Mark Fogarty Author Archives

Fifteen years ago, residents of the historic Miriam Apartments in Chicago got together to create a grand mosaic, a bright and beautiful therapeutic work of art that symbolized the positive aspects of what living there meant to them.

The Stuyvesant Motor Co. building in downtown Cleveland is a landmark structure from the city’s manufacturing heyday but had also been a decaying eyesore for decades.

The human element is always going to be the most important factor in providing resident services, but technology is what helps a provider analyze and target services to achieve good metrics and even more importantly, useful results. National Church Residences has taken and run with this particular concept by designing its own in-house technology tool.

When Shawn Wilson, president of Blue Sky Communities, attended the recent ribbon cutting for the Clermont Ridge Senior Villas development in Clermont, FL, he saw something that made him think the seniors at the brand new development already felt at home. Many of them had put up wreaths on their front doors.

An ambitious joint venture is planning $2 billion in “middle-income” or workforce housing development in California. And in an unusual aspect of an effort that is targeting both new construction and existing housing, many of these middle-income workers will have units with luxury amenities.

Affordable housing owners and managers are working hard to help their tenants tap unused Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) funds to stay current on rental payments, and many of them have been doing this since the program rolled out.

Where there’s a will there’s a way. A big senior affordable housing tower for sale near New York City and Newark, NJ generated a lot of interest in turning it into a market-rate project in a gentrifying neighborhood.

National Church Residences and FTK Construction Services are working on their second project together in Texas and have agreed to do a third. The two companies seem to have some items of philosophy in common that make for a productive partnership. Interviewed separately, they both say the same thing about the seniors living in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) development they are renovating in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas: They want the residents to be able to enjoy upgraded features and stay in their homes for life.

The planets are all lined up for tax-exempt affordable multifamily bonds right now, for both public offerings and private placements. That’s the unanimous conclusion reached by a panel on the Tax Exempt Multifamily Bond Market at the recent Summer Institute of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association.

An egalitarian spirit of co-locating affordable renters in a development along with middle-income residents and market-rate occupants is a housing idea that is being seen more and more. One such effort is in Springfield, MA, where a rehab is underway to create revitalized housing for a population that includes all three types: affordable, workforce and market-rate renters.

The Sursum Corda development in Washington, DC is a huge and hugely complicated deal. One thing that is helping to bring more than 1,000 planned units of housing to the capital neighborhood is structuring separate condominiums for the affordable and market-rate units.

USA Properties Fund thinks big.

By developing a large number of affordable housing units in its projects, the Roseville, CA-based firm helps house more families and develops economies that reduce costs.