Tax Credit Advisor Article Archives

This is the motivating statement behind former Vice President Joe Biden’s housing policy plan, and he has made clear that it is a central and essential part of his presidential candidate platform.

One major difference between the current recession and the one that occurred a decade ago is that major depository institutions are financially stable and providing much needed capital to the communities they serve.

Apparently God, at least, doesn’t mind having low-income neighbors. That’s the implication of a new initiative called YIGBY (Yes in God’s Back Yard), which is using church land to build affordable housing while getting around the usual litanies of NIMBY objections.

In 2008, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison named Matthew Desmond took up residence in a rundown trailer park on the South Side of Milwaukee, and later moved into a Black neighborhood on the city’s North Side, where he roomed with an African American security guard he’d met at the trailer park. His goal was to document from every angle and perspective the pervasive effects of eviction and chronic housing insecurity.

Could bankrupt shopping malls lying dormant throughout the country offer new opportunities for affordable housing?

It is time we treat access to the internet as a basic component of multifamily infrastructure, as critical as water, electricity and heat.

For 52 years, from the suburban house I grew up in, through four dorm rooms, a rent-controlled apartment, a condo and then two houses, there has sat on my bookshelves a thick densely printed small-print paperback. A few days ago, I pulled it down and read. Its sobering messages, now a half-century old, have recently taken on new resonance.

Housing is expensive in America, and this creates hardship for low-income renters. It also makes life difficult for landlords, particularly smaller-scale ones: high housing costs discourage long-term leases. While the best answer for these high costs is to increase supply, there is still a need for subsidies.

Mixed-use housing is poised for a huge expansion in the post-COVID era, as at-risk populations, especially seniors, are going to want more goods and services available to them under one, health-secure roof.

For examples in world history of grand changes to urban planning, look no further than a health crisis.