Monthly Columns Archives

As Michael Milken discovered, one can rue forever giving a good idea the wrong name, for even if it does not sour the public, the wrong name sends the innovators chasing the wrong direction and solving the wrong problem.

It sometimes seems as if the United States has more than just one country within its boundaries. The divide can appear so vast, you wonder if one government can fuse it.

If my instincts are correct, a seven page complaint filed on March 28, 2019, HUD v. Facebook, may one day be seen as an industry-disrupting legal event on par with U.S. v. Microsoft (1998) and U.S. v. IBM (1969). HUD accuses Facebook of violating the Fair Housing Act’s prohibitions on discrimination:

For those of us, no matter our leanings, who are frustrated by the lack of functionality of government, whose taxes have shot up significantly as a result of tax reform, whose personal or business healthcare costs continue to rise, this is an issue about a federal program that, by all appearances, is working.

In 1975, the year I got into this business, American residential rental housing was split into three utterly separate domains.

Over the last eight years, California’s Bay Area added 167,000 new homes, while adding four times as many jobs: 750,000. Yet when voters were asked to explain the causes of California’s runaway unaffordability, the worst in the nation, they cited lack of rent control first; restrictive zoning came in last.

All aboard! Welcome, and we’re glad you’re joining us today for this grand tour of affordable housing situations and civic innovations in cities all across our country.

Is it bragging if I open this issue by declaring it a win-win? Actually, it’s a win-win-win-win—for affordable housing management, for their residents, for government and for our readers.

Many executives I know and respect are afflicted with what I’ve dubbed the perception of essentiality – the belief that not only is their work broadly essential to the organization, each element of how they do it is likewise essential and personal, else the organization suffers.

Finance is not subsidy, though they are easily confused in people’s minds. Affordable housing always needs subsidy in one form or another – so why the recent fascination with state and local housing bonds?

I bonded with Ballotpedia.

Hey, all you folks out there oozing over OZones: remember New Markets Tax Credits?