Monthly Columns Archives

I grew up in a suburban community of 18,000 in which the homes were built on potato fields and mostly bought with the help of the G.I. Bill. Walking to school, I would say hello to the local firemen who were playing handball against the wall of the firehouse. When the cops were called by neighbors to break up a backyard party that got too loud, we knew them by name.

It is the curse of the expert to be unaware of what regular folks don’t know about his or her subject.

In our cover story this month, staff writer Mark Olshaker interviews the leaders of the various tax credit coalitions on advocacy plans in the face of potential tax reform. (Defending the Forts).

One of the primary roles of the President of the United States is encouraging and overseeing creation. Nations have problems and we elect a head of state to find solutions.

The voluntary public housing revolution has yet to cost HUD a dollar: in fact, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) has leveraged $8.90 for every dollar of public housing funds deployed, generating $3.9 billion of construction investment on the 59,000 apartments that have closed, with another 126,000 on deck, which together are liberating 185,000 apartments from the 1.3 million home public housing inventory and awakening the hitherto squelched or sublimated entre- preneurial capacity of public housing authorities, many of whom may never have known they had it in them.

Because the cycle of poverty is generational, to break it we must adopt a generational approach, enlisting the whole family so that those who are older can help those who are younger aspire to, and achieve, more than their parents did.

Transitions are times of anxiety and uncertainty. We know what we have, but we don’t know what we are going to get. Patience is probably the best antidote. It is difficult to anticipate outcomes. But that is not going to stop us.

During the past couple of years, we have reported frequently in these pages on the evolution of the relationship between housing and healthcare.

Not for the last time, President-elect Trump confounded expectations when he nominated as HUD secretary a pediatric neurosurgeon and unsuccessful Presidential candidate.

Among those destabilized by the aftershocks from our recent presidential election are many of my colleagues and friends, for whom the conjoining of ‘tax reform’ and ‘Trump’ have had an effect on their check-writing hands similar to a crowbar whacking their ulnar nerves.

In this issue, you will find detailed reporting on everything mentioned above from that informative day in Boston. NH&RA’s Fall Forum was the concert. This issue is the album.

Knowing as I do that you are on tenterhooks to read my monthly Guru column, allow me to advise you on how your housing policy can be a centerpiece of your delivery of the vision on which you campaigned – a land of economic and social opportunity for all Americans.