Affordable Housing Industry’s Top 10 Stories of 2016

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE

The Affordable Housing Industry’s Top 10 Stories of 2016

AHF, with help from industry leaders, counts down the top news events.

By Christine Serlin 

Although different news surrounding the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC), which marked its 30^th anniversary in October, dominated the headlines for much of 2016, the presidential election and its subsequent waves have had the industry abuzz for the past six weeks.
Affordable Housing Finance, with help from its Editorial Advisory Board members, takes a look at 10 notable events for the industry from the past year -here's just one
Read entire list of Top 10 >> here

4. The 30th Anniversary of the LIHTC Program

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of the LIHTC program, which was established as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 under president Ronald Reagan. Over the past three decades, it has become the most successful federal program ever for the production and preservation of affordable housing, financing more than 2.9 million units and providing 6.7 million low-income households with homes they can afford across the nation.

“Rarely has a program been so well designed and implemented to produce such superior results that support and implement the objectives of local and state housing leaders at such minimal cost in federal oversight. It is, in essence, self-regulating,” says Conrad Egan, a senior advisor at the Affordable Housing Institute.
Bart Mitchell, president and CEO of The Community Builders, agrees.
“The LIHTC reached year 30 with much more consistent quality of housing and ongoing local support than any previous U.S. housing program. Private underwriting works. Moderate-income families and seniors in every congressional district in the United States have benefitted from the stability and health benefits of living in better quality housing. Recent studies have shown that adjacent property values have mostly increased when LIHTC housing is built,” he says

Stakeholder Meeting Follow-up | EPA Extends Comment Period for its Proposed Ozone Implementation Rule | ADEQ presentation attached

EPA extended its deadline for public comments on the proposed rule to Mon., Feb. 13, 2017 and ADEQ encourages you to provide your comments to EPA.
To comment electronically, visit docket EPA-HQ-OAR-2016-0202 at regulations.gov.

	QUESTIONS? Natalie Muilenberg Air Quality Improvement Planning Section (480) 771-1089 nm3@azdeq.govhttp://www.azdeq.gov/

Councilmember David Luna Named Chair of the NLC ITC Committee

Featuring both David Luna and Dennis Kavanaugh
Published on Dec 21, 2016
Views: 6
District 5 Councilmember David Luna has been named the Chair of the National League of Cities Information Technology and Communications Committee.

Unprecedented Spending Trends in America, in One Chart

Published five days ago on 16 December 2016, this chart is missing some co-related factors that are addressed in the comments section in the original source.
Spending is broken into 12 categories: Reading, alcohol, tobacco, education, personal care, miscellaneous, recreation & entertainment, healthcare, clothing, food, transportation and housing.
Each category is further broken down into spending by year, from 1941 to 2014, and each category is given a unique color. The data were collected from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The data is adjusted for inflation and measures median spending of all Americans.

1. Unsurprisingly, housing expenses have almost always been the largest area of spending in America for over 70 years.

The only exception is 1941, when spending on food averaged $8,311, whereas spending on housing came to $7,537. However, in 1941 the government included alcohol in the food spending category, which inflates the food spending data for that year. In the other years, alcohol was given its own category.

In every other year measured, spending on housing outpaced every other category.

2. Another interesting trend is the downward slope of spending on clothing.

Americans spent the most on clothing in 1961 for an average of $4,157. In every year measured since 1961, spending on clothing fell, even when accounting for inflation.

3. At the same time, Americans began spending more on education, transportation and healthcare.

Spending on education has increased far more than any other category, jumping from $242 in 1941 to $1,236 in 2014.

Education spending increased at a particularly fast rate between 1984 and 1994 and onward.

While spending on healthcare increased between 1941 and 2014, overall spending dipped between 1973 and 1984, but then began rising rapidly thereafter.

Between 1941 and 2014 Americans spent money on most of the same things, with a few changes.

Housing has persisted as a large area of spending for Americans, as has the food category. However, spending on food and clothing has fallen when adjusting for inflation while spending on education and healthcare has risen quickly.

Source: https://howmuch.net/articles/american-spending-past-75-years

Merry Christmas from WireMasters!

