Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Success and its resultant growth may make the ownership and staff of a company happier, but it does not make their jobs easier. Success in the housing industry, affordable or other, usually means more—more buildings, more units, more residents, more staff, more income, more expenses, more data, more time, more everything.

Responding to a request from Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has performed a review of the oversight and administration of the Low- Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Program. The results of the study were sent to Senator Grassley on July 15, 2015.

Do my eyes and ears deceive me? Has affordable housing really been edging its way into popular culture and the mainstream media?

In prominent historian Joseph J. Ellis’s latest work, The Quartet, he chronicles how George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay persuaded—and with great difficulty—states in fear of another King George III that wanted to remain independent, instead, be united. What that Colonial Quartet feared was 13 different opinions on vital issues (at that point, primarily war with a foreign nation).

It may be called Newport, but it’s a town that joyously celebrates the old. On a visit there in July, I toured the oldest library and synagogue in America and had dinner in the oldest tavern, the White Horse.

A few issues back, our esteemed affordable housing advocate and columnist, David Abromowitz, vented in these pages about the lack of attention for our industry among political candidates.
“Yet if history is a guide,” he wrote, “almost none of them will have much, if anything, to say about one of the biggest costs in every family’s budget: housing.”
Well, the candidates on the primary trail may not be focused on us, but a lot of other folks in their destination of choice—our nation’s capital—seem to be.

On June 22, 2015, HUD issued Notice H-2015-04, Methodology for Completing a Multifamily Housing Utility Analysis. The Notice provides instructions to owners and management agents for completing the utility allowance required at the time of the annual or special adjustment of contract rents and when a utility rate change results in a cumulative increase of 10 percent or more from the most recently approved utility allowance.

After almost two decades at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, most recently managing tax credit equity investments, David Leopold maintained a passion for multifamily affordable housing but was looking for something new. This past spring he was offered an irresistible opportunity: He joined Freddie Mac, as Vice President of Affordable Housing Production, where he manages all lender relationships, transactions, and deal negotiations for the multifamily affordable housing business.

”It would be paradoxical to construe the FHA [Fair Housing Act] to impose onerous costs on actors who encourage revitalizing dilapidated housing in the Nation’s cities merely because some other priority might seem preferable.”

Contrary to the messages of the latest spate of dystopian science fiction novels and futuristic prognosticators, the brave new world of high technology and computer control has not eliminated the role of human beings or made them obsolete. At least, not in the area of energy efficiency.

On June 26, 2015, HUD published a Notice in the Federal Register revising some of the rules of the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) Program. The RAD program provides the authority to convert various housing programs to long-term project-based Section 8 rental assistance. The revised Notice PIH-2012-32, REV-2 summarizes key changes made to the program. Most elements of the revised Notice are effective June 26, 2015.

RAD’s birth a little over three years ago could scarcely have been less heralded: tucked obscurely into an appropriations extender, it offered no new money (not a bug, a feature; if RAD had had scoring cost, it could never have emerged from the sausage factory); outside the public housing realm it was greeted with indifference; and within public housing circles it was generally treated with at best hostile vigilance1. How then could this unassuming program blow through its original optimistic cap, tripling in size to over 180,000 apartments (nearly 15% of the entire public housing inventory) with no signs of slowing down?