Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

America is a big place – I would know. For the past three years, I’ve seen about as much of it as anyone could. As Tax Credit Advisor readers are likely aware of by now, I just completed a three-year cross-country journalism tour, living for a month each in 30 cities.

I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and though I’ve traveled around the United States and the world, personally and professionally, the Nation’s Capital has always been my home. The city has a static and somewhat clichéd image, based on our wealth of museums, monuments and other tourist attractions, as well as the less than attractive impressions emanating out of Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Despite having one of the hottest economies in the country, Salt Lake City suffers from a shortage of affordable housing.

Mixed-income development is of increasing importance in the affordable housing industry.

A program to match real estate development with area transit lines in Portland, OR increasingly is targeting affordable housing after regional government found low-income residents ride metro area trains and buses more than other groups do.

On Friday, September 28, 2018, the city of Minneapolis released a 500-page comprehensive development plan that the mayor dubbed “a forward-thinking vision.”

Sometimes controversy can boost sales. A controversy that shows up repeatedly on your television and in your emails almost daily may irk you, but at the same time it pushes the issue front and center in all of our very crowded minds.

Over the last eight years, California’s Bay Area added 167,000 new homes, while adding four times as many jobs: 750,000. Yet when voters were asked to explain the causes of California’s runaway unaffordability, the worst in the nation, they cited lack of rent control first; restrictive zoning came in last.

An ambitious Detroit program to preserve 10,000 existing affordable multifamily units and build 2,000 new ones is moving quickly to prevent the potential 15-year opt-out of a large number of Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects and sustain affordability in the Motor City.

All aboard! Welcome, and we’re glad you’re joining us today for this grand tour of affordable housing situations and civic innovations in cities all across our country.