General News
Sen. Michael Bennet Releases Presidential Housing Plan
2020 Democratic Presidential hopeful, Senator Michael Bennet (CO) released a plan to Tackle America’s Housing Affordability Crisis. The three tenants of his plan are Build More Affordable Housing Near Good Jobs, Help Middle-Class and Working Families Afford A Home and Reform Federal Housing Tax Incentives. Sen. Bennet calls for expanding the LIHTC by 50 percent, […]
The U.S. Needs a National Vision for Housing Policy
In a new Issue Brief Vincent Reina, PhD with the University of Pennsylvania argues for a national housing policy in the face of unprecedented housing challenges. This Issue Brief lays out several policy prescriptions for improving housing affordability and fairness, both for renters and owners: modifying the federal Housing Choice Voucher program, as well as […]
The Effects of Exposure to Better Neighborhoods on Children
New research from Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren and Lawrence Katz examines the effect of the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment on children’s long-term outcomes. Their estimates imply that moving a child out of public housing to a low-poverty area when young (at age eight on average) using a subsidized voucher like the MTO experimental voucher […]
Report Suggests ‘Internet Rating’ for Updated CRA Assessment Areas
In a new paper, Mark Willis with the Furman Center, suggests including an ‘Internet Rating’ in a modernized Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) framework since the current assessment areas used to delineate the primary geographies within a bank’s CRA test do not adequately account for the rise of internet banking. Under his proposal, banks would be […]
NCSHA Releases Updated Model LIHTC Compliance Forms
NCSHA released revamped model forms for LIHTC compliance monitoring, developed in collaboration with its members and stakeholders. NCSHA’s Recommended Practices in LIHTC Administration encourage housing finance agencies to adopt model forms, which help standardize compliance monitoring practices across states and create efficiencies for development owners and other LIHTC industry professionals.
California Rent Control – What Investors Need to Know
Marcus & Millichap will host a webinar on October 10 at 1:00 pm EDT to discuss the recently-passed California Tenant Protection Act of 2019, also known as CA Assembly Bill 1482. The panelists (John Sebree, Marcus & Millichap; Jim Lapides,National Multifamily Housing Council; Damon Conklin,Federation of California Builders Exchanges; and John Chang, Marcus & Millichap) […]
Quicken Loans, City of Detroit Release Sustainable Financing for Healthy Housing RFP
The Quicken Loans Community Fund, the City of Detroit Housing and Revitalization Department and Quantified Ventures are seeking applications from local organizations that holistically tackle housing challenges affecting the health and well-being of the Detroit community – either by eliminating systemic barriers to housing, or by securing safe, quality housing for low-income and typically underserved […]
DC Commits to Deliver 36,000 housing Units by 2025, Launches Housing Data Blog
Following a report from the Urban Institute that estimates the Washington, DC region needs 374,000 more housing units by 2030, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments approved regional housing targets. DC Mayor Muriel Bowser set a goal to deliver 36,000 housing units by the year 2025. The office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & […]
Rockefeller Foundation Selects DC, Oakland, Dallas and St. Louis for Opportunity Zones Initiative
The Rockefeller Foundation announced $3.7 million in grants that will benefit four U.S. cities to help drive responsible private investment in Opportunity Zones. The Foundation named Washington, D.C., Oakland, Dallas and St. Louis as the newest participants in its Opportunity Zone Community Capacity Building Initiative, which launched in May 2019. The initiative will help cities […]
Georgia Supreme Court: LIHTCs “Do Not Constitute Actual Income”
The Supreme Court of Georgia decided in Heron Lake II Apartments, LP et al. v. Lowndes County Board of Tax Assessors that LIHTCs do no constitute “actual income.” The decision centers around the argument that investors do not receive more money from anyone for tax credits rather, they merely pay less in taxes to the […]
Documenting the Long-Run Decline in Low-Cost Rental Units in the U.S. by State
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released a working paper, which details the dramatic decline of low-cost rental units over the past three decades. The number of units renting for less than $600 per month, adjusted for inflation, fell by almost 4 million between 1990 and 2017. The data also show that […]
Senator Sanders Releases Housing for All Plan
Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) released his expansive Housing for All plan, which is guided by the belief that every American must have a safe, decent, accessible and affordable home as a fundamental right. The plan proposed to build 7.4 million affordable units that will remain affordable in perpetuity through a ten-year, $1.48 trillion investment in the National Housing Trust Fund.