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If you, as a site owner or manager, screen applicants yourself, one of the most important steps you take is to contact applicants' current and prior rental references.

References' evaluations are valuable in helping you decide whether to rent a tax credit unit to an applicant. But rental references are often reluctant to fill out forms, so you might find it easier to call them to get the information you need. To get an informative reference over the teleph...

Groundwork for the establishment of a national affordable housing trust fund was laid last fall, when the House of Representatives passed legislation (H.R. 2895) that House Financial Services Committee Chairman, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., had introduced, and when Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S.2523), which was almost identical to the House bill. The Senate bill has already been referred to the Senate Banking Committee, which is cha...

As a site owner or manager, you are required by federal Fair Housing law to do what is reasonable in granting requests for accommodations or modifications, so that a visually impaired applicant might consider residing at your site. Furthermore, you are under a legal obligation to ensure that a visually impaired resident has the same “full use and enjoyment” of the site as a resident who is not disabled. Each visually impaired applicant or resident will have ...

Federal Fair Housing law makes it illegal to discriminate against prospects and residents with disabilities. This includes persons who are blind or who suffer from some other visual impairment, ranging from significant to total vision loss.

Combining tax credits from the low income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program with energy tax credits (which are most associated with solar panels) raises a variety of issues for developers of housing projects. With the help of Forrest Milder, an attorney at Nixon Peabody and an expert on tax credit financing, we tell you what the issues are and how you can avoid mistakes that could cause an owner to forfeit its entire allocation of tax credits.

A recent follow-up to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition's study of national housing patterns indicates that in the four-year period from 2001 through 2004, more than 1.2 million housing units ceased to be affordable.

In some cities, such as New York, affordable housing is declining at an even faster rate. According to the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, the number of New York City units that a family making $33,000 a year could afford f...

In 2007, HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO), the division devoted to anti-discrimination and Fair Housing concerns, investigated approximately 10,300 cases involving claims of discrimination, according to Kim Kendrick, assistant secretary for FHEO. Based on a pattern of investigation by HUD, going back several years, HUD is increasing its efforts to end discrimination in housing.

One obstacle to building or acquiring sites for affordable multifamily housing is the notion of “not in my back yard” (NIMBYism). Although it is a difficult problem, developers and prospective site owners can get local support for buildings they want to construct. With the help of Gehbre Selassie Mehreteab, chief executive officer of NHP Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization, we will show you how you can limit local opposition to contro...

This month, the manager of an affordable housing site in Texas reported how—as many managers have done—she had brought Internet access into the management office to help run the site and communicate with HUD, prospects, applicants, and residents. She expected site employees to spend a lot of time using the Internet and sending site-related email. What she did not expect was that Internet access would also lead employees to spend a good deal of time using the...

In August, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that federal law trumps, or preempts, the “innocent tenant defense” that residents facing eviction often raise, which typically is based on local law.