Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Supply chain delays, rising material costs, labor shortages. Construction companies have encountered these challenges before, but not during a global pandemic.

Energy efficient construction (EEC) is a focus area for cities and states as they move to reduce carbon emissions – after all, current buildings account for nearly 40 percent of such pollution. In many jurisdictions, developers—and consumers, to whom costs are passed down—must contend with building code changes that call for more EEC.

Think about affordable housing. What image comes into your mind? Is it a cutting-edge piece of architecture? A boxy looking brutalist tower design from the 1960s? A row of townhouses on a city street?

America has a long and complicated legacy of discrimination and racism, dating back more than 400 years to when the colonists of Jamestown brought slavery to our shores, through the Jim Crow era to today.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program has a couple of new provisions that should enhance conversion opportunities, attendees of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association’s annual meeting heard.

Design can help play an important role in mitigating rising affordable housing insurance premiums, attendees of a recent National Housing & Rehabilitation Association town hall heard.

In early March, NH&RA held its annual meeting, a three-day symposium on all things housing, finance and tax credits. As part of the meeting and ongoing efforts in the industry, the meeting included discussion of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Vincent R. Brown, a Cincinnati-based consultant who coaches companies and nonprofits on DEI strategies, delivered a keynote address. This topic is salient, not only with stories dominating the news but also as an ongoing issue in the affordable housing industry and the communities they serve.

Encouraging net-zero home construction is an increasingly common tool cities and states seek to reduce their carbon footprints. Buildings account for a substantial share of carbon emissions in many cities and the U.S. in general. Accordingly, several jurisdictions have introduced requirements and incentives for increasing net-zero construction, focusing on residential development. An Urban Land Institute-affiliated consortium of developers, for example, has committed to bring half of their projects to net-zero compliance by 2030.

COVID-19 is in headlong retreat: infections down 70 percent since January, seven-day average hospitalizations and deaths down 66 percent and 77 percent. In less than six months, Covid-19 vaccines in America will have gone from impossibility through scarcity to surplus, with the administration announcing that “all willing American adults will be able to receive a COVID-19 vaccine by the end of May.”

Victor Body-Lawson’s designs go beyond the basics of putting a roof over people’s heads. The New York City architect plans housing to enhance a community’s health and financial strength as well. And he often thinks about how to house residents’ souls.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, people were told to spread out, but the pandemic’s impact on affordable housing design might have been to accelerate the use of tighter energy efficient design plans.

An abandoned hospital campus is set to bring new life to a suburban Chicago neighborhood through an ambitious rehab that is to build housing, health care, social services and educational office space through financing using both Historic Tax Credits (HTC) and New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) equity.