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On Oct. 13, the Social Security Administration (SSA) announced the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) for 2018. The monthly Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for more than 66 million Americans will increase 2.0 percent in 2018. The 2.0 percent COLA will begin with benefits payable to more than 61 million Social Security beneficiaries in January 2018. And increased payments to more than 8 million SSI beneficiaries will begin on Dec. 29, 2017.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) recently announced a new initiative to combat sexual harassment in housing. The initiative specifically seeks to increase the DOJ’s efforts to protect women from harassment by landlords, property managers, maintenance workers, security guards, and other employees and representatives of rental property owners. “No woman should be made to feel unsafe in her own home,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General John M. Gore of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division in announcing the initiative.
The IRS recently published Revenue Procedure 2017-58. It announced the 2018 inflation-adjusted amounts for the low-income housing tax credit and private activity bond caps. The state LIHTC ceiling in 2018 will be the greater of $2.40 multiplied by the state population or $2,765,000, which is an increase of $55,000 over this year’s cap. The multiplier had been $2.35 in 2017. The state ceiling for the private activity bond volume cap will be the greater of $105 times the state population or $311,375,000.
HUD Secretary Ben Carson recently testified before the House Financial Services Committee in a hearing titled “The Future of Housing in America: Oversight of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.” The hearing’s intent was to discuss current HUD activities and programming.
According to data recently released, the National Housing Preservation Database (NHPD) shows that 488,332 federally assisted apartments or rental homes will reach the end of their current subsidy contracts and affordability restrictions for low-income families in the next five years. Nearly one in four of these units are funded by LIHTCs. Recently updated, the database allows users to estimate the size of the affordable housing stock in local areas and identify properties at risk of leaving the publicly assisted housing stock, and develop preservation strategies.
According to a new report from public accounting firm CohnReznick, LIHTC sites are operating better than in any period in the program’s 31-year history. For its report, the firm requested the participation of every active housing tax credit syndicator and some of the nation’s largest institutional investors. Thirty-three housing tax credit syndicators and two of the nation’s largest investors participated in the survey. The firm analyzed data collected from more than 22,000 housing tax credit properties.
The A Call To Invest In Our Neighborhoods (ACTION) campaign recently released updated fact sheets on the impact of the LIHTC program in each state through 2015, the latest data available. The ACTION Campaign is a coalition of over 2,000 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 LIHTC.
The Trump administration and GOP congressional leaders recently proposed the “Unified Tax Reform Framework,” their plan for the most sweeping overhaul of the federal tax code in more than three decades. The proposal calls for reducing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, a shift that’s intended to make American companies more competitive with their counterparts around the world. It should be noted that under a lowered corporate rate, the value of LIHTC is reduced.
HUD recently released its biannual Worst Case Housing Needs Report to Congress. It finds that the number of very poor unsubsidized families struggling to pay their monthly rent and who may also be living in substandard housing increased between 2013 and 2015. HUD reports that in 2015, 8.3 million very low-income unassisted families paid more than half their monthly income for rent, lived in severely substandard housing, or both.
The Senate Finance Committee recently held a hearing on “America’s Affordable Housing Crisis: Challenges and Solutions.” The hearing demonstrated bipartisan support for affordable housing. It emphasized the importance of the LIHTC as an affordable rental housing tool, and S. 548, the legislation sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Senator Hatch (R-UT) to expand and improve the LIHTC to help address affordable housing needs.
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