare instance of the Court grappling with the issue of homelessness.

Four years after the response to COVID-19 emptied downtown high-rise office buildings of workers, leaving some towers furnished shells empty of life or commerce, why hasn’t the prophesied breakthrough of office-to-residential conversions appeared?   

Out With the Old, In With the New

Are you an affordable housing developer in search of a local building permit and feeling helpless as popup financial exactions materialize as fast as you vanquish the previous ones? Now there’s one weird trick you can use to get relief: say “sheetz.”

I was recently asked to reflect on what moments led me to a career in affordable housing. Like most people in this industry, it wasn’t something I ever knew was a career option.

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, in a rare instance of the Court grappling with the issue of homelessness.