Monthly Columns Archives

Our headline this month—“A New Era for the LIHTC Program”—might well have you scratching your head and wondering what the heck are they talking about.

In late June, to absolutely no press coverage, a Presidential executive order established the “White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing” with a pointed observation:

People Versus Places: The Definitive Argument

In addition to CEO and president of Family Scholar House, Cathe Dykstra’s title includes Chief Possibility Officer.

In the summer following my freshman year at college, I had the privilege of interning in an over-the-counter trading room on Wall Street.

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.