Good News in Bad Times

By Marty Bell
April 1, 2020 3 min read

As our staff prepares this issue to go to press, we are not working side by side in our downtown DC offices as we usually do but rather each teleworking from our own homes. Like most of you, I suppose, we have been advised to remain sequestered and isolated as our nation battles with a devil of a virus. We can only adhere to this directive because we are fortunate enough to have homes. But what about those who don’t? Where can they isolate themselves and find safety?

This is an extremely troubling thought in extremely troubling times. So, perhaps it is fortuitous that our annual editorial calendar laid out as last year ended has us focusing this month on the Rental Assistance Demonstration or RAD program. Amidst the housing crisis and conflicted views on the role and effectiveness of government, RAD is a balm.

“RAD has been the most positive experience I’ve had working with HUD,” Richelle Patton, now president of Collaborative Housing Solutions of Decatur, GA and formerly a transaction manager at the Department, tells staff writer Mark Olshaker in his update of the progress of the RAD program. (The Continuing Evolution of RAD)

And despite being initially greeted with “skepticism and suspicion only a skosh short of hostility,” columnist David A. Smith writes, “RAD today is fundamentally remaking the public housing ecosystem by enabling housing authorities to evolve themselves into a wholly new species, the Essential Housing Authority, one the country urgently needs.” (The Guru Is In)

RAD is not only preserving homes for hundreds of thousands of people who might not find or afford any alternative, but it is also substantially upgrading living conditions in previously existing but unlivable spaces. In these pages, you will read about, and see photographic evidence, of two examples of the program’s achievements.

In Little Rock, AR, Gorman and Company and the Heritage Consulting Group have rehabilitated 597 units in three towers using RAD combined with Historic Tax Credits as part of the city’s “Redevelopment of the Rock” program.

And in Philadelphia, the Jonathan Rose Companies and Bank of America are both part of a private-public-federal-city-tenant partnership that has used RAD, Choice Neighborhoods funds, Low Income Housing Tax Credits and Transit-Oriented Development funds to replace 147 low-rise, ramshackle public housing units with 297 new units complete with an impressive menu of amenities. Our busy staff writer Mark Fogarty guides you through each of these case studies.

But as RAD protects so many residents from facing the horror of homelessness, it does not provide enough housing to assure everyone the safe space they need. One of the most important and impressive voices perpetually addressing that concern is Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, ranking member of that body’s Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. Last July, he sent a letter to President Trump that offered a plan for how Congress and the administration could work together to end homelessness. More recently, he called on his Ohio constituents to share their stories with him and the obstacles they’re facing when it comes to housing. We are honored that the Senator took the time to speak with staff writer Darryl Hicks in this month’s Talking Heads interview.

Marty Bell, Editor

Industry Insights

Final CRA Rule Implementation on Pause

Kaitlyn Snyder • May 1, 2024 4 min read

A U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas recently granted an injunction to extend the Community Reinvestment Act final rule’s effective date, April 1, along with all other implementation dates. Here’s what you need to know about the case and how it will impact LIHTC investment.

The Guru Is In

Neither Fair, Nor Market, Nor Rent

David A. Smith • May 1, 2024 6 min read

Names can outlive their purpose and their original meaning. Though the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire, a cluster of mutually distrustful principalities with a largely symbolic head of state known as the Holy Roman Emperor maneuvered under that rubric for a thousand years after its 800 AD founding by Charlemagne before it was put to sleep by the 1815 Congress of Vienna. Such may yet be the fate of two venerable concepts, Fair Market Rent (FMR) and the Area Median Income (AMI).

Legally Speaking

Blending Yields

Alex Zeltser, Esq. & Robert Kaplan, Esq. • May 1, 2024 7 min read

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting impacts on the economy and financial markets, as well as the Federal Reserve’s raising of short-term rates to stave off inflation, interest rates and construction costs have risen dramatically, resulting in funding gaps that many multifamily affordable housing developers in the four percent LIHTC space have had difficulty filling.