Monthly Columns Archives

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.

Today, just as we finish editing this issue, a letter with signatures representing 1,000 organizations and companies has been delivered to the chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee urging for extension of the New Markets Tax Credit program, which is due to expire at the end of this year.

A recent article on the Bisnow East Coast website reported that, according to a survey by the Associated General Contractors of America, “Across the U.S., 43 percent of construction firms reported that their costs had been higher than anticipated due to labor shortages, while 44 percent reported having to lengthen project timelines because of the issue.”

A philosophical feud over the soul of affordability that has been ongoing for most of a century may have reached a turning point.

With the mid-September release of Treasury’s Housing Reform Plan, the administration has presented its exit strategy for GSE conservatorship, which may be summarized as ‘death sentence commuted, eligible for parole in a few years,’ and mapped out a strategy to do exactly that without legislation.

This is our annual Historic Tax Credit issue. But this year we’ve expanded the subject a bit to look at using historic credits as a part of multi-credit deals.

Thirty years ago, when I and others were inventing affordable housing preservation, it came in only two flavors (ELIHPA and LIHPRHA), just like Coke and Diet Coke.

There are many problems we are faced with as a society that we may not currently have the means to solve, particularly those that are nature-driven (i.e., dementia, global warming, storms). But we can solve the housing shortage.