David A. Smith Author Archives

Knowing as I do that you are on tenterhooks to read my monthly Guru column, allow me to advise you on how your housing policy can be a centerpiece of your delivery of the vision on which you campaigned – a land of economic and social opportunity for all Americans.

In early October, the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Terwilliger Center for Housing and the National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders (NAAHL) co-hosted a day-long symposium/roundtable on what we decided by the end of the day just might be an emerging asset class whose preservation is integral to the success of America’s cities and the urban economy.

When first I saw a gleaming new tower sprouting within, and above, the five-story brick crust that was all that remained of a decrepit century-old block whose guts had been scoured out and trundled away, I thought the surface preservation both incongruous and a waste of money. In the decades since then, I’ve changed my mind even as the world’s historic cities have changed around us.

If the world’s 60 million refugees were a nation, they would be the world’s 23rd largest, with more people than South Africa or Italy. All of them have lost their homes, and all of them desperately want a home – in fact, not just a home, but a secure and stable place from which they can build new lives. While many may feel emotionally that ‘home’ is where they came from, most know that to build a new life they must migrate somewhere – within their country or to a new country.

As will be amply demonstrated elsewhere in this month’s Tax Credit Advisor, the conceptual case for using improvements in affordable housing to improve healthcare outcomes is overwhelming. Common sense, personal experience, a nearly unanimous view of affordable housing providers, a host of expert opinions, statistical studies – everything favors it.

A few weeks ago at the World Bank’s biannual Global Housing Finance Summit, a conference of roughly 350 housing executives from around the world (mainly from national governments and the Bank itself), I spoke on Financing Housing Down the Income Pyramid, and the ensuing Q&A session produced this challenging question from the audience, “How do we create effective affordable rental tenures?” That choice of words instantly set me thinking, and in formulating my answer, I stumbled on the right way to frame the question.

Congressman Steve Pearce (R-NM-2): Mr. Russ, can you tell me what rates of return [LIHTC] investors are looking at in this market? A lot of money sits idle, desperately looking for return.

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.

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.

In central London, on the pavement at every street corner, every traffic light, every pedestrian crossing, are painted two words: LOOK RIGHT. They exist to protect us against the instincts most of us have spent a lifetime acquiring, instincts that kick in when we are inattentive, in a hurry, tired or under stress.

You know that old trees just grow stronger/ And old rivers grow wilder every day
Old people just grow lonesome/ Waiting for someone to say, “Hello in there, hello”
– John Prine, 1971

For centuries during the late Middle Ages, tales were told of the realm of Prester John, whose empire of milk and honey lay among the heathen somewhere beyond the horizon. Expeditions were mounted in search of this Most Christian King, reputed to breed unicorns, whose prized horns were brought back by intrepid explorers.