icon Blueprint for November

Hot Button Issues

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3 min read

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? At a time when noise about so many other important controversial issues (immigration, race, guns, abortion, gender equality, income inequality, political bias) is so loud and broadcast 24 hours a day, can the shout for housing even be heard? After all, our shout can be honed down to just one word: “More!”

These are questions that, I guess, could have been asked at any point in all of our lifetimes. So why ask them now?  Well, as you will read in these pages, either due to coincidence or sine qua nons, a number of issues that will impact our industry going forward are heating up simultaneously. In order of appearance:

Bond Program Expansion—Though 2017 was a record year for issuance of multifamily private activity bonds, as NH&RA Executive Director Thom Amdur writes in his New Developments column, there is still a lot of work that can be done by local policymakers to maximize the potential of this increasingly popular funding mechanism.

CRA Program Improvement—The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the lead regulator of the Community Reinvestment Act, has issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking “to solicit ideas for building a new framework to transform or modernize the regulations that implement” the CRA, a program our columnist David A. Smith characterizes as broken, though few will voice it publicly. Not our guru. In his The Guru Is In column, Smith suggests where the industry needs to stand to fix the program and still meet the Treasury sub-agency’s six macroeconomic goals.

Opportunity Funds Clarification—We are all seeing a burst of enthusiasm and a swirl of activity around the potential of the new Opportunity Fund program, and yet rules are still to come. In this month’s The Land of OZ feature, attorney Jerome Breed of Miles & Stockbridge argues for stakeholder involvement in the shaping of those rules. And our Talking Heads interview is with Laura Burns of Eagle Point Companies who is already in the process of organizing a fund.

The Costs of Regulation—Are local regulations in areas such as zoning, permitting and plan review increasing the already overwhelming costs of construction and thereby increasing rents? Staff writer Mark Olshaker examines the impact of each area on cost and asks developers what can be done to control them.

YIMBY or NIMBY?—The local battle of affordable housing resistors has inspired a counterwave of boots on the ground advocates that started as a cult but has grown into a national movement. Staff writer Scott Beyer looks at the impressive progress of this effort over the past year.

Income Averaging Trends—The introduction of Income Averaging should enable housing more of the workforce in the communities they serve, but depending on state housing agencies to establish their own regulations is also a potential for confusion. Mark Fogarty updates us on trends that are emerging from the agencies’ policy choices.

Examined individually, the resolution of each of these issues has the potential to either improve or hinder the ideal of housing for all. But packaged together—if resolved as industry professionals prefer and residents need—they can impel a new vitality to solving our national housing shortage.

Marty Bell, Editor