Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Few people have achieved the level of success expanding access to affordable housing and homeownership opportunities in the mid-Atlantic region as Chickie Grayson, President and CEO of Enterprise Homes, Inc.

“New Markets Tax Credit legislation for South Carolina has been filed the past two years sponsored by a broadly bi-partisan group of legislators,” says Burnie Maybank, a former director of the state’s Department of Revenue and now in the Columbia, S.C. office of the Nexsen/Pruitt law firm

Throughout the U.S., people know new ideas and trends often come from California. But in one such case, some worry that the new ideas may drive developers and investors away from building affordable housing there.

The clock started ticking in May 2014, when Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH), an affordable housing developer with offices in Chicago, signed an agreement to buy Lafayette Terrace, an old, project- based Sec. 8 property on Chicago’s South Side.

If we had to pick a single word that best characterizes the approach to senior living exemplified by Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly of Boston, Massachusetts, we would find that word right in the name: Community.

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

Success and its resultant growth may make the ownership and staff of a company happier, but it does not make their jobs easier. Success in the housing industry, affordable or other, usually means more—more buildings, more units, more residents, more staff, more income, more expenses, more data, more time, more everything.

Responding to a request from Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has performed a review of the oversight and administration of the Low- Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Program. The results of the study were sent to Senator Grassley on July 15, 2015.

Do my eyes and ears deceive me? Has affordable housing really been edging its way into popular culture and the mainstream media?

In prominent historian Joseph J. Ellis’s latest work, The Quartet, he chronicles how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay persuaded—and with great difficulty—states in fear of another King George III that wanted to remain independent, instead, be united. What that Colonial Quartet feared was 13 different opinions on vital issues (at that point, primarily war with a foreign nation).

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.