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The Rayette Building in the Lowertown section of St. Paul, Minnesota has been a lot of things over the last 100 years, starting as a hat and clothing wholesaler in 1911. It became the Raymond Rayette Laboratories in 1936, where scientists developed products like Aqua Net, once the most popular hairspray in the U.S. In the mid-1990s, the building changed again into a giant, seven-story parking garage, with room for 300 cars.

The result of this National Housing & Rehabilitation Association initiative, now in its second year, has been a program that encourages sustainable efficiency in affordable housing. But that is not how PTEE was sold. “We present utility efficiency as an economic imperative and a business opportunity,” states NH&RA Executive Director Thom Amdur. “How can we leverage energy efficiency to increase the residual value of a property, increase cash flow and decrease operating expenses? The word green doesn’t even show up in our literature; this is about dollars and cents.”

Ask Americans what they envision by green building and the property they describe will likely be a ground-hugging campus, newly built, festooned with cutting-edge technology. Then show them a 12-story central-city high-rise built in the mid-1960s and they may instinctively recoil at its plain exterior, small footprint (often paved), and visible age. Yet, when properly compared, that refurbished 202 is much greener than the new campus, because “green isn’t what you think it is.” Instead it’s three things.

The principal reason for this greening, Daskalakis says, is competition: The vast preponderance of projects seeking NMTC funding do not receive it, and projects are “greened” to make them more attractive. The Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund documents the odds: For 2014 allocations, $19.9 billion in total applications were made for an available $5 billion; $25.8 billion in applications were made for an available $3.5 billion in 2013; and $21.9 billion seeking $3.6 billion in 2012.

Developing, owning and managing commercial real estate is a complicated, labor-intensive and expert-driven endeavor, and it is unreasonable to think that one individual can “play all positions.” Just as the owner of a pro football team needs an entire roster of on- and off-the-field talent to make his enterprise successful, owners and developers of affordable housing need a variety of teams to acquire, develop and maintain properties. These days, one of the most critical teams in maximizing efficiency and profit is an energy team. And what separates out the high-performing energy/maintenance teams is their ability to maintain results for the 15-plus years of the building’s compliance life.

With the mid-term elections behind us, and with Republicans controlling both the Senate and the House, it is possible that 2015 will see some movement toward change, subject to a potential White House veto. Expect 2015 to be very interesting on this front, with numerous discussions and proposals, and with much back and forth.

On the first Monday in February each year, the day on which what is generally referred to as “the President’s Budget” is released, Washington is sated with that giddiness you feel on the night of a Nats’ playoff game or an all-star holiday concert on the Mall. After all, the federal government is the biggest bank in America and there are a whole lot of folks eager to dip into its coffers.

Frequent readers of my column know that energy and water efficiency is one of my professional passions and after getting my electric and propane bills this month, I took some of the lessons we have learned from our Preservation Through Energy Efficiency (PTEE) Road Shows and embarked on some winter efficiency measures and operations and maintenance at home, too. There is nothing like the winter vortex to inspire action and I hope our readers will take some of the lessons and strategies we have highlighted in this month’s issue and put them into action.

A recent article in Multihousing Pro, entitled “The Incredible Shrinking Tradesman,” highlighted what many in the affordable housing development world already understand first hand: A generation of construction workers is leaving the workforce, and no one knows just how we will replace them.

Call it an exodus, call it a coincidence or call it a meme, but Americans are heading to the cities in the largest numbers since the Industrial Revolution changed a rural society into an urban society at the end of the 19th century. This latest great migration is from the center of the country towards all the edges. And it’s not surprising since the cities are beautiful. A month ago, I traveled from my home in beautiful Washington to Boston, Pittsburgh, Charleston and Atlanta and each of them was beautiful in its own quirky way.

During Bernie Husser’s two-year term as chair of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (NH&RA), which ends at the annual meeting in March, the organization has launched its Preservation Through Energy Efficiency initiative, fought for affordable housing in Congress and watched over the launch of a new federal program to recapitalize public housing. Husser has been in the business of affordable housing for more than two decades.

Even as tax reform looms on the horizon, the LIHTC is under a different mortal threat, one from an unlikely source – the Obama Administration and its judicially questionable but so-far politically effective blunderbuss known as disparate impact. If not struck down in a case just argued in the Supreme Court, then we might as well kiss goodbye states’ autonomy to set their own QAPs and to make binding awards, and say sayanora to the LIHTC production pipeline as we know it.