News
AFFORDABLE CHALLENGES
October 1, 2009
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| Earlier, we dropped by the Marriott Marquis with the 400 others for The Reznick Group’s event on financing and strategies for affordable housing. We snapped keynote Jon Sheiner, legislative council to the Committee on Ways & Means for Congressman Charles Rangel. He notes that the all-consuming issue of healthcare is going to change how things are done politically. It’s taking precedent over everything, including housing, and will have an enormous impact on the relationship between the White House and Congress. He’s not going to sugarcoat issues, he says, because then we won’t go home to work harder and make changes. |
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| We turned to the panel of nyhomes’ Priscilla Almodovar, NYC HDC’s Marc Jahr, NYC HPD’s Rafael Cestero, NYS DHCR’s Deborah VanAmerongen, and Bingham McCutchen’s Kenneth Lore for an update on city and state agencies. Deborah notes that DHCR has not shut the door on affordable housing, although it’s changing the way it does business; in three months, it awarded $190M in tax credits, and she says the other agencies helped salvage deals. Rafael feels we’re lucky we have four government agencies who get along in this challenging time. Despite politics and finances, NYC’s still on track to build 165k units by ’14. |
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| Walking us through the complexities of financing, the 80/20 housing program, and Mitchell-Lama housing were Reznick founder David Reznick, BoA’s Kim McLaughlin, Wachovia’s Rachel Grossman, Jones Day’s Steven Koppel, Bingham McCutchen’s Martin Siroka, and Nixon Peabody’s John Kelly. Rachel notes that general financing is harder, but not impossible, to get—lenders are just being pickier. The future of affordable housing is positive, Steven asserts; we’re just going back to where things started. |
