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The LIHTC would be increased and its allocation formula adjusted under a bill recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives. H.R. 6542, the Restoring Tax Credits for Affordable Housing Act, introduced by Representative James E. Clyburn (D-SC) would increase credit amounts and percentages while modifying allocation formulas including the discount rate, effective for calendar years after 2018. Rep. Clyburn also announced that he would be cosponsoring a package ...

The A Call To Invest in Our Neighborhoods (ACTION) Campaign is a national, grassroots coalition of over 2,200 national, state, and local organizations and businesses calling on Congress to protect, expand, and strengthen the LIHTC program. The ACTION Campaign was established in 2009 by a broad cross-section of Housing Credit stakeholder organizations in reaction to the recession and financial crisis that rapidly and drastically affected Housing Credit investment.

HUD recently released an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in the Federal Register. It seeks public comment on possible amendments to HUD’s 2013 final rule implementing the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard. The amendments would help ensure the rule is consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project (ICP). In that case, the U.S.

Unstable housing will cost the United States $111 billion in avoidable healthcare costs and education expenditures over the next 10 years, according to research from Children’s Healthwatch, one of the nation’s leading networks of pediatricians, public health researchers, and children’s health policy experts.

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) recently released its annual report on federal tax expenditures, listing over 150 tax provisions that are expected to reduce federal revenue over the coming years. As in years past, the report shows the comparatively low cost of the low-income housing tax credit compared to other tax expenditures. New this year is the Opportunity Zones (OZ) incentive, created as a result of tax reform in late 2017.

Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies recently released its State of the Nation’s Housing Report. The report paints a grim picture centered around high rents, low wages, and booming wealth inequality. While the U.S. housing market has shown some improvements, such as the national homeownership rate increasing for the first time in 13 years, the report shows that many challenges still persist, especially for lower-income Americans.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court recently upheld a lower court’s ruling supporting a nonprofit developer’s right of first refusal to purchase an LIHTC site once a third party makes an enforceable offer to purchase the site. In Homeowner’s Rehab Inc. v. Related Corporate V SLP LP the court ruled that the right of first refusal doesn’t require a bona fide offer to be made and accepted with the consent of the special limited partner.

LIHTC sites are operating better than in any other period during the program’s history, according to a recent study issued by CohnReznick, an accounting and advisory service firm. Entitled “Housing Tax Credit Investments: Investment and Operational Performance,” the study incorporated data from more than 22,000 Housing Credit properties, 33 Housing Credit syndicators, and two of the nation’s largest institutional investors.

A recent report from the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley, “The Links Between Affordable Housing and Economic Mobility: The Experiences of Residents Living in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Properties,” examined the experiences of tenants living in LIHTC housing. The report finds that tenants are generally satisfied with the housing stability, economic mobility, and access to education provided by LIHTC housing.

The National Fair Housing Alliance, a national organization dedicated to ending discrimination in housing, recently released its 2018 fair housing trends report, Making Every Neighborhood a Place of Opportunity, which outlines key obstacles to achieving the goals of the Fair Housing Act. The 2018 report assesses some of the progress that has been made, lays out the ways in which the Fair Housing Act has been undermined in recent years, and outlines some of the newer and...