Monthly Columns Archives

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The forgotten housing experiment

5 min read

When, in the 1960’s, Lyndon Johnson launched the federal government into the regulated public- private partnership era of affordable housing delivery, the initiative drew on two decades of multifamily rental experience, about which until very recently I knew nothing – the benevolent insurance-company as workforce housing investor/developer.

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Occasions

3 min read

In the years of my youth, air travel was an occasion. The men dressed in suits and ties, the women in dresses, good meals were served with the elegance of a four-star restaurant and the rows of seats were comfortable.

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100: Advice from a centenarian

5 min read

Today the Guru turns 100.

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Shift the focus of effort

4 min read

Confession time: these days I seldom go to big-tent national affordable housing conferences. Half a day’s panels of my peers discoursing in informed erudite polyphony on the latest Washington bad news past, present or possible future leaves me enervated.

icon Blueprint for April

Seeing the Light

3 min read

As you begin to peruse this issue it will, at last, be April and a winter of cold and darkness in many regions of the country should be behind us. I have been commuting both to and from work in the darkness for so long now I sometimes wonder if I’m in Iceland rather than Washington, DC.

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The three right answers in Social Impact Bonds

5 min read

For more than half a decade now, we’ve heard unicorn tales of Social Impact Bonds (SIBs), and despite a compelling common-sense soundbite case, SIB sightings are rare, volume is minimal and replicable scalability at best theoretical…because we are having trouble putting together the right ingredients, the right government counterparties and the right sponsors.

icon Blueprint for March

Strategy

3 min read

Early in my career, when I worked as a sportswriter, Sonny Werblin, then the head of Madison Square Garden and thus the boss of the Knicks and Rangers, said to me, “A budget is a strategy.”

icon Blueprint for February

A house is not a home

3 min read

Rather than providing, we seem to find ourselves in an era of taking away—and predominantly from those who need it most. Health insurance, Medicaid expansion, the right to remain here, access to birth control, endeavors to slow climate change, overall affordability.

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Unfamiliar territory

5 min read

Without realizing it, roughly 20 years ago American affordable housing drifted into its third new territory, and because its border isn’t demarcated, we’re wandering through it without a map.

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The urban palimpsest

5 min read

In 1229, Christian monks in Jerusalem, rummaging about for parchment, unbound a centuries-old codex, scraped off what was written on it, refolded the leaves in half, and wrote atop the now-smaller book, at right angles, new liturgical texts for the Holy Land’s faithful knights.

icon Blueprint for January

Build On

3 min read

In order to get our editorial and design staff home for the holidays, we are putting this issue to bed a week before the leaders of both houses of Congress ascertain they will vote on tax change.

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Schrodinger’s tax

5 min read

By the time you read this, tax-exempt private activity bonds will be dead. Or they won’t. The New Markets Tax Credit will be dead. Or it won’t. The top corporate bracket will be 20 percent. Or it won’t.

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