David A. Smith Author Archives
The Guru Is In
The reunification of affordable housing
David A. Smith • 5 min read
In 1975, the year I got into this business, American residential rental housing was split into three utterly separate domains.
The Guru Is In
The leadership California needs
David A. Smith • 4 min read
Over the last eight years, California’s Bay Area added 167,000 new homes, while adding four times as many jobs: 750,000. Yet when voters were asked to explain the causes of California’s runaway unaffordability, the worst in the nation, they cited lack of rent control first; restrictive zoning came in last.
The Guru Is In
How to work yourself out of a job
David A. Smith • 5 min read
Many executives I know and respect are afflicted with what I’ve dubbed the perception of essentiality – the belief that not only is their work broadly essential to the organization, each element of how they do it is likewise essential and personal, else the organization suffers.
The Guru Is In
Subsidy’s conduit, subsidy’s camouflage
David A. Smith • 5 min read
Finance is not subsidy, though they are easily confused in people’s minds. Affordable housing always needs subsidy in one form or another – so why the recent fascination with state and local housing bonds?
The Guru Is In
The wonderful new markets of OZ
David A. Smith • 5 min read
In 2001, roughly as the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC)was coming into effect, Apple introduced the iPod.
The Guru Is In
Blueprint for a CRA-evolution
David A. Smith • 10 min read
So powerful is the fear of the devil we don’t know that though everyone who works in affordable housing will admit privately that, as currently regulated, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is broken in a policy sense, few will voice this publicly.
The Guru Is In
A value proposition for intermediaries
David A. Smith • 5 min read
To stay profitable, an intermediary (syndicator, CDFI, mortgage originator, donor/technical assistance provider, development consultant) always has to have its own proprietary value proposition – a statement we make about ourselves that, if believed to be true, leads inevitably to the conclusion, ‘Do business with us’.
The Guru Is In
Ten years after, what have we learned?
David A. Smith • 5 min read
On September 6, 2008, the federal government nationalized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a measure without precedent in global financial history, even more systemically dramatic than Pierpont Morgan’s single-handedly underwriting global liquidity to stop the Panic of 1907.
The Guru Is In
Beyond the event horizon(s)
David A. Smith • 5 min read
For affordable housing transactors, the goal line is the closing, and as it approaches, vision narrows until nothing exists but that.
The Guru Is In
Rebooting private urban workforce housing
David A. Smith • 5 min read
Seventy years ago, American employers and insurance companies responded to the post-World War II economic and baby boom by developing over 50,000 apartments of largely unregulated private urban workforce housing rentals.
The Guru Is In
The forgotten housing experiment
David A. Smith • 5 min read
When, in the 1960’s, Lyndon Johnson launched the federal government into the regulated public- private partnership era of affordable housing delivery, the initiative drew on two decades of multifamily rental experience, about which until very recently I knew nothing – the benevolent insurance-company as workforce housing investor/developer.