Monthly Columns Archives

For just over a third of a century, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’ (JCHS) State of the Nation’s Housing has been an annual must-read for its comprehensive, omni-sourced examination of all things housing – and its disciplined just-the-facts-ma’am compilation makes it fertile ground for a guru to discover the invisible drivers of housing.

New York Mayor Eric Adams recently set a ‘moonshot’ goal of 500,000 new affordable homes over the next ten years.

Don’t Drop the Ball in 2023

As I write this, I am already feeling nostalgic for the holiday season.

NewPoint Real Estate Capital is a real estate lender that’s looking to make a big splash in the affordable housing space.

In early September, USC’s Lusk Center for Real Estate, in partnership with Habitat for Humanity’s Way Forward Housing Coalition, put on an in-person Washington, DC conference called “Housing’s Contribution to Economic Development.”

In November, I attended a White House meeting on Resident-Centered Management Practices to solicit best practices.

Homelessness first became a national issue in the 1870s. Back then the pejorative term referred to “tramps” traversing the country in search of work.

Peter Bell has been an observer, chronicler and convenor of the affordable housing industry since becoming NH&RA’s first full-time staff member back in 1976.

Without anyone noticing, at roughly the same time ‘return-to-office’ softened its branding to ‘hybrid work environment,’ ‘side hustle’ replaced ‘moonlighting’ as the common parlance for being entrepreneurial outside one’s primary job.

Housing, at long last, has taken center stage in federal policy.

As fall blows in, we are nearing the end of our first full year back in person.