Mark Olshaker Author Archives

Each year since 2004, NH&RA has bestowed its Affordable Housing Vision Award to affordable housing and community development leaders who have made significant and valuable contributions to the field and demonstrated years of leadership, commitment and imagination.

If you’re looking for one word to summarize John W. Gahan III’s approach to affordable housing—and virtually every other important aspect of his life—that word would be teamwork.

William “Bill” McGonagle literally has spent nearly his entire life involved with public and affordable housing.

More than a half century ago, in what would become the major theme exhibition for the 1967 Montreal World Exposition, Israeli-Canadian architect Moshe Safdie created a 12-story urban neighborhood on the bank of the Saint Lawrence River out of modular, precast concrete blocks lifted into place by cranes.

The Federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit statute provides that after the decade in which all tax credits have been claimed, and the 15-year compliance period in which they are no longer subject to recapture, the nonprofit partner generally has the right of first refusal to buy the property at a favorable price when an offer is made by a third-party.

Back in the 1990s, I was hired to write an IMAX film entitled Stormchasers, about the men and women who pursue and study “big weather.”

When Tax Credit Advisor took a look at the solar energy market last summer, it was as hot as our nation’s capital in August.

The good news is that Detroit seems finally on the way back up with strong signs of urban renewal and rehabilitation.

When the Coffelt-Lamoreaux public housing project was built in 1953 for veterans returning from the Korean War and migrant seasonal agricultural workers, its 38-acre site on the southwest corner of Buckeye Road and 19th Avenue was considered country by locals and wasn’t even within the Phoenix, AZ city limits.

HUD’s HOPE VI program was developed to deal with severely distressed public housing through three critical factors: physical improvement, management improvement and social and community services.

It’s a well-known problem in many areas of the country: A pernicious combination of high land values, mounting construction costs, super-gentrification and lagging wages have conspired to put decent housing out of reach for the workforce on which the increasingly affluent community depends.

The year 1962 saw the opening of the two most exhilarating architectural symbols of the dawning jet age: Dulles International Airport, serving Washington, DC in Chantilly, VA, and the Trans World Airlines Flight Center at Idlewild (now John F. Kennedy) Airport in Queens, NY.