Monthly Columns Archives

The Schleswig-Holstein question is socomplicated, only three men in Europe have ever understood it. One was Prince Albert, who is dead. The second was a German professor who became mad. I am the third … and I have forgotten all about it.
– Lord Palmerston (Prime Minister, 1855-65)

Our staff writer Mark Olshaker and I spent the summer of 1981, the most glorious summer of each of our lives, traveling the country with a film crew and visiting the stars of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers for a documentary based on Roger Kahn’s bestselling book, The Boys of Summer. While Duke Snider was the color commentator at the time for the Montreal Expos, we found most of his former teammates in their 50s or 60s and working in their old hometowns: Pee Wee Reese worked in marketing for Louisville Slugger; Clem Labine managed a clothes manufacturing operation in Woonsocket, Rhode Island; Carl Erskine was a bank vice president in Anderson, Indiana; Roy Campanella, long disabled from a famous car accident, was a consultant for the Dodgers; Preacher Roe ran a family grocery store in Viola, Arkansas; and Carl Furillo, battling cancer at the time, worked as a night watchman at a factory in Reading, Pennsylvania.

To the list of American things that are growing more expensive in real terms, we must add the standard LIHTC apartment, and the principal reason is our capital sourcing model, the funding sieve.

In “Hamilton,” the most highly praised Broadway musical in some years, author/composer/lyricist/star Lin Manuel Miranda tells the story of America’s Founding Fathers to rap music—and it works. Miranda’s brilliant conceit is that the rebels who sought a better life than they had under King George III share the emotions in the voices of those seeking a better life today. And, in his cast, the faces of his 18th century revolutionaries are those of today’s America.

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost,
“by Three Spirits.”
“I – I think I’d rather not,” said Scrooge.

It may be called Newport, but it’s a town that joyously celebrates the old. On a visit there in July, I toured the oldest library and synagogue in America and had dinner in the oldest tavern, the White Horse.

A few issues back, our esteemed affordable housing advocate and columnist, David Abromowitz, vented in these pages about the lack of attention for our industry among political candidates.
“Yet if history is a guide,” he wrote, “almost none of them will have much, if anything, to say about one of the biggest costs in every family’s budget: housing.”
Well, the candidates on the primary trail may not be focused on us, but a lot of other folks in their destination of choice—our nation’s capital—seem to be.

If you attended NH&RA’s Spring Forum in Los Angeles in May or just took a glance at the event’s agenda, you will recognize many of the topics covered in this month’s issue. A paramount objective of both a trade association and a trade magazine is to capture the current mindset of an industry, address the issues of greatest concern and facilitate the sharing of experience and innovative thinking across company lines. I view the association and the magazine as partners in comprehensive communication.

In thermodynamics, entropy is, among other things, a measure of a system’s granular complexity – and in thermodynamics it is a fundamental law that entropy and complexity always increase.

Acertain $10-billion-a-year industry faces systemic catastrophic risk, for which we are entirely uninsured.
Today’s tax credit properties would not exist without insurance. Today, a LIHTC property without insurance is unfinanceable and un-ownable. It must have title insurance, fire insurance, casualty and personal injury insurance, and flood insurance if relevant. Many properties expect the tenants to buy renter’s insurance, many loans have mortgage insurance.

Along with a little luck, choice is probably the primary determinant of success. It’s also the basis of endless debate. Did our child pick the right spouse? Did our team pick the right draft choice? Why’d you order that dish? You’re voting for who? Yellow? You’re painting this room yellow? You know you look great in that dress.
Just think how much of our daily discussion is triggered by the choices we (or others) make.

In an anecdote that has become urban folklore, the famous Roaring 20s pilferer Willie Sutton was asked, “Why do you rob banks?” And he responded, “It’s where the money is.”