Darryl Hicks Author Archives

Gregory Minott is an awarding-winning architect and co-founder of DREAM Collaborative, a black-owned design firm in the Boston metro area.

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.

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

Affordable housing developers and property managers have adapted to COVID-19 through innovation, flexibility, patience and open lines of communication. A good example of this is Boston-based Beacon Communities Development.

Headquartered in Bethesda, MD, MidCity Financial Corporation was founded in 1965 by Eugene F. Ford, Sr., an engaged leader and community advocate with a visionary approach to delivering quality multifamily housing to support the diverse needs of local communities.

Bellwether Enterprise, a subsidiary of Enterprise Community Partners, is a major lender of affordable multifamily housing, amassing a $26 billion servicing portfolio. Over the past year, the company has made a major push into workforce housing including opening an office in Dallas devoted exclusively to this market and hiring Anthony Tarter to run it.

Alan Jaffe is at the forefront of these efforts. Jaffe is managing director and head of the Public Finance Housing, Real Estate, and Project Finance Group at Jefferies, the largest independent investment bank in the United States. Jefferies is also a 50 percent owner of Berkadia, a market leading multifamily and commercial lender, investment sales provider and tax credit syndicator.

Sherrod Brown is a senior statesman who has devoted his entire adult life to politics—representing Ohio’s residents for 45 years—and become one of the most powerful lawmakers in the United States Congress.

Tax Credit Advisor sat down with Bernstein to get his thoughts on the role Opportunity Zones can play to help address the crisis, as well as other policy initiatives that Congress might focus on in 2020 to help generate more affordable housing.

Only a few months after Red Stone Equity Partners was founded in 2007, America suffered its worst economic recession in 80 years. While many companies in the affordable housing business closed, RSEP persevered, and over the next decade, became a leading national equity syndication platform.

Despite being one of the most idyllic places to live in America, Vermont suffers from a shortage of affordable housing. The legislature and the Vermont Housing Finance Agency are doing all they can to address the problem, but they have two strikes against them already.

“For the first time since we built the pyramids, we need to rethink the way we build things.” Cecil Phillips, chairman and chief executive of Atlanta, GA-based Place Properties, spoke those words at NH&RA’s Summer Institute in July, and emphasized them again when I interviewed him recently.