Monthly Columns Archives

In these darkest of times, this month’s Tax Credit Advisor devotes our pages to hope.

Insufficient ventilation and insanitary surroundings reduce the vital resisting power of individuals exposed to such conditions; overcrowding causes closer contact with the infected individuals, and the absence of sunlight prevents the destruction of disease germs by nature’s principal disinfecting agent.

Our original game plan for May was to highlight case studies of the variety of options available in Private Activity Bonds. But this issue, like all of our lives, has been disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis. Private activity might also be the best description of our daily routines now as so many of us are restricted to our homes.

As our staff prepares this issue to go to press, we are not working side by side in our downtown DC offices as we usually do but rather each teleworking from our own homes.

When Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) was launched eight years ago, the public housing world was encased in its own hard shell: HUD officials speaking at NAHRO or CLPHA conferences to explain and cheerlead for the program were greeted with skepticism and suspicion only a skosh short of hostility.

Two years into the era of Opportunity Zones, its impact on our industry has been minimal: whatever benefit the OZone may provide other types of real estate, it’s not boosting Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) production.

It’s spring training time, when everyone is optimistic and hopes they can win the World Series.

Am I missing something or is the current campaign-driven conversation about healthcare totally focused on costs? Limiting the healthcare debate to dollars and cents makes no sense.

Though their business necessarily compels them to accommodate people during overnight stays, hospitals are the country’s least willing landlords, forced into the role by a to-them-toxic rapid evolution of healthcare laws, pharmacological potency, and one-way urbanization.

When it comes to housing innovation urgency, states are where the action is. Stories in this issue ably document what and how, and as a big-picture counterpoint, allow me to tell you why, and what that means for your state.

There is a lot of noise both in the air and on the air. A lot of loud and fast talking and a fear of listening. I like to view our magazine as a thoughtful sanctuary from the fracas, a rest stop where you can quietly and patiently mull over ideas, innovations and transactions.

Unless Congress and the Administration extend it, the New Markets Tax Credit will die at year-end. While reprieve is likely, to paraphrase noted investment banker Dr. Samuel Johnson, nothing so concentrates the mind as the knowledge that one might be sunset.