Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

Regular readers of this column know I’m a native of Maine, the “Pine Tree State.” As the nickname implies, it’s a place that has more forests than urban and suburban areas. All those trees have helped power Maine’s economic engine in the form of paper, logging and lumber mills. And remember that shortage of swabs for COVID-19 tests last year? Yep, lots of those wooden sticks with a cotton ball on the tip are manufactured in Maine.

It has been a momentous few months for the affordable housing community. After a bumpy presidential transition, there has been a flurry of positive activity from the Biden administration and 117th Congress. The enactment of American Rescue Plan of 2021 provides much-needed financial support for affordable housing renters at a critical moment. Our champions in Congress have reintroduced the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act and Historic Tax Credit Growth and Opportunity Act with expanded scopes that would dramatically enhance and expand the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit if enacted.

A troubling spike in lumber prices may not break until later this year, as a badly out-of-whack supply and demand equation continues to roil the construction industry.

While COVID-19 may be accelerating design and construction changes in multifamily housing in the near term, larger market forces are at work and will influence how homes are built over the longer term, speakers at the National Council of Housing Market Analysts (NCHMA) said at the NCHMA Spring Meeting last month.

Wood-frame high-rise construction may soon become commonplace in the United States. The International Code Council (ICC), which develops a model building code, recently approved mass timber construction of up to 18 floors.

Dateline – June 1, 2023. National Housing & Rehabilitation Association announces the inaugural winner of its Hippo Award for Innovative Design in a Healthy Multifamily Property is Hygeia Developments’ Galen Apartments.

Residents at Foothill Villas Apartments in San Bernardino, CA stand to save more than $1,000 apiece in electricity costs after a solar photovoltaic system is installed as part of an extensive acquisition and rehab made possible by Low Income Housing Tax Credits.

From the evidence of the Boston area, one good way to get a transit-oriented development (TOD) done is to site a housing project either directly adjacent to a transit line or on unused transit property itself. This month Tax Credit Advisor is featuring the third in a series of these Boston TODs, an ambitious development called Bartlett Station, going up on an old bus yard in the city’s Roxbury section.

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.