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On Aug. 15, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released its 2016-2017 priority guidance plan and a fourth-quarter update to its 2015-2016 priority guidance plan. Through this plan year, the 12-month period from July 2016 to June 2017, the IRS plans to address 281 projects. Compared to the prior version of the plan, the IRS added issuing guidance on the right of first refusal under Section 42(i)(7).

U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) recently introduced legislation that would provide legal protections to ensure access to safe housing for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. Building on protections in the Violence Against Women Act and the Fair Housing Act, the “Fair Housing for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Survivors Act of 2016” (S.3164) would establish a nationwide standard that victims of domestic violence and sexual assault cannot be evicted or otherwise penalized solely for being victims of those crimes.

The U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Administrative Records Research and Applications recently released a new working paper titled “The Effect of Low-Income Housing on Neighborhood Mobility: Evidence from Linked Micro-Data.” The paper assesses the impact of LIHTC developments on neighborhood mobility patterns.

U.S. Senate Finance Committee member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) recently introduced the bipartisan Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2016. This legislation continues the effort to expand the Affordable Housing Tax Credit by 50 percent to help combat the country’s growing affordable housing crisis, and includes major, comprehensive reforms to the program to enable it to better serve the extremely low-income, homeless, rural, and Native American communities.

Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) recently introduced the “Housing for Homeless Students Act” (H.R. 5290), which would allow full-time students who are or recently have been homeless to qualify for housing at tax credit sites. H.R. 5290 would exempt individuals from the student rule if they were homeless at any time in the previous seven years and met the definition of “homeless children and youth” under the McKinney-Vento Homelessness Assistance Act.

The House Tax Reform Task Force, led by House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX), recently released a tax reform blueprint, “A Pro-Growth Tax Code for All Americans,” as part of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “A Better Way” agenda. According to the plan, the goals of the tax reform blueprint are to fuel job creation and create opportunity, make the tax code simpler and fairer, and improve the IRS’s customer service.

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) recently released The State of the Nation’s Housing 2016, its latest annual report on U.S. housing trends. While the report finds that the housing market continues to recover post-crisis, it highlights serious challenges, including all-time high renter cost burdens, growing concentrations of poverty, falling homeownership rates, and tight mortgage credit.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued the second of three reports on the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program entitled, “Low Income Housing Tax Credit: Some Agencies’ Practices Raise Concerns and IRS Could Improve Noncompliance Reporting and Data Collection.” In preparing the report, the GAO reviewed Qualified Allocation Plans from each state, the District of Columbia, U.S. Territories, New York City, and Chicago. They performed site visits and file reviews at nine allocating agencies. The GAO also interviewed IRS and HUD officials.

A recent ruling by Massachusetts’ highest state court relied on an analysis of the June 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. (ICP). In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that a state’s “Qualified Allocation Plan” (QAP) implemented by an allocating agency violates the Fair Housing Act if it “disparately impacts” a protected minority even though the allocating agency did not intend to discriminate.

On May 19, Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) introduced legislation entitled The Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2016. The proposed bill would expand the LIHTC program to help create or preserve approximately 1.3 million affordable homes over a 10-year period. This would be an increase of 400,000 more units than is possible under the current program. The expansion would be phased in by 10 percent per year for the next five years.