Thom Amdur Author Archives

Due to Hurricane Florence and its expected effect on our state, the public hearing scheduled for Tuesday Sept. 18 has been postponed.  NCHFA expects to announce the new public hearing shortly.  

Connecticut Housing Finance Authority will host a public discussion of its 2018 Qualified Allocation Plan, the LIHTC application process and new Guidelines on Wednesday, September 12, from 9:30 am to 11:30 am at The Lyceum, 227 Lawrence Street, in Hartford.  To register for the event, email catherine.bitterman@chfa.org. Please RSVP no later than Friday, August 31.

If you haven’t looked at RAD in a while, now is a good time. Several recent developments deserve your attention.

The City of Shreveport and the Housing Authority of the City of Shreveport were awarded a $24.2 million FY2017 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant for the Allendale, Ledbetter Heights, and West Edge neighborhoods. A once thriving arts and music district, the target neighborhoods experienced sharp population decline in the 1970s. Today, the neighborhoods are challenged with […]

CBRE Group, Inc. announced that Sarah Garland has joined CBRE Affordable Housing as Director, Capital Markets, Affordable Housing Production. One of the foremost industry specialists in affordable housing finance, Ms. Garland will join CBRE Affordable Housing’s Debt & Structured Finance team and will be responsible for supporting origination of affordable and workforce housing debt financing. […]

t’s summer! The kids are out of school, the heat and humidity are rising, and, since it’s an even year, political campaign season is ramping up! I won’t try to handicap the outcome of this November’s elections, but if the primaries to date are any indication, the ideological and rhetorical divide between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party is only going to widen.
Amidst the politics, our industry faces new headwinds. The Federal Reserve has telegraphed
further interest rate increases. Trade wars are driving up the cost of lumber, steel and virtually all building supplies and materials. A shortage of available labor across the building trades is exacerbated by low unemployment (generally), an aging workforce (specifically) and high-demand,
particularly in areas impacted by natural disasters.
While it may be summer, there is no time for an extended vacation for housing, community development and tax credit advocates. Now more than ever, we need legislation to fix the flat four percent Low Income Housing Tax Credits, to build on the expansion of the nine percent LIHTC enacted in the last round of appropriations and, in relatively “new” news, speedily adopt recently introduced (on June 13) legislation (HR. 6081 and S. 3058) sponsored by U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Susan Collins (R-ME), as well as U.S. Representatives Darin LaHood (R-IL) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) to strengthen to the Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit (HTC) after it was diminished in tax reform.
The Historic Tax Credit Enhancement Act, in particular, will boost the value of HTC
investments from urban cores to rural Main Streets across the country. Presently, the tax code requires that building owners subtract the amount of Federal Historic Tax Credits
from a building’s basis (the amount a property is worth for tax purposes). Eliminating this requirement will increase the basis of rehabilitated historic buildings for building owners, providing a tax benefit, and attract more capital from tax credit investors. This legislative change preserves the vast majority of the savings achieved by the Tax Cut and Jobs Act.
Eliminating the basis adjustment will also bring the HTC in line with the LIHTC, which
does not require a basis adjustment. Enacting this legislation will strengthen the credit
and improve the incentive for building owners who are revitalizing historic properties in communities nationwide.
We anticipate at least one or two other potential legislative vehicles for tax policy adjustments before the end of this Congress and it is critical that we take advantage of the upcoming summer recess to continue to meet with elected officials and advocate for bipartisan tax legislation.
The 116th Congress is a great unknown. What we do know is that some of our most ardent champions, like Senator
Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), will be retiring at the conclusion of this Congress and that there will be dozens of new representatives and senators to educate. Just six months post-tax reform, it is critical that we act NOW and forcefully advocate for these
enhancements while there is still some momentum for technical corrections and a core stable of legislative champions who can get these bills over the finish line.

The US Senate Appropriations Committee has approved its FY-2019 Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development spending measure (S. 3023). The Senate committee proposes an additional $4.3 billion in Tenant Based Vouchers and an additional $400 million in Project Based Rental Assistance over the House’s T-HUD funding language (which was approved by the full House Appropriations Committee on May […]

Doctors don’t always diagnose the source of an ailment and as a result sometimes prescribe the wrong medicine.

HUD has announced that C. Lamar Seats as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Multifamily Housing Programs. Lamar brings more than 25 years of experience in commercial, market and affordable multifamily mortgage banking through his previous leadership roles with various lending institutions. Immediately before beginning his Federal career with HUD, Lamar was a Managing […]

On May 23, HUD has issued three separate but related notices in the Federal Register indefinitely suspending the implementation of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule and removing its Assessment of Fair Housing (AFH) tool for local governments. This was achieved by withdrawing the Local Government Assessment Tool developed by HUD for use by local […]

The House has put off a vote on President Trump’s proposed rescission request, which recently passed legal muster under a Government Accountability Office study (only $134 million, all from the Transportation Department, was decided as improper to impound of the total $15.2 billion). House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) stated the reason is simply an […]

WHEDA will be holding three information sessions across the state to describe the new Wisconsin Housing Tax Credit and Housing Trust Fund programs – sessions will be held in Pewaukee on Friday, May 18th, La Crosse on Tuesday, May 22nd and Stevens Point on Friday, June 1st.  Seating is limited, so please register on  https://tabletop.events/conventions/state-tax-credit-and-housing-trust-fund-information-sessions.  Informational […]