How Companies Can Tackle the U.S. Housing Crisis

As the U.S. housing crisis grows even more dire due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, key stakeholders within the wider real estate sector can support housing strategies that help ensure everyone has access to an affordable place to live. Even as the country moves closer to herd immunity and the rate of virus transmission has slowed, here’s the reality: Millions of Americans will be behind in rent - more than 11 million households, in fact - or will have to start all over and need to find a place to live that is within their means.

With as many as 5 million households facing the risk of eviction this year, bold action, targeted investments and creative solutions are needed.

To that end, be sure to join Mary Mazzoni, Senior Editor of TriplePundit, on Thursday, March 25 at 2 p.m. ET/11 a.m. PT as she sits down with Desiree Francis, Head of Community Finance at Capital One. Together, they will explore the challenges, complexities, and opportunities in financing Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) developments in the United States as one way to tackle the nationwide housing crisis.

According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the LIHTC program is a leading resource for creating affordable housing in the U.S. Launched with the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the LIHTC program offers state and local LIHTC-allocating agencies the equivalent of approximately $8 billion in annual budget authority to issue tax credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation or new construction of rental housing specifically targeted to lower-income households. HUD data suggests that an average of close to 1,400 projects and 106,000 housing units have been made available annually between 1995 and 2018.

Joining Mazzoni and Francis will be Carol Galante, I. Donald Terner Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Planning at the University of California, Berkeley to discuss findings from forthcoming Capital One-sponsored research completed by the university’s Terner Center.

Register for this free event here.

Image credit: Jacob Culp/Unsplash