Monthly Columns Archives

Inflation is not a single force but a swarm of costs that appears in scouts and attacks from all directions.

The last scalable change to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s program compliance was around the time of America’s bicentennial. It’s certainly a different world today. And you’re not alone in wanting to understand its impact.

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, in a rare instance of the Court grappling with the issue of homelessness.

Four years after the response to COVID-19 emptied downtown high-rise office buildings of workers, leaving some towers furnished shells empty of life or commerce, why hasn’t the prophesied breakthrough of office-to-residential conversions appeared?   

Out With the Old, In With the New

Are you an affordable housing developer in search of a local building permit and feeling helpless as popup financial exactions materialize as fast as you vanquish the previous ones? Now there’s one weird trick you can use to get relief: say “sheetz.”

I was recently asked to reflect on what moments led me to a career in affordable housing. Like most people in this industry, it wasn’t something I ever knew was a career option.

The Supreme Court recently heard arguments in City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, in a rare instance of the Court grappling with the issue of homelessness.

Names can outlive their purpose and their original meaning. Though the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, a cluster of mutually distrustful principalities with a largely symbolic head of state known as the Holy Roman Emperor maneuvered under that rubric for a thousand years after its 800 AD founding by Charlemagne before it was put to sleep by the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Such may yet be the fate of two venerable concepts, Fair Market Rent (FMR) and the Area Median Income (AMI). 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting impacts on the economy and financial markets, as well as the Federal Reserve’s raising of short-term rates to stave off inflation, interest rates and construction costs have risen dramatically, resulting in funding gaps that many multifamily affordable housing developers in the four percent LIHTC space have had difficulty filling.

This is an auspicious year.

A U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas recently granted an injunction to extend the Community Reinvestment Act final rule’s effective date, April 1, along with all other implementation dates. Here’s what you need to know about the case and how it will impact LIHTC investment.