Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

For the eight years since the onset of the financial crisis, the economic recovery in the United States has been uneven. Month-to-month we have enjoyed a slow, but steady increase, in the creation of new jobs into the economy, though critics correctly point out that many of these new jobs are not equal replacements for high-paying manufacturing jobs that have migrated overseas. Many real estate markets (and not just on the coasts) are booming, cap rates continue to shrink and the value of rental housing assets (market rate and subsidized) are at all-time highs.

Attendance at this year’s annual meeting of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association at the Breakers in Palm Beach was a record high for the 34 year-old organization. Along with Henry Flagler’s beach palace, an aggressive level of development activity and the chance to network with industry luminaries, I have to think one of the lures was an entire day’s symposium devoted to the progress of the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program.

The idea for 409 Cumberland in Portland, Maine, one of the “greenest” and most innovative recent concepts in affordable housing, began in an Irish restaurant-bar.

Jonathan Rose Companies, headquartered in New York, describes itself as a “green” real estate policy, urban planning, development, project management and investment firm.

Sunlight warms the water at the Ohav Shalom Seniors Apartments. A new solar heating system has cut its cost to heat domestic hot water at this high rise by two-thirds.

Improved profitability, reduced operating costs, increased building value, and high investment returns. That’s what every developer wants, and that’s what will be possible in New York state thanks to governor Andrew Cuomo, through the recently initiated $5 billion Clean Energy Fund (CEF).

“Conservation only really works when it doesn’t affect or impact the end-user’s way of life.”

The National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) was established as part of HERA 2008, and provides communities with funds to build, preserve and rehabilitate rental homes that are affordable for extremely low-income households. Program funds have now been released to the states.

A 2012 Deutsche Bank study titled “Recognizing the Benefits of Energy Efficiency in Multifamily Underwriting” analyzed 230 buildings encompassing over 21,000 units of affordable housing where energy efficiency retrofits were performed to understand how predicted energy savings stacked up to actual energy savings. The results: only about 61% of predicted savings were realized.

Everyone in America knows that student debt is out of control. Seventy percent of the Class of 2015 will graduate with debt averaging $35,000 apiece, adding to the $1.2 trillion in student loans outstanding, a debt class bigger than car loans, bigger than credit card debt.

The Woodlawn, a four-story, 18 unit, mixed use building in Portland Oregon, demonstrates how technological and design innovation fuel energy savings, which in turn bring tax credits and lower financial costs – and keep pushing communities into new, cost-saving terrain.

The challenge of providing affordable housing is often one of providing options to those that live in high cost metropolitan areas.