General News

Last week, the Portland City Council and Mayor approved an annual $60 per unit fee for landlords to fund the city’s Rental Services Office, which maintains a registry of rental units, enforces fair-housing laws and mediates landlord-tenant disputes. The fee is expected to generate $3.9 million annually and will facilitate the collection of data that can better inform the city’s housing policy. Housing

This Los Angeles Times article explores the role that California cities and counties play in perpetuating the state’s affordable housing crisis. The Residential Impact Fees in California Study from the Terner Center found that overly burdensome fee programs can limit growth by impeding or disincentivizing new residential development, facilitate exclusion and increase housing costs across the state.

Three more 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, Governor Jay Inslee, Former Governor John Hickenlooper and Senator Bernie Sanders, have released housing plans. The three new candidates join the ranks of former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who have already released housing plans.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) of Harvard University released a new paper GSE Reform: None or Mostly Done? Author Don Layton argue that while Congress has yet to pass comprehensive reform of the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), almost all of the major flaws of the pre-conservatorship GSEs have been successfully addressed while the companies have been in conservatorship.

The California State Senate passed SB 329, which would expand the California Fair Employment and Housing Act’s protections to add federal, state and local public assistance and housing subsidies—including Housing Vouchers—to the Act’s source of income protections

In a new feature, the Urban Institute examines three cities’ plans to use Opportunity Zones to revitalize neighborhoods. The authors conclude that while Fresno, CA; Cleveland, OH and Washington, DC have each taken a different approach to regulating land use, they share a common strategy to leverage Opportunity Zones to accelerate their existing community and […]

The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Coalition released a report on program’s impact and funding need. The report finds that the CDBG program has invested nearly $64 billion in local economies since 2000 and every $1.00 of CDBG funding leverages another $4.09 in public and private funding. It also shows that over 92 percent of […]

The ACTION Campaign released a series of short videos providing an overview of each of the provisions in the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2019. The ACTION Campaign also released updated fact sheets for congressional districts that show the impact of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sent a letter to President Donald Trump on recommendations to end homelessness after the president said the following on homelessness in an interview with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “It’s disgraceful. I’m going to maybe and I’m looking at it very seriously.”

The Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) launched the Zoning for Great Neighborhoods project, an initiative aimed at helping Vermont cities and towns break down the regulatory barriers preventing them from meeting the housing needs of Vermonters. The project’s next steps will involve meeting with communities, analyzing typical local regulations, and proposing alternatives that can support the types of homes needed. The full toolkit for municipalities will be completed by the spring of 2020.

The 2019 Pennsylvania Tax Act signed by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf on June 28, 2019— made several changes to Pennsylvania tax laws. The Act adds Opportunity Zone conformity for personal income tax, adopts new sales tax provisions and amends other tax and credit provisions. Read more in this analysis from Ballard Spahr.

The New Markets Tax Credit Coalition released the 2019 version of its annual New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Progress Report. It shows that in 2018, community development entities used $3.2 billion in NMTC allocation to finance 286 projects in 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. This financing resulted in the creation of 58,360 total jobs, including 32,917 permanent full-time-equivalent jobs and 25,443 construction jobs.