Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Hope this month’s cover got your attention. And if you’ve arrived at this page, I guess it did. When I find myself waiting in the checkout line at Safeway with nothing to do but stare at all the celebrities on the magazine covers, I’m envious that the editors of those publications can depend on famous faces to lure you inside.

Nationwide, 90 companies originate FHA-insured multifamily debt, among them AGM Financial, Inc., based in Baltimore, MD. Last year, the company ranked 15th overall in production, completing 22 transactions worth $315,403,300. The company’s Founder and Chief Executive, Margaret Allen, is among the industry’s most widely respected thought leaders.

States across the country are increasing access to renewable energy sources through support for community solar projects, which create a unique opportunity for developers to reduce their utility costs while bypassing some of the challenges of installing a solar system as part of the property.

“A whole lot of moving parts,” is the way Holly Bray of Love Funding in Washington, D.C., depicts the three-year process of rehabilitating Arnold Gardens, a three-building affordable housing project in suburban Suitland, Maryland.

The Historic Tax Credit industry has never been better organized than it is today—and that’s a good thing since there has never been a greater need for that organization than over the past few years.

Imagine that you woke up one morning, expecting to see the person whom you married 14 years ago lying in bed beside you and instead you found a brand new spouse.

On March 24, Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington launched a national effort to increase affordable housing tax credits by issuing a report entitled, “Addressing the Challenges of Affordable Housing and Homelessness: Housing Tax Credit.”

HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program (RAD) has the potential to preserve thousands of units of much needed affordable housing as well as to improve the quality of apartments built, in many cases, half a century ago. That’s all great. But it also will, by necessity, cause some disruption along the way. In many cases, the amount of work needed in these units is going to require tenants relocating while the work is in progress.

The problem is clear, pervasive, and all but overwhelming: According to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimates, there is a backlog of more than $26 billion in needed renovations, repairs and upgrades to the nation’s inventory of public housing properties, and 10,000 affordable units are leaving housing programs each year.

When soliloquized by megalomaniacal president Frank Underwood in House of Cards, our title quote sought to prove his opponents’ hypocrisy. But it actually reveals quite the opposite: a profound divide between two philosophies that affects almost every part of the affordable housing business.

Oxford Mills give educators a place where they can live, work and come together as a community. The mixed-use project includes apartments targeted to teachers. It also includes commercial space targeted to nonprofit educational organizations and community space – including a busy café and coffee shop – where educators can meet and share ideas.

In April 2015, Brian Swanton got a message from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Federal officials questioned whether his plan to redevelop public housing in Maricopa County, Ariz., would violate the Fair Housing law by concentrating poverty in a low-income neighborhood.