Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

It was a warm, humid summer night in Lexington. More specifically, it was about to get hotter. I was on my way to the first neighborhood meeting of the infamous Meadowthorpe Neighborhood Association to introduce my proposed affordable housing infill development.

Denver, CO—Denver is not an old city, even by American standards. So compared, say, to Boston or Philadelphia, it doesn’t have an extensive footprint of historic buildings.

So long have the Historic and Low Income Housing Tax Credits existed substantively unchanged that we take both for granted, not just in their existence but also in their particulars – procedural switches that were set one way for the Historic Credit, another for the LIHTC.

The most powerful tool in the last 40 years of the historic preservation movement has been the Federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit.

CohnReznick LLP recently released its sixth study addressing the performance of properties financed with Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits.

When Republican candidate Charles D. Baker lost the 2010 race for governor of Massachusetts to Democrat Deval Patrick, largely on the basis of blue collar and liberal enclaves throughout the state, he went into the political wilderness for a lot of personal reflection and soul-searching.

Millions of families across Texas, Florida, the Caribbean, the Gulf Coast and the Southeast have had their lives upended by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. As I write this column, Hurricane Jose is forming off the Bahamas with an uncertain trajectory.

Each year since 2004, NH&RA has bestowed its Affordable Housing Vision Award to affordable housing and community development leaders who have made significant and valuable contributions to the field and demonstrated years of leadership, commitment and imagination.

In our office, in addition to publishing Tax Credit Advisor, we manage organizations that address the needs of aging Americans. This has inspired me to be a collector of stories about creative aging solutions, including many in housing. Some of my favorites—including MetaHousing’s Arts Colonies, senior housing that contains art studios, music studios and theaters, and the Actors Fund residences where people get to spend later life with others with whom they shared an occupation—have been covered previously in these pages.

Last month, NH&RA’s Developers Council submitted comments to the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) in response to its new proposed recommended practices in housing credit allocation and underwriting. It is to the credit of NCSHA and its members that as the LIHTC program and marketplace has evolved, it has dedicated significant time and effort to developing revised guidelines for its members to coincide with the times.

The Pacific Companies, headquartered in the bucolic community of Eagle, Idaho, has developed 10,000 units of multifamily housing over its 20-year existence—90 percent of it affordable—in some of the remotest parts of the western United States as well as in its largest urban centers.

Is far as scientists know, light is the fastest-moving entity in the universe. And now, harnessing the energy provided by our only significant light source, 92.6 million miles away, is the fastest-moving technology to provide for our future power needs.