Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Barack Obama famously told House Republicans in 2009 that “elections have consequences.”  While we do not know what the results will be once the polls close on November 3 (or even when we will know who actually won) we do know that this particular election will be very consequential.

In response to the myriad of presidential tweets, op-eds and administration actions, we thought it was time to set the record straight on fair housing. The duty to affirmatively further fair housing was enshrined into law in the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968. We, as a country and as a government, have yet to live up to the ideals of that law’s provision, despite our unchanged obligation to do so.

Since the 1930s, nearly all cities and towns have implemented some form of zoning to separate uses. Retail is put apart from housing, which is put apart from offices, and so on.

If the pandemic itself doesn’t decide the upcoming election, the voters’ judgment of their elected officials’ policy responses to its consequences will. And voters’ pandemic experiences are wildly diverse based on many things – most especially on their housing, what it is and where it is.

Any business or industry as affected by government regulation and legislative decision-making as affordable housing has a vested interest in engaging elected officials and encouraging its constituent voters to exercise their rights.

The Pittsburgh Athletic Association building, more than a century old, has been called a structure with good bones, gracious and elegant. Presidents have spoken there. Stately weddings have been held within. There was a two-story swimming pool on its third floor. Now, after years of deterioration, Historic Tax Credits (HTC) are being used to bring it back to its old grandeur.

The Merchants National Bank building in Mobile, AL, has experienced many obstacles since its opening in 1929. For example, the 1929 market crash occurred within weeks of opening, it is currently relaunching through the extensive disruption of a pandemic and has weathered dozens of hurricanes in its nearly 100 years of existence. The $45 million rehab is trying to ensure this historic building and the buildings that surround it can endure for another century.

This is the motivating statement behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s housing policy plan, and he has made clear that it is a central and essential part of his presidential candidate platform.

One major difference between the current recession and the one that occurred a decade ago is that major depository institutions are financially stable and providing much needed capital to the communities they serve.

Apparently God, at least, doesn’t mind having low-income neighbors. That’s the implication of a new initiative called YIGBY (Yes in God’s Back Yard), which is using church land to build affordable housing while getting around the usual litanies of NIMBY objections.

In 2008, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison named Matthew Desmond took up residence in a rundown trailer park on the South Side of Milwaukee, and later moved into a Black neighborhood on the city’s North Side, where he roomed with an African American security guard he’d met at the trailer park. His goal was to document from every angle and perspective the pervasive effects of eviction and chronic housing insecurity.

Could bankrupt shopping malls lying dormant throughout the country offer new opportunities for affordable housing?