I structure RAD conversions, Section 18 dispositions, and blends for housing authorities, and arrange the LIHTC and capital stack/ financing behind them. If you're weighing these paths for a specific property, I'm glad to walk through it
Every LIHTC deal has a stretch of time when the project is real enough to spend money on but not real enough for anyone to lend against it. Market studies, Phase I environmental reports, surveys, architectural drawings, zoning counsel, application fees, and bond inducement costs all come due before the
LIHTC
2026 is the first allocation year under the permanent Low-Income Housing Tax Credit expansion in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21). State credit ceilings for 9% credits rose 12%, and the private activity bond test for 4% deals dropped from 50% to 25% of aggregate
Regulatory Updates
On September 1, 2026, HUD announced that it had rescinded "burdensome guidance" as part of its housing affordability agenda. The press release was short. The underlying legal change is not trivial, and it reaches further into affordable housing finance than the headline suggests. The action is a memorandum
PHA Partnerships
Two things became true at the same time this year, and most housing authorities have only noticed one of them. The first is that development capacity got cheaper. Starting in 2026, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act permanently increased state 9% credit allocations by 12% and permanently cut the tax-
Opportunity Zones
Most housing authorities are sitting on land they cannot use. Cleared HOPE VI sites that never got a Phase III. Parcels left over from a Section 18 demolition where the replacement units went to vouchers. Surplus maintenance yards, oversized parking lots, the half-acre next to the senior high-rise
Relocation
Ask a housing authority director what worries them most about a repositioning transaction and the answer is rarely the capital stack. It's the residents. That instinct is correct, and not only for the reasons people expect. Relocation is where deals lose money they didn't budget, lose
Repositioning
Most housing authorities approach this as a fork in the road: convert under RAD, or dispose under Section 18. Pick one. That framing is usually wrong. For substantial rehabilitation, the answer is almost always both — a blend, in some ratio determined by your construction scope. The real questions are what
Section 18
HUD's Office of Public and Indian Housing issued Notice PIH 2026-23 on August 28, 2026. It amends PIH 2024-40, the notice that has governed public housing demolition and disposition applications since December 2024. It contains several changes that will materially affect which properties can be repositioned
RAD
If you run a housing authority, you already know the arithmetic that brought you here. Your Capital Fund allocation covers a fraction of your physical needs assessment. The roofs, the boilers, the plumbing risers — the work you can't get to keeps getting more expensive than the work you
Legislation & Policy
Congress does not often pass significant housing legislation. When it does, it usually passes narrowly, along party lines, and gets unwound two administrations later. That is not what happened this summer. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act cleared the Senate 85-5 and the House 358-32, and became