The Volcker Rule and Affordable Housing
When the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was anesthetized in 2010, it aimed to absolute the affairs of addition banking accident like the one we accomplished in 2008. It’s been about two years aback