Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Where there’s a will there’s a way. A big senior affordable housing tower for sale near New York City and Newark, NJ generated a lot of interest in turning it into a market-rate project in a gentrifying neighborhood.

National Church Residences and FTK Construction Services are working on their second project together in Texas and have agreed to do a third. The two companies seem to have some items of philosophy in common that make for a productive partnership. Interviewed separately, they both say the same thing about the seniors living in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) development they are renovating in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas: They want the residents to be able to enjoy upgraded features and stay in their homes for life.

In the fall of 2019, Gilbert Winn, the CEO of Boston-based WinnCompanies, formed a task force to explore new ways to reduce eviction rates within the company’s affordable housing portfolio. Five months later COVID-19 hit, but the task force continued to meet and hash out ideas and best practices that would be refined throughout 2020.

Seems like I got a lucky draw when I was born in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world. I was fortunate to be alive for the final Apollo mission when Americans last set foot on the surface of the moon. As a kid, I watched the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981 and with 135 missions over 30 years, they hardly made the news anymore by the time I was an adult.

A recent NH&RA presentation describes new and underutilized options for affordable home providers.

The planets are all lined up for tax-exempt affordable multifamily bonds right now, for both public offerings and private placements. That’s the unanimous conclusion reached by a panel on the Tax Exempt Multifamily Bond Market at the recent Summer Institute of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association.

An egalitarian spirit of co-locating affordable renters in a development along with middle-income residents and market-rate occupants is a housing idea that is being seen more and more. One such effort is in Springfield, MA, where a rehab is underway to create revitalized housing for a population that includes all three types: affordable, workforce and market-rate renters.

For decades, racial discrimination has been a real problem in housing – both for those building it and those living in it. Reversing the trends that limit housing access, and spurring economic mobility, has become a salient goal for the affordable housing industry.

As I showed in last month’s Guru, under-reinvested urban neighborhoods are left behind or shortchanged on economic capital, political capital, municipal infrastructure, coordinated government policy and local income and earning power.

The Sursum Corda development in Washington, DC is a huge and hugely complicated deal. One thing that is helping to bring more than 1,000 planned units of housing to the capital neighborhood is structuring separate condominiums for the affordable and market-rate units.

USA Properties Fund thinks big.

By developing a large number of affordable housing units in its projects, the Roseville, CA-based firm helps house more families and develops economies that reduce costs.

It will shock nobody when I assert that the affordable housing finance system is deeply entwined and enmeshed with the actions and activities of federal government activities.