Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

I just had the privilege of watching a National Housing & Rehabilitation Association member interview Gloria Steinem for his webcast. At 90, Steinem has not lost a beat. She is as eloquent, thought-provoking and inspiring as ever.

Recent good news has me feeling like the affordable housing industry is awakening from a bleak winter into a springtime blossoming with federal action that will make it easier to build and preserve affordable housing.

John B. Cruz III is a raconteur. You’ll learn a lot from listening for an hour to this dignified, elderly developer, head of the Cruz Companies in Boston.

Those who say you can’t put a price on virtue have never worked in the capital markets. Although people say they value many things, what they actually pay for is what they truly value. Increasingly, that is virtue, or the appearance of virtue, now manifesting itself in the availability, terms, security and risk-adjusted yield of debt or equity instruments.

Since 2018, the City of Baltimore, the Housing Authority of Balti-more City (HABC), planners, architects and developers have been working on a comprehensive redevelopment of a large public housing project near the city’s famous Inner Harbor.

The California city of Santa Barbara is an affluent place. Oprah Winfrey lives there. President Reagan had his ranch there. But its commercial district was starting to look ragged post-pandemic, with stores going out of business due to online competition from Amazon and others.

As challenges continue to buffet the low-income housing market, an increasing number of states are implementing their own versions of a Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). According to a recent Novogradac report, 17 states have added completely new state tax credit programs since 2013, resulting in a total of 29 states and Washington, DC having unique LIHTC incentives.

The needs of the public housing portfolio are well documented: annual shortfalls in Congressional funding dating back to the 1980s have contributed to an estimated capital backlog of $70 billion.

In 1998, when North Carolina Democrat-turned-Republican Lauch Faircloth added the amendment for which he became infamous, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) were in a protracted bureaucratic standoff combining the worst features of medieval sieges and the First World War.   

The prospects are changing for combining solar energy production and affordable housing.

Launched through federal legislation in 2012, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has leveraged over $19.3 billion in construction investment to improve or construct over 174,000 public housing units and 53,000 Section 8, tax credit and market-rate apartments co-located in these public housing communities.

Two proposed changes in tax legislation pending in Congress could increase the number of new and preserved affordable rental homes coming to market in the next ten years by over 200,000, according to consulting and accounting firm Novogradac.