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On July 18, the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing to consider the nomination of David J. Kautter as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy of the Treasury Department. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), who introduced The Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act to expand and strengthen the LIHTC, pressed the nominee for a commitment to the program. Senator Cantwell noted a growing national affordable housing crisis.
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau housing data, more households are headed by renters than at any point since at least 1965. The total number of households in the United States grew by 7.6 million between 2006 and 2016. But over the same period, the number of households headed by owners remained relatively flat, in part because of the lingering effects of the housing crisis.
The Chief Prosecutor of the Attorney General’s office in Guam recently filed charges of official misconduct and conspiracy against former board members and the current executive director of Guam Housing and Urban Renewal Authority (GHURA). The charges stem from federal investigations into GHURA’s awarding of Low Income Housing Tax Credits. Guam is an unincorporated and organized territory of the United States, and Guamanians are American citizens by birth.
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) recently introduced new maps for industry professionals interested in providing homes for lower-income families and learning more about development and financing opportunities using the LIHTC.
NAHB’s Economics and Housing Policy group made eight maps of metro areas pinpointing where the LIHTC program is used the most. The association used data from HUD along with housing data from the U.S. Census. The new NAHB map is available to members of the NAHB Housing Credit Group.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) recently delivered a speech on his vision for tax reform at the 2017 National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) Summit. He indicated his hopes to see a comprehensive tax reform bill passed by the end of 2017. “Our goal is to get it done by the end of the year,” Speaker Ryan said. “We think it is very much doable.” Such legislation, he said, would eliminate many deductions, exemptions, exclusions, and credits, and use savings from reforms to cut rates for businesses and individuals.
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University (JCHS) recently released “The State of the Nation’s Housing” report for 2017. The report shows that 37 percent of American households now rent. This marks a 50-year high. The report also finds that the supply of rental housing has not kept pace with demand. As a result, the rental market has a vacancy rate of 6.9 percent, a 30-year low, and 11 million renters spend more than half of their incomes on housing.
The report asserts that affordability and accessibility are both major concerns:
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) recently released a letter inviting feedback on tax reform. Hatch invited recommendations on a variety of tax-related topics, including four key issue areas—individual income tax relief for middle-class individuals and families, lowering tax rates and broadening the relevant tax base, removing savings and investment impediments and making the United States more competitive through international tax system updates.
Representatives from the IRS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury recently spoke at the annual meeting of the American Bar Association Forum on Affordable Housing and Community Development. The representatives did not speak on behalf of their respective agencies, but rather provided personal observations and reflections.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently posted audits of the Section 1602 program for Rhode Island and Arkansas. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a stimulus package signed into law by President Obama in February 2009 in response to the Great Recession, provided in Section 1602 grants to be awarded to states for low-income housing projects in lieu of low-income housing credit allocations.
On May 9, the television series Frontline aired an installment of a joint investigation with NPR on the affordable housing crisis. This particular episode, titled “Poverty, Politics and Profit,” took a look at the LIHTC program. After the airing, affordable housing industry organizations quickly disputed what they referred to as misleading depictions of the LIHTC program in a joint statement.
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