Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Autumn is a season of change. While many poets refer to spring as the season of rebirth, I tend to think of the fall more as the marking of a new life cycle. September has always been my favorite month, when the heat and humidity yield to cooler, drier air. It’s generally a much more pleasant time in my view. While spring is nice, it also marks the nearing of oppressive summer heat in the Washington, DC, area where I live.

September is always a busy month in DC, but this year is shaping up to be exceptionally so.

It’s rare that the financial forces of government and industry collide to an extreme degree in any one city neighborhood. As someone who’s traveled much of the U.S., I’ve seen plenty of divestment, even in places that are centrally-located. The area I’m profiling this month used to be somewhat like that, but has seen a flood of public, private and philanthropic capital that may cause it to eventually rival surrounding boomburbs in Northern Virginia.

From flexible work schedules to “stay-on” bonuses and social media blitzes, property management companies and human resources officials are embracing innovative strategies to retain and hire employees at residential properties in the quirky, tight, pandemic labor market of 2021.

The United States, thanks to a combo of Coronavirus lockdowns, supply chain issues, tariffs and a rise in inflation, is seeing a spike in home material prices.

Never in my professional experience has a government defendant so cavalierly offered up a gratuitous admission against interest as did President Biden the day the Centers for Disease Control “independently” announced that it had miraculously discovered authority to reimpose a nationwide eviction moratorium.

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.

In the fall of 2019, Gilbert Winn, the CEO of Boston-based WinnCompanies, formed a task force to explore new ways to reduce eviction rates within the company’s affordable housing portfolio. Five months later COVID-19 hit, but the task force continued to meet and hash out ideas and best practices that would be refined throughout 2020.

Seems like I got a lucky draw when I was born in the United States, the wealthiest nation in the world. I was fortunate to be alive for the final Apollo mission when Americans last set foot on the surface of the moon. As a kid, I watched the first Space Shuttle launch in 1981 and with 135 missions over 30 years, they hardly made the news anymore by the time I was an adult.

A recent NH&RA presentation describes new and underutilized options for affordable home providers.