Center for Public Enterprise

I'm honored to announce today that Center for Public Enterprise has been selected as a Top 25 Finalist for the Ivory Innovations 2025 Ivory Prize, in recognition of our work supporting housing affordability with housing authorities, housing finance agencies, and governments across the country.

ICYMI, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released updated guidance governing the demolition & disposition of public housing (AKA Section 18) at the tail end of 2024. Counterintuitively, a notice focused on “demolition and disposition” of public housing actually includes key updates to better preserve and rehabilitate the public housing stock. PHAs considering a RAD conversion in 2025 take note: PIH 2024-40 makes the existing RAD & Section 18 blends more generous and expands the eligibility for projects to qualify for the greatest number of units under Section 18, potentially enabling a greater number of projects to pencil. Over the last few years the per unit amount of rehab in RAD deals has risen significantly, nearly doubling between 2020 and 2023. This is due, in part, to the rise of RAD/Section 18 blends which enable far deeper levels of rehab. Read more: https://lnkd.in/e3Dgah5W

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently released their updated Operating Cost Adjustment Factors (OCAFs). If you aren’t familiar, OCAFs are way that HUD administratively determines how much to increase project-based Section 8 subsidy amounts. For projects that have converted under RAD, your annual OCAF increase (calculated at the state-level) can sometimes be the only increase in funding you’ll see year over year, so making sure the numbers reflect reality is a hugely important exercise. I was curious so I put together a few quick graphics looking at this year’s OCAF compared the FY24. A majority of states saw a decrease in their OCAF, but the changes varied across the country. HUD also announced an important change to their methodology this year, switching to actual property data instead of relying on indices to capture insurance costs. The indices were national and missed regional variation. In my opinion, this is a positive move. One of the common complaints about OCAF is that by virtue of being a broad, composite number, it ignores differences in the cost to operate properties within a state. Say, for example, the cost differences between New York City and the balance of New York State. It would be interesting to see HUD rely more on property data in the future, and not just in the Section 8 portfolio. With better data collection and capacity, HUD could probably calculate and process budget-based rent increases for 202 and 811 properties without needing the properties to request increases. Some lower-capacity owners may go years without requesting an increase! Read more here: https://lnkd.in/esBy6WPK

We've been glad to work with the City of Kingston, who is now seeking information from potential development partners for a mixed-income program similar to Montgomery County's Housing Production Fund.

PARTNERSHIP OPPORTUNITY: For the past few months, it's been great working with the Center for Public Enterprise to determine how the City of Kingston could create a mixed-income public development model to support the City's aggressive housing creation goals. With CPE's support, I hope that Kingston will be the first in New York State to use this public development model. Already, in places like Montgomery County, Maryland, this model has been shown to be a win-win: The City will create deeply affordable housing units with a minimal amount of public equity investment while a developer is able to overcome traditional financing challenges to get a project built. I have a new Request for Information now out to gather input from any development partners interested in partnering with the City. Responses are due January 8 and an information session will be held on December 6th. All the info is here: https://lnkd.in/gEFQhwbf

Last week, we released a summary of the results of a survey, conducted in partnership with the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA), of housing finance agencies across the country. We wanted to better understand how agencies were using HUD's HFA Risk Sharing program and what improvements could be made to increase housing production. Since 2001, the Risk Share program has helped HFAs finance or refinance over 1,771 loans, totaling nearly $18.7 billion in principal and supporting more than 210,247 affordable rental homes. Surveyed agencies expect to use Risk Share to fund over?100 projects?representing nearly?10,000 units?in 2024 alone.?Recent changes to the program make it even more likely agencies will use this program for new construction. Read more: https://lnkd.in/ebX_PMMp

At #ClimateWeekNYC I had the opportunity to speak at the New York Stock Exchange and the Jain Family Institute about the Center for Public Enterprise, the Inflation Reduction Act, the role the public sector can play in driving decarbonization, and the financial tools policymakers can deploy to that end. I got to engage in amazing discussions about the role financial markets play in industrial policy and—perhaps most ambitiously—how public sector-led financial engineering can ensure that private markets don’t treat vulnerable communities and critical infrastructure as credit risks. (And, at NYSE, I got to tour the trading floor!) Thanks so much to ICE and the Jain Family Institute for two stellar events, particularly Evan Kodra and Nolan Lindquist at each. I’m particularly grateful to Jeff Gitterman and Melanie Brusseler for their moderating roles, to my co-panelists—at JFI, Kerry O'Neill, Steve Boyd, and David Burton; and at ICE, Priya Parrish, Karl Burkart, and Jon Williams—and to everyone else I spoke to!

CPE goes to Washington. This morning, our Executive Director Paul Williams testified before the Senate Budget Committee on financing constraints for multifamily development, and opportunities to ease those constraints. Here's his response to a question from Senator Van Hollen, where he explains how Montgomery County Housing Opportunities Commission's Housing Production Fund enables the development of mixed-income housing outside of traditional subsidies. Read Paul's full testimony to the Committee here: https://lnkd.in/eAxSwWXb

I'll have the honor of testifying to the Senate Budget Committee tomorrow morning. I'll be speaking about financing constraints for multifamily development, and opportunities to ease those constraints. Tune in here tomorrow morning: https://lnkd.in/e3w5sJnR

NYPA VP of Renewables Vennela Yadhati, P.E. spoke at the Center for Public Enterprise's "Emerging Development Strategies from Public Authorities" panel for #ClimateWeekNYC, where she shared how the Inflation Reduction Act supports NYPA's work to develop and deploy #cleanenergy projects across #NewYorkState. Additional guests included speakers from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) DOE Loan Programs Office, Minnesota Climate Innovation Finance Authority, Center for Public Enterprise and Heatmap News.