Pamela Martineau Author Archives

What Can Be Done About Insurance?

NH&RA Panelists Explore Ways to Rein in High Insurance Costs for Affordable Housing

6 min read

Meet with your underwriter in person, provide as much data as possible on relevant inspections and offer photos of improvements you’ve made to affordable housing properties. These were just a few of the tips offered at the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association’s Summer Institute Panel: “What Can Be Done About Insurance?”

Subsidizing the Middle: Policies, Trade-Offs and Costs of Addressing Middle-Income Affordability Challenges

Report Analyzes Impact of Subsidizing Housing for Middle-Income Earners

5 min read

As an increasing number of cities and states develop programs to subsidize housing for middle-income earners, policymakers must ensure that middle-income programs don’t take vital resources from low-income housing programs.

Property Managers Turn to AI to Enhance Tenants’ and Applicants’ Experience

6 min read

Forget Siri. Colleen, Elise, Penny and Kelsey are the AI personas that property managers are using to manage tenants’ and housing applicants’ queries.

Housing Affordability A Top Priority for Voters, Yet Political Candidates Rarely Mention It, Survey Finds

4 min read

Nearly 60 percent of surveyed voters cite the lowered cost of housing and rent as key factors that would improve their lives, yet say those same issues are at the near bottom—12th—of issues they hear politicians speak of.

Interest Rates: Experts Weigh in on When the Fed Might Move the Needle

7 min read

What does the future hold for interest rates? Many real estate developers, consumers and economists are weighing that question as mortgage interest rates hover at roughly seven percent, more than double what they were during the height of the pandemic.

Treasury Department Introduces Triad of Moves to Bolster Affordable Housing  

5 min read

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has introduced new guidance and rule changes intended to bolster the nation’s supply of housing, especially affordable housing. 

Budget-Based Rent Adjustments Possible for Qualifying Mark-to-Market Section 8 Properties 

7 min read

Section 8 property owners who refinanced their debt through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Mark-to-Market program, mainly in the late 1990s through early 2000s, may qualify for budget-based rent adjustments under a new program launched this year by HUD.

Large-Scale Effort to Convert Commercial to Residential Gets New Initiative     

Conversions Gain Federal and Local Support

6 min read

Office vacancies throughout the nation have reached a 30-year high and the country is amid an affordable housing crisis. These dual inflection points have increased housing advocates’ focus on conversions of commercial real estate into housing and encouraged federal and local governments to assist in the transformations.

Taxpayer Donations Bolster Affordable Housing    

Minnesota State Housing Tax Credit Program and Contribution Fund

8 min read

Minnesotans hoping to bolster the state’s affordable housing stock may donate to affordable housing projects, requesting to have their donation allocated to a specific project or a general affordable housing fund and receive a tax credit of 85 percent of their donation through a new state program.

Leveraging Private Capital to Rehabilitate HUD Legacy and Public Housing Properties

HUD’s RAD Program

8 min read

Launched through federal legislation in 2012, the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), has leveraged over $19.3 billion in construction investment to improve or construct over 174,000 public housing units and 53,000 Section 8, tax credit and market-rate apartments co-located in these public housing communities.

Cooperation, Innovation and Thought

Developers Craft Creative Financing Deals to Meet Growing Need for Workforce Housing

8 min read

A lack of workforce housing is a growing element of the nation’s housing crisis and some developers who typically build affordable housing are creatively pulling together financing for housing projects for workers who make above area median income (AMI) but cannot afford market-rate rents.

Yes In God’s Backyard

8 min read

Looking to bring their philanthropic missions into their own backyards, an increasing number of faith-based organizations are building affordable housing projects on their properties, often with the help of new local and state laws.

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