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The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) recently released the 30th anniversary edition of the Out of Reach report. The report documents the gap between renters’ wages and the cost of rental housing throughout the U.S. The national Housing Wage--the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a rental home at HUD’s fair market rent without spending more than 30 percent of his or her income on housing--is $22.96 for a modest two-bedroom rental home and $18.65 for a one-bedroom rental home.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House and Senate, including Senators Bob Casey (D-Pa.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Representatives Jim Langevin (D-R.I.) and Chris Smith (R-N.J.), recently introduced the “Real Emergency Access for Aging and Disability Inclusion for Disasters Act” (REAADI) to improve disaster response and recovery for older Americans and people with disabilities.

The National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) recently sent a letter to the IRS urging it to rescind the recently released final amended compliance monitoring regulations and to work with states to develop a “workable alternative.” The new compliance monitoring final regulations replace temporary regulations (Revenue Procedure 2016-15) that had been in place since 2016.

The A Call to Invest In Our Neighborhoods (ACTION) Campaign is a coalition of over 2,200 national, state, and local organizations and businesses working to address our nation’s severe shortage of affordable rental housing by protecting, expanding, and strengthening the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The group recently updated its national and state fact sheets on the impact of the LIHTC. Nationwide, the LIHTC has financed nearly 3.2 million rental units, providing approximately 7.4 million low-income households with homes they can afford.

A recently published study in Housing Policy Debate, “Rethinking Opportunity in the Siting of Affordable Housing in California,” found that residents’ perspectives on housing affordability, neighborhood conditions, and access to educational and economic opportunity can differ from commonly used measures.

A recent study by the Urban Institute, “Despite Labor Market Gains in 2018, There Were Only Modest Improvements in Families’ Ability to Meet Basic Needs,” found that families saw little improvement over the past year in their ability to meet basic needs despite rising employment and real wage growth.

In October 2018, the IRS published the first set of proposed regulations providing much of the direction taxpayers had been seeking. And while those regulations represented a step forward in understanding how to implement an Opportunity Zone project, many questions remained. Recently, the IRS sought to address many of those questions by publishing a second set of proposed regulations.

President Trump established the Opportunity and Revitalization Council in December 2018 to target, streamline, and coordinate federal resources to be used in Opportunity Zone (OZs) and other economically distressed communities. The interagency Council is chaired by HUD Secretary Ben Carson. 

HUD recently released a document that provides a snapshot of HUD’s programs and initiatives within Opportunity Zones (OZs) and requested input and recommendations on how HUD can incorporate OZs into existing policies, practices, planned actions, regulations, and guidance. According to HUD:

U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Tim Scott (R-SC), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Todd Young (R-IN) have introduced S.1344, a bipartisan bill to restore reporting requirements for Opportunity Zones. Specifically, the bill would require the Treasury Department to collect data on the number of Opportunity Funds created and the impact the funds are having on underserved communities. The data would have to be reported on an annual basis to Congress.