Marty Bell Author Archives

NH&RA News

NH&RA Hosts ICAST IRA & BIL Instant Benefit Estimate Calculator

ICAST’s IRA & BIL Instant Benefit Estimate Calculator is now available on NH&RA’s website under the Resources section.

Blueprint for November, Hot Button Issues

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?

Marty Bell: Blueprint for October, Community

The word that stands out throughout this issue is community. We didn’t plan it that way. But in stories devoted to a wide range of subjects, including multi-credit deals, Opportunity Zones, state funding for housing and even NH&RA’s 2018 Vision Award honorees, the concept of community demanded attention.

Blueprint for September: Solving Problems

We may call it work, but for many of you it is really daily problem solving.

New York

D.C. Court Dismisses Fair Housing Suit

A lawsuit by not for profit fair housing advocacy groups against HUD to reinstate an assessment tool for local governments to measure progress in meeting Fair Housing requirements was dismissed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia on Friday, August 17, at the request of cabinet department.

Blueprint for August: Watch Your Assets

The storm you see on the cover of this issue is not, I promise you, a metaphor for the federal government or the NBA or Harvey Weinstein’s life. It’s just a storm, like the three that hit Florida last year, the same year that fires seered parts of California, as well as properties owned by some NH&RA members in the northeast.

Blueprint for July: Opportunities Abound

The first slide you see shows that the Congressional Budget Office may forecast GDP growth in 2018 and 2019 due to recent tax changes, but point to a significant and fairly steady decrease after that.

Blueprint for June: Hometown for all

This spring, engineering professors and students from universities across the country descended upon the sprawling, tree-filled campus of Stony Brook University, just a few miles from where Long Island meets the Sound, to explore technical innovations aimed at helping people age in their homes.

Blueprint for May: Occasions

In the years of my youth, air travel was an occasion. The men dressed in suits and ties, the women in dresses, good meals were served with the elegance of a four-star restaurant and the rows of seats were comfortable.

Blueprint for April, Seeing the Light

As you begin to peruse this issue it will, at last, be April and a winter of cold and darkness in many regions of the country should be behind us. I have been commuting both to and from work in the darkness for so long now I sometimes wonder if I’m in Iceland rather than Washington, DC.

Blueprint for March, Strategy

Early in my career, when I worked as a sportswriter, Sonny Werblin, then the head of Madison Square Garden and thus the boss of the Knicks and Rangers, said to me, “A budget is a strategy.”

Blueprint for February

Rather than providing, we seem to find ourselves in an era of taking away—and predominantly from those who need it most. Health insurance, Medicaid expansion, the right to remain here, access to birth control, endeavors to slow climate change, overall affordability.

Blueprint for January, Build On

In order to get our editorial and design staff home for the holidays, we are putting this issue to bed a week before the leaders of both houses of Congress ascertain they will vote on tax change.

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