Introduction to Affordable Housing Preservation

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• Issue Brief: Why Preserve Affordable Rental Housing? This short issue brief makes the case for preserving federally assisted rental housing.

Resources

• Overview of federally assisted multifamily housing programs. Provides an historical perspective on the federally assisted multifamily housing stock, including the Section 221(d)(3), Section 236, and project-based Section 8 programs.

• Project-Based Rental Assistance Units by State and Program Type. This report summarizes the number of project-based rental assistance units by state and program type. Please note, the report does not include all subsidized housing units, but only properties with project-based rental subsidy contracts through HUD’s multifamily programs. The report also includes the number of assisted units expiring before the year 2012. Data are as of February 2007.

• Preservation glossary.

Articles and Publications

• Preservation of Affordable Multifamily Housing (Community Developments Newsletter, Spring 2008) features an overview of the challenges facing the nation's affordable multifamily rental housing inventory and describes how a variety of public, private, and nonprofit initiatives have addressed these challenges. This issue also highlights the specific activities and investments of selected national banks, nonprofit organizations, and state and local government agencies in supporting the preservation of affordable multifamily rental housing. The newsletter is published by the Office of Comptroller of the Currency.

• Creative Capital: Financing the Preservation of Affordable Housing. Underwriting can be particularly daunting in the federally assisted portfolio of affordable housing. This article demonstrates the challenges of preserving affordable housing by discussing two communities developed by NHT/Enterprise that proved particularly challenging: Meridian Manor, a 34-unit, 100 percent Section 8 cooperative in Washington, D.C.; and 51st and King Street, a 96-unit, affordable family rental property in Chicago, with multiple finance sources and affordability restrictions that resulted in a complex array of rents serving a variety of income levels. Each provides a useful glimpse of what it takes to preserve affordable housing. The article was written by NHT Vice President Scott Kline and was reproduced with the permission of the Urban Land Institute, www.uli.org. (Multifamily Trends, March/April 2007)

• Best Practices for Effecting the Rehabilitation of Affordable Housing. This HUD report released in September 2006 documents best practices for rehabilitating existing affordable housing. 

• Taking the right steps to preserve affordable housing: The correct path lies just ahead (Affordable Housing Finance, July 2003)

• The Increasing Shortage of Affordable Rental Housing in America: Action Items for Preservation (Fannie Mae Foundation's Housing Facts & Findings, Vol. 4, Issue 4)