General News

On August 28, the California Legislature has passed a measure (SB 1227) that would require cities and counties to grant a 35 percent density bonus when an applicant for a housing development of five or more units seeks and agrees to construct a project that will contain at least 20 percent of the total units for […]

HUD has issued a notice updating the FY 2019 FMRs. It also enumerates the procedures for Public Housing Agencies (PHAs) and other interested parties to request reevaluations of their FMRs, as required by HOTMA. To help inform PHAs’ decisions concerning reevaluation requests, this notice briefly addresses HUD’s May 30, 2018 notice regarding the use of […]

On August 28 the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities released a new report entitled, “Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Could Do More to Expand Opportunity for Poor Families.”  The report finds that,  “despite some recent improvements, LIHTC falls short of meeting its potential to help poor families move to low-poverty neighborhoods with strong schools and low […]

The latest issue of HUD’s Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, guest edited by Veronica Helms Garrison and Craig Evan Pollack, is titled “The Housing-Health Connection” and features a symposium on the complex interplay between housing and health outcomes.

In all of the 50 largest cities across the country (or the “central cities”), 75 percent of the Extremely Low Income (ELI) population is rent “burdened” and paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing, according to a new report issued by Bill Brauner, Director of Housing & Preservation at the Community Economic Development Assistance Corporation (CEDAC) in Boston.

The Strategic Growth Council (SGC) just released the Round 4 Draft Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) Program Guidelines. The draft guidelines are open for public comment and will close at 5:00 pm on September 23, 2018. Associated documents that are also posted include the Narrative Scoring Rubric and Community Engagement Tracker. The draft revised AHSC […]

A lawsuit by not for profit fair housing advocacy groups against HUD to reinstate an assessment tool for local governments to measure progress in meeting Fair Housing requirements was dismissed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia on Friday, August 17, at the request of cabinet department.

A recent article on the Forbes.com highlights efforts by Health Insurers including Anthem, Aetna, Humana, Medicare, Medicaid and UnitedHealthcare investing is housing as a “social determinant of health” in an effort to increase profits and reduce costs.

Schuetz argues that current legislative proposals are only partial fixes and gives four recommendations for federal, state, and local governments to address the housing affordability crisis.

Applicants requested an aggregate total of $14.8 billion in NMTC allocation authority, over four times the $3.5 billion in authority available for the 2018 round.

Later this month, The Urban Institute, the MacArthur Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations are hosting a half-day workshop to discuss and debate what Chicago and Cook County should do to optimally utilize the new federal Opportunity Zones incentives established by the Tax Reform Act. The official announcement can be found here.

On July 10, the Bipartisan Policy Center hosted a panel on the evidence-based evaluation of tax expenditure programs, such as LIHTC and Investment Tax Credits. It coincided with the release of a new report entitled “Evaluating Tax Expenditures: Introducing Oversight Into Spending Through the Tax Code”. The event discussed the necessity of evaluating tax expenditures […]