icon Blueprint for June

The Right Choice

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3 min read

Along with a little luck, choice is probably the primary determinant of success. It’s also the basis of endless debate. Did our child pick the right spouse? Did our team pick the right draft choice? Why’d you order that dish? You’re voting for who? Yellow? You’re painting this room yellow? You know you look great in that dress.

Just think how much of our daily discussion is triggered by the choices we (or others) make.

Business, of course, is all about choices. And, ideally, experience in business trains us to make better choices.

In the affordable housing business, probably the most significant choices are the projects we select to pursue. So this month, we asked staff reporter Mark
Olshaker to chase down a group of experienced developers and ask them how they choose their projects, what are the underlying values that steer their choices, how has experience taught them to make better choices? (The Art of Picking Projects). We intentionally contacted developers (and NH&RA members) spread out across the country—Joe Wishcamper in Portland Me., Larry Curtis in Boston, Kevin McCormack in St. Louis, Deb Koehler in Tampa and Michael Costa in Gardena, Ca. to see if and how choice is affected by location.

Besides Costa, another Californian dipping his toe into the affordable housing surf is legendary motion picture producer and director George Lucas (Artoo Him Too). Learning this triggered the amusing thought of solving our nation’s affordable housing funding problem once and for all by making it the newest bauble, the ultimate symbol of luxury of the very rich and very famous. Instead of Gulfstreams and yachts, beachside villas and Montana ranches, why don’t celebrities devote their extra bucks to building housing? We could put their names on the buildings. Even their likenesses (Bradley Cooper Village, Rhianna Plaza). And I’m sure they could make use of the tax credits.

On a little more practical level, one of the takeaways from NH&RA’s Preservation Through Energy Efficient effort this past year has been the money left on the table by inefficient calculation of utility allowances for LIHTC supported properties. So we asked Bendix Anderson to research the various options for calculation and find who has had success in increasing their revenue (The Right Utility Allowance).

And we kept our peripatetic reporter Joel L. Swerdlow (he with the background at National Geographic) on the run this month, sending him out to explore the widespread usage of new markets tax credits to build health centers (A Healthy Marriage) as well as to tell the amazing and quite moving story of the overnight decision by the WODA Group to rebuild a senior housing facility burned to the ground during the recent Baltimore protests (Love Among the Ashes).

This month we offer you a full and varied menu. There’s plenty to digest.

So make your choices. And enjoy.

Marty Bell,
Editor