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President Donald Trump recently announced that he would nominate Mark Calabria, chief economist to Vice President Mike Pence, to be the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) for a term of five years. Prior to his current position in the administration, Mr. Calabria was director of financial regulation studies at the Cato Institute. Before that, as a senior aide on the Senate Banking Committee, he was one of the lead drafters of the Housing and Econom...

A recent report from Zillow Research titled, “Homelessness Rises More Quickly Where Rent Exceeds a Third of Income,” looked at the relationship between rent affordability and homelessness. The report found that communities where the median rent is more than 32 percent of the median household income are likely to have sharply higher rates of homelessness.

The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University released a study highlighting housing needs as the U.S. population ages. More than half of the nation’s householders are at least 50 years of age, and more than one-quarter are at least 65 years of age. Between 2011 and 2016, the number of households headed by adults between the ages of 65 and 74 increased by 26 percent to more than 17 million. With the aging of these “baby boomers,” the number...

The IRS recently announced an increase in the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) and private-activity bond caps for 2019. Revenue Procedure 2018-57 sets the 2019 amounts used to calculate each state’s LIHTC ceiling at the greater of $2.76 multiplied by the state population, or $3,166,875.

The per-capita number is an increase of nearly 36 cents over the initial 2018 figure, which was $2.40 before being raised to $2.70 by an increase included in the omnibus...

The Treasury Department and IRS recently released their third quarter update to their 2018–2019 Priority Guidance Plan, detailing tax guidance the government intends to focus its efforts on in the coming months. The update identifies projects needed to implement tax changes made by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

State and local source-of-income nondiscrimination laws prohibit landlords from discriminating against potential renters who receive income from sources such as alimony, disability benefits, and Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs). Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) recently introduced the “Fair Housing Improvement Act of 2018.” The bill would prohibit discrimination based on source of income and veteran status. The bill (S.3612) was referred to the...

Wells Fargo has dismissed two Charlotte, N.C.-based executives in its community lending and investment division in relation to a federal investigation into the bank’s negotiation and procurement of LIHTCs. The two executives had been previously suspended by Wells Fargo in connection with the investigation.

The 2018 omnibus spending bill passed earlier this year authorized the “income-averaging” option for minimum set-aside elections in the LIHTC program. The option replaces the 60 percent area median income (AMI) maximum eligible income for LIHTC sites with 80 percent for units where the site-wide average doesn’t exceed 60 percent.

A recent analysis by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) compared changes in the rental supply at various rent levels with changes in the number of renter households at various income levels. The analysis found that a growing number of low-income renters are competing for a shrinking number of low-rent units. The analysis also found that the rapid growth in high-income renters over the last 10 years has outnumbered growth in high-rent units, and that sim...

The Internal Revenue Service has provided temporary relief from certain requirements of the Internal Revenue Code to allow owners and operators of low-income housing projects located anywhere in the United States and its territories to provide temporary emergency housing to individuals who are displaced by a major disaster from their principal residences, regardless of income.