Now that the 2018 mid-term elections are finally behind us, at least we believe they are behind us, we may reflect on another successful year for affordable housing. As of the writing of this update the year is not yet complete as we are in the midst of a lame duck session of congress that, like the elections themselves, just will not end. We could have a partial shut down of the federal government on December 21st over boarder wall funding. It also does not help that between 18 and 25 soon to be former Members of Congress have not come back to Washington to vote, leaving House Republican’s short of the votes they need to pass bills let alone the remaining appropriations bills for FY2019. The year began with a bang and seems to be ending with a duh.
We began the year celebrating our existence as an industry having dodged the effort in the House to eliminate private activity bonds in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. In coordination with our champion, Senator Maria Cantwell, we immediately began plotting our “we’ll show them” strategy for recouping resources we lost in the tax bill, highlighting the housing crisis that has been gripping the country. After some wicked good Capitol Hill chess and capitalizing on one of the many errors made in the tax bill our long-time advocate, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, used her negotiating skills with an assist from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, and secured the increase in the 9% LIHTC allocation for four years and the permanent income averaging provision in the 2018 Omnibus bill. Another success for the LIHTC industry.
Since then the industry has continued to push for resources and administrative fix’s that will increase affordable housing production and preservation. In addition we began meeting with and educated the many candidates that were running for congress, laying the groundwork for the 116th Congress.
Currently we are working on including the 4% fixed LIHTC onto a tax bill that may or may not be voted on in the lame duck session. We are also working on the next version of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act. Senator Cantwell will again be the lead sponsor in the Senate but who her Republican colleague will be is at this point still unknown. In the House, we are waiting to find out if Congressman Richie Neal, the incoming chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, and our House LIHTC champion, will continue in that role or if he will pass off the AHCIA to one of his colleagues. Until that is settled we will not know who our lead Republican on the committee will be although we have a number of members interested in taking the lead.
Come January we will have over 100 new Members of Congress to educate on the LIHTC and this does not include the many new members of the Ways and Means Committee we will also work to become advocates. In the Senate Finance Committee, we know the new Democratic members will be Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada. We have met with both of them and believe they will support our efforts. We are waiting on the new Republican members of the committee to be announced. We know there will be at least two new Republicans on the committee as Senator Hatch is retiring and Senator Dean Heller was defeated for reelection.
As for the California delegation there are eight new members to educate on the LIHTC. As you know, having them and their staffs visit properties in their districts is essential to this process. Your annual trip to Washington will give you an opportunity to meet the DC staff as well and let them know how important affordable housing is to their constituents. It is also important the we focus on incoming Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy as he will be critical in the negotiations as to what provisions are included in any tax package that is negotiated between the House and Senate.
I want to thank all the members of CHC for the outstanding efforts over that past year. None of our successes at the federal level would be possible without the advocacy that goes on at the state level. I am very optimistic about our prospects for significant affordable housing legislation in the 116th Congress and look forward to working with all of you to make 2019 and even more successful year.