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On Dec. 11, 2014, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Director Melvin L. Watt instructed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to begin setting aside and allocating funds for the Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund. Congress created the two funds in 2008 under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) to provide financing for the production and preservation of affordable housing. However, they have been empty since they were created six years ago due to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being placed into conservatorship.

Housing credit sites are performing well across-the-board, including large, small, urban, and ex-urban projects, according to a recent report published by CohnReznick entitled “The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program: A Performance Update Analysis.”

Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS), the agency that administers the LIHTC program in Oregon, recently released new data on the demographics of households served by LIHTC sites in 24 of the state’s 26 counties. This is the first publically available dataset on LIHTC properties to contain county-level data on tenant characteristics.

On Nov. 7, HUD submitted its Fiscal Year 2012-2013 Annual Report on the State of Fair Housing in America to Congress. The report includes information regarding the prevalence of different types of discrimination in housing and HUD’s actions to combat discrimination.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released on Nov. 21 the final version of its strategic plan for fiscal years 2015-2019. The FHFA was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and is responsible for the effective supervision, regulation, and housing mission oversight of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), and the Federal Home Loan Bank System, which includes 12 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBs) and the Office of Finance.

On Oct. 22, the federal government announced that the Social Security Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for 2015 will be 1.7 percent. This is up from the 2014 increase of 1.5 percent, but less than the 3.6 percent increase of 2012. Next year will mark only the eighth time the COLA has been less than 2 percent. Payments will begin in January and will also affect persons receiving SSI, VA pensions, Civil Service Pensions, and Railroad Retirement.

The District of Columbia’s fiscal year (FY) 2015 Budget Support Emergency Act, which became effective on Oct. 1, 2014, implements a low-income housing tax credit for the District of Columbia. As a result of the legislation, the Department of Housing and Community Development will make available $1 million in LIHTCs in FY 2015. For years following 2015, the available allocation amount will be equal to the District of Columbia’s federal LIHTC cap.

The Treasury Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released an audit of the Missouri Housing Development Commission regarding payment under the Section 1602 cash grant exchange program. The Section 1602 program was enacted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Each year the IRS allocates a certain amount of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits to each state using a formula allocation method, which is based on a state’s population, and is established in Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code. In addition to the credits allocated by this formula method, each year, states are also permitted to allocate to the state housing finance agency (HFA) LIHTCs that were unused by recipients of tax credits allocated in a prior year, and LIHTCs from the prior calendar year that were not previously allocated by the HFA.

At the end of 2013, the Social Security Administration (SSA) posted information that it intended to stop providing paper benefit/award letters from the local SSA offices beginning in February 2014. The rationale was that requiring individuals to use the online technological investments that SSA made would help meet increasing service demands despite shrinking budgets.