Representative Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., recently released a report entitled, “Locked Out: Reversing Federal Housing Failures and Unlocking Opportunity.” The report identifies the LIHTC program as the largest form of federal assistance to state and local governments in the form of a tax credit and not a direct expenditure.

The House Ways and Means Committee recently held a hearing called “Paving the Way for Funding and Financing Infrastructure Investments.” The hearing was held the same day that House Democrats unveiled their outline for a $760 billion infrastructure package that includes LIHTC as a tool for community development.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals recently dismissed a discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Treasury and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). This long-running lawsuit was brought by the Inclusive Communities Project (ICP), the same organization that pursued a similar lawsuit against Texas’ LIHTC allocating agency.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) recently announced proposed regulations that may affect LIHTC investments. The proposed regulations are intended to modernize the agencies’ regulations under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which haven’t been substantively updated for nearly 25 years. The CRA was enacted in 1977 to encourage insured depository institutions to help meet the credit ne...

The fiscal year (FY) 2020 appropriations bills recently passed through Congress and was signed by President Trump before the Dec. 20 deadline, averting a government shutdown like the one experienced with the FY 2019 spending bills. The FY 2020 measures include appropriations for Transportation-HUD, as well as the tax extenders.

Nearly two years after the Opportunity Zone initiative was enacted into law as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act, the Treasury Department and the IRS has issued final regulations on Qualified Opportunity Funds. The final regulations are a modification and merger of the first and second tranches of regulatory guidance and provide additional clarification on topics that remained unresolved after the first two sets of proposed regulation. In total, the notice is 544...

The IRS recently published Revenue Procedure 2019-44, which provides the per capita and small state minimum levels for the LIHTC and Private Activity Bonds (PABs). These volume cap figures are adjusted annually for inflation. And, for the LIHTC, the volume cap includes the temporary 12.5 percent increase called for when Congress passed the FY2018 omnibus spending bill.

Representative Yvette Clarke (D-NY) recently introduced the “Affordable Housing and Area Median Income Fairness Act of 2019” (H.R.4984). The bill attempts to change how HUD calculates the area median income (AMI). For Clarke’s constituency, the AMI calculation incorporates not just mean earnings in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Queens, and the Bronx, but also those of the affluent counties of Westchester and Rockland counties. Her bill would subt...

Recently, congressional Democrats have been increasing oversight efforts over the Opportunity Zone (OZ) program. This program is a community investment incentive established by Congress in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 to encourage long-term investments in low-income urban and rural communities nationwide. Treasury and the IRS have yet to finalize the regulations governing OZ investment.

Freddie Mac recently released a white paper highlighting the role that the LIHTC program serves in the rural Lower Mississippi Delta. The report shows that the LIHTC program supports a substantial percentage (39.2 percent) of multifamily rental housing in the region, more than three times the national average. The white paper, titled “LITHC in Rural Lower Mississippi Delta,” is part of Freddie Mac’s three-year Duty to Serve plan to increase rental and ...