Tax credits for low-income housing are 'dead' amid scrutiny from lawmakers, Greitens

[TexasTowelie]

An embattled tax credit for developers who build low-income housing units is essentially dead and developers worry that so are efforts to build affordable housing in Kansas City.

Low-income housing tax credits provide an incentive for developers who build affordable housing, but they've been criticized as inefficient. Gov. Eric Greitens says the credits line the pockets of wealthy developers.

Greitens' legal team has implied that the industry may be connected to payments made to a lawyer representing the ex-husband of the woman with whom the governor had an affair in 2015. His lawyers this week asked a Missouri House committee investigating allegations of misconduct against him to issue subpoenas to a bank and developer involved in low-income housing development.

The Missouri Housing Development Commission, which is led by Greitens and administers funds for affordable housing, decided late last year it wouldn't issue any state tax credits this year. The federal government grants its own tax credits for affordable housing.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/development/article211821204.html

[Cicada]

1. We need more housing, not subsidies for very few houses

A law introduced in CA requires zoning within a mile of a public transportation stop to permit building up to 85 feet without excessive parking space requirements. That would generate a ton of new housing units. If ca passes it then far more super productive workers can live near California’s many super productive businesses. It would lower housing costs and shot the California economy into turbo drive. We must coalesce around laws increasing housing.

[SWBTATTReg]

2. A study was done some time ago (a year, give or take a year), where it ...

was determined that the average cost of housing using tax credits and all other incentives actually brought the cost of each housing unit created under these types of incentives ended up costing over a million dollars PER unit.

These credits were mostly scooped up by wealthy individuals and / or companies (in order to avoid taxes I am assuming), and in a lot of cases, the properties that the tax credits were intended for just sat there while the properties still didn't get rehabbed (in St. Louis City in my example).

With the economic housing boom (again, in St. Louis City), no tax credits aren't needed, but some kind of low income housing incentive is needed but the 'not in my neighborhood' mantra is alive and well (especially in the metro/rural county areas outside the city of St. Louis MO) and thus, a lot of development is somewhat forced into the St. Louis City area itself, which I think is dumping everything on the city itself.

Those unincorporated and incorporated areas outside the City of St. Louis MO need to step up and take on more of a responsibility for low income persons and families and basically, quit dumping these people into the city of St. Louis MO itself (some cities and their police departments would pick up these people and actually drive over to St. Louis City and dump them!).

No, these small towns and/or cities outside the city limits of St. Louis City, while working within the city of St. Louis MO, would erect barriers and so forth, limiting growth or regulating it severely, to preserve their 'way of life'. Unfortunately, some of these HOA like rules and so forth ended up killing these communities (or didn't help them).

How this for being neighborly?