David A. Smith Author Archives

Two years into the era of Opportunity Zones, its impact on our industry has been minimal: whatever benefit the OZone may provide other types of real estate, it’s not boosting Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) production.

Though their business necessarily compels them to accommodate people during overnight stays, hospitals are the country’s least willing landlords, forced into the role by a to-them-toxic rapid evolution of healthcare laws, pharmacological potency, and one-way urbanization.

When it comes to housing innovation urgency, states are where the action is. Stories in this issue ably document what and how, and as a big-picture counterpoint, allow me to tell you why, and what that means for your state.

Unless Congress and the Administration extend it, the New Markets Tax Credit will die at year-end. While reprieve is likely, to paraphrase noted investment banker Dr. Samuel Johnson, nothing so concentrates the mind as the knowledge that one might be sunset.

A philosophical feud over the soul of affordability that has been ongoing for most of a century may have reached a turning point.

With the mid-September release of Treasury’s Housing Reform Plan, the administration has presented its exit strategy for GSE conservatorship, which may be summarized as ‘death sentence commuted, eligible for parole in a few years,’ and mapped out a strategy to do exactly that without legislation.

Thirty years ago, when I and others were inventing affordable housing preservation, it came in only two flavors (ELIHPA and LIHPRHA), just like Coke and Diet Coke.

In late June, to absolutely no press coverage, a Presidential executive order established the “White House Council on Eliminating Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing” with a pointed observation:

People Versus Places: The Definitive Argument

As Michael Milken discovered, one can rue forever giving a good idea the wrong name, for even if it does not sour the public, the wrong name sends the innovators chasing the wrong direction and solving the wrong problem.

If my instincts are correct, a seven page complaint filed on March 28, 2019, HUD v. Facebook, may one day be seen as an industry-disrupting legal event on par with U.S. v. Microsoft (1998) and U.S. v. IBM (1969). HUD accuses Facebook of violating the Fair Housing Act’s prohibitions on discrimination:

In 1975, the year I got into this business, American residential rental housing was split into three utterly separate domains.