Get To Know Jon Talton The Rogue Columnist

Rogue Columnist'

A pen warmed up in hell'

Fact-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation

December 19, 2016

Phoenix 101: the twenties

Just the intro to his most recent article to whet your appetite for his kind of reporting.

He lives in Seattle, admired by most of his colleagues.
[Blogger's Note: some good details about the Salt River Valley, Mesa and expansion of railroad links among other interests]

 

"If this photo shows a busy little city from the Roaring Twenties, that's exactly what you found in Phoenix during this transformative decade. Town to city, horses to cars, less Wild West and more sophistication — Phoenix had been moving this way for years. But in the 1920s, they became solidly entrenched — even Town Ditch was covered. The first "skyscraper," the seven-story Heard Building, right, opened in 1920. By the end of the decade, it had several taller and more impressive siblings that remain some of the city's most treasured and beautiful buildings. Central Methodist Church (ME South) on the near right would move to a handsome new structure at Central and Pierce.

The nation entered the decade with Woodrow Wilson as president. But he was incapacitated by a stroke and his wife, Edith, was protecting him from most visitors and essentially carrying out most of his executive duties. America was disillusioned by the outcome of the Great War, the Palmer Raids and the "Red Scare," what was seen as Wilson's overreaching, and two decades of the Progressive Era. Voters (including women, for the first time) eagerly embraced Ohio's Warren G. Harding as the next president. He promised a "return to normalcy," forever wrecking the correct word "normality." Harding freed the Socialist Eugene Debs, who Wilson had imprisoned for opposing American involvement in the war.
The Great War had brought changes to the Salt River Valley, especially with the booming demand for cotton. By 1920, it had turned into a bust and Phoenix was suffering through the national recession. Things would soon turn around as the economy expanded and America embarked on, as F. Scott Fitzgerald put it, "the greatest, gaudiest spree in history." It was the Jazz Age, with the experiment of Prohibition sidestepped with speakeasies. Prohibition was hardly observed at all in the non-Mormon towns of the West. In Phoenix, bars, borthels, and gambling dens operated in the open, sometimes making payoffs to the city. This wide-open environment soon attracted the Mafia, including Al Capone. . . "

Read more >> http://www.roguecolumnist.com/rogue_columnist/2016/12/phoenix-101-the-twenties.html

24 Boeing AH-6i Little Bird Helicopters Delivered to Saudi Arabia

Air Platforms
Saudi Arabia accepts first AH-6i helos

Gareth Jennings, London - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly

21 December 2016

Just hours ago in the midst of widespread condemnation of Britain for armaments and weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen that's killed over 10,000 people and destroyed vital infrastructure, IHS Jane's Defense Weekly reported what was disclosed but declined to discuss the issue and acceptance of the world's deadliest and most lethal attack helicopter.
Saudi Arabia has accepted into service the first of 24 Boeing AH-6i Little Bird light attack and reconnaissance helicopters, the manufacturer disclosed in the December issue of its in-house magazine, Frontiers.
While Boeing did not name Saudi Arabia, it said in Frontiers that the first international customer accepted the type in August
Photo credit: An AH-6i testbed aircraft being displayed to reporters at Boeing's Mesa production facility on 8 June. Source: IHS/Gareth Jennings
Source: http://www.janes.com/article/66454/saudi-arabia-accepts-first-ah-6i-helos 
Link to view December 2016 issue of Frontiers >> http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/archive/2016/december/#/1/

The company told reporters in June that deliveries would begin from its Mesa production facility in Arizona in the coming weeks, but declined to discuss the issue after that. The US Army too would not comment to IHS Jane's on the sale, which has been widely reported to be for the Saudi Arabian National Guard (SANG), beyond a Federal Business Opportunities notification posted in August in which it said that the first 12 helicopters would be transported to Saudi Arabia "as soon as possible".
The AH-6i features an enhanced powerplant, payload, and avionics package, giving it enhanced 'hot and high' capabilities; a large and varied arsenal that includes 7.62 mm and 12.7 mm machine guns and AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles; and interoperability with the latest-variant AH-64E Apache Guardian attack helicopter.
Production has been running at two airframes per month, with the last of the SANG's helicopters due to arrive on the line in February 2017.
Want to read more? For analysis on this article and access to all our insight content, please enquire about our subscription options:　ihs.com/contact
IHS