Buildings, HUD, Leading Syndicators and Lobbyists.

I have had an eventful couple of days in DC.

On Thursday, Michael Weincek Associates (architects who specialise in affordable housing and community buildings) took me around to visit three of their projects. The first was a project where work had just started on redeveloping a partially destroyed historic building following a fire. Part of the building was just a façade now supported by steel, the other part which was more complete, had been stripped back to the bear brick and the studwork. Prior to the fire the property had been a notorious overcrowded slum which the city and other agencies had been trying to tackle for a number of years. This was clearly going to be a very expensive project. We then visited a 140 unit sheltered scheme where the property had been refurbished a couple of years before and extensive facilities added to the building, including a cinema, lounge, laundry, guest suit, activity areas, a gym, large reception area as well as new offices for NCBA who run the scheme. It was an impressive scheme. However, not as impressive as the next scheme we visited which was a block of 70 apartments (all affordable) which had been completed one year ago. The scheme had a high end timber finish externally and a 'designer' atrium. The building had a manger based in the building who worked during working hours, two full time maintenance men and underground parking for 25 cars. it also had a rear furniture access corridor so that you do not have to move furniture through the front entrance. We were shown a one bed apartment of 700ft2. This is at least 200ft2 larger than what we would build in the UK under Design and Quality Standards.. In addition, the ceiling height was 14ft and the kitchen had granite work tops. All the apartments had air conditioning. The scheme was funded using LIHTC and cost $160k per unit.

In the afternoon I met with Robert Rozen who is a lobbyist based at Ernst and Young and worked with Senator Mitchell in drafting the LIHTC legislation. Robert took me through his views on the LIHTC scheme and its strengths and weaknesses politically.

The US debt ceiling was lifted and on Thursday HUD re-opened. I managed to secure my meetings with folk at HUD on Friday. I met with Margret Salazar who is the Director of Affordable Housing Preservation programmes including the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) project.  I also met separately with Michael Hollar who is a senior policy analyst and with Kurt Usowski, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary or Economic Affairs.

In the afternoon Scott Hoekman from Enterprise Communities kindly spent about 2 hours discussing the LIHTC programme including walking me through a worked example showing how the credits and depreciation are accounted for in order to arrive at a rate of return.

I have just arrived in Raleigh after a 6 hour train ride from Washington DC. Mark Shelburne from the North Carolina Housing Finance Agency met me at the station and we went for a Southern meal - mashed sweet potato, onion rings, fried okra, beef and black eyed peas with sweet iced tea. Delicious. Tomorrow we are visiting rural affordable housing schemes in North Carolina with Russ from the NCHFA who deals with the building side of the HFAs operation. We kick off at 8.15am with Southern breakfast - bacon and biscuits.