Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

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.

For decades, racial discrimination has been a real problem in housing – both for those building it and those living in it. Reversing the trends that limit housing access, and spurring economic mobility, has become a salient goal for the affordable housing industry.

As I showed in last month’s Guru, under-reinvested urban neighborhoods are left behind or shortchanged on economic capital, political capital, municipal infrastructure, coordinated government policy and local income and earning power.

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.

It will shock nobody when I assert that the affordable housing finance system is deeply entwined and enmeshed with the actions and activities of federal government activities.

In this issue, we look to the states to see when and how this new funding will make its way into local affordable housing markets around the country. As the director of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency notes, this is a “bespoke” industry where no two deals are exactly alike. That presents a challenge as states are figuring out how to deploy all these new resources and are stepping up to the plate to do so equitably and effectively. Many states will use it to help address the housing disparities JCHS cites in its report. Make no mistake, this investment is such that hasn’t been seen since the start of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program decades ago.

State housing finance agencies (HFA), for more than a generation the primary delivery system for federally-funded affordable construction, rehab and preservation, are playing a newer role in the continuing recovery from the pandemic: emergency assistance provider.

For more than 35 years, the success of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) has hinged on the effectiveness of its public-private partnership (P3).

As an influx of federal dollars are expected for affordable housing, state housing finance agencies (HFAs) plan to use the money not only to increase existing programs, but in some cases, see this as a historic opportunity to make significant changes.

Private placements may make up to three quarters of the affordable multifamily housing bond market, but that doesn’t mean that publicly offered bonds are a weak sister. In fact, growth in tax-exempt bond public offerings may be even larger than the increase in private placements in 2021.