Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

The traditional wisdom is that the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) operate in two separate arenas: housing for the LIHTC and business/commercial for the NMTC.

Brian McGeady and Michael Riechman share a dedication to affordable housing, a dedication that is reflected in the origin story of their new company, MVAH Partners.

This city has made headlines recently as one that’s transitioning from an old to a new economy.

In 2001, roughly as the New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC)was coming into effect, Apple introduced the iPod.

On this recent Thanksgiving, I hope our elected officials—both present and future—took the opportunity to remember the spirit of collaboration between the Mayflower Pilgrims and the Wampanoags on that first Thanksgiving.

Projects, like the Salvation Army’s Freedom Center in Chicago, partially financed by New Markets Tax Credits, are changing the way people think about issues, like homelessness, substance abuse and the reintegration of prisoners into society.

The question is: Why would a successful, experienced developer that relatively easily could have raised the $7.2 million needed to build a mixed-use Opportunity Zone project in northwest Philadelphia from a small number of well-heeled investors, instead go for a complex financing structure involving investments as small as $500?

What is the future of affordable housing in America going to look like? Are we as a society going to have the will and as an industry going to have the means to significantly increase volume and accommodate everyone from the lowest incomes to the middle-income workforce?

Can the four percent and nine percent tax credits co-exist peacefully in the same housing project? At the Building 9 project in Sands Point, Seattle, Mercy Housing Northwest decided the two forms of credit could, as long as they were segregated into separate projects in the same development.

So powerful is the fear of the devil we don’t know that though everyone who works in affordable housing will admit privately that, as currently regulated, the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is broken in a policy sense, few will voice this publicly.

There is a shortage of good urbanism in America. There are only eight, “legacy cities,” where dense, transit-oriented neighborhoods spread contiguously over many square miles.

State housing finance agencies are still feeling their way into the new Income Averaging (IA) authority, with no clear consensus yet on standard practices for how it will be implemented.