Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

“If you’re going through hell, keep going,” Winston Churchill is reputed to have advised during the early days of World War II. This advice is equally relevant for the current Covid-19 pandemic as it affects owners, staff and residents of affordable housing buildings and complexes, especially those dedicated to senior living, and truly, the entire population.

With the conclusion of the 2020 elections, Washington is once again embracing a season of change which includes the transition process from the Trump Administration to the Biden Administration as well as from the 116th to the 117th Congress.

I like to joke with other parents that we need to treat our children well, because someday they’ll be choosing our senior living arrangements and I’d like to live someplace nice.

Last month, NH&RA hosted an inspired town hall focused on health and sustainability in affordable housing. The panel theme was inspired by a conversation I had with Krista Egger, vice president of National Initiatives at Enterprise Community Partners. Krista had recently updated me on the latest iteration of Enterprise’s Green Communities (EGC) Standard, which is the “gold standard” for affordable housing green building standards. I was intrigued and excited by the new ways the EGC update incorporates resident health into its design strategy.

While the COVID-19 pandemic has hit senior housing so recently that post-COVID design has yet to fully materialize, what seems likely is that new congregate living projects will be more compartmentalized to cordon off seniors and their families and visitors in the public and semi-public areas of their residences.

Late this summer, the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawai’i granted a motion for summary judgment in Michael Tuttle, et al. vs. Front Street Affordable Housing Partners, et al., No. 18-00218 JAO-KJM, 2020 BL 305979, 2020 U.S. Dist Lexis 145071 (D. Haw. Aug. 12, 2020), a case brought by prospective low-income tenants seeking to reinstate an extended use agreement, which was released by the state agency at the end of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit compliance period following an owner’s request for a qualified contract. While a federal district court decision has limited precedential value, the decision is instructive for state allocating agencies, practitioners and LIHTC transaction participants, given the scarcity of cases involving qualified contracts since the enactment of Section 42(h)(6)(E)(i)(II).

This is the outlook presented by the latest edition of Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies report, entitled, Housing America’s Older Adults 2019. And it represents one of the greatest challenges facing the entire affordable housing enterprise. The first question, then, in any discussion of senior housing and services is: Are we meeting the demand?

2020 has been a brutal year for urban America. New York City, since bearing the brunt of the early COVID-19 impacts, has suffered steep drops in business activity.

When disruption threatens health and prosperity, whom does duty call, and to what action?

The federal role in providing affordable housing takes various forms, but is mainly focused on subsidies or underwriting for private sector housing. Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored enterprise that purchases mortgage shares and pools them for resale as security investments, is a major conduit for this. In September, the corporation announced a new Social Impact Bond (SIB) product that focuses on multifamily properties, using the proceeds from loans to finance affordable housing.

Hopeton Terrace in Chillicothe, OH, the first senior housing project to benefit from a RAD for PRAC rehab deal, may soon have a lot of company. According to officials at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD has seven more such deals currently being underwritten and has received a total of 180 applications to take part in the new program.

On April 29, 2016, President Barack Obama issued a proclamation designating May 2016 as Older Americans month. Shortly thereafter, the White House held a meeting with affordable housing and senior advocates to celebrate the proclamation and consider what else the Obama administration could do to make housing more affordable for seniors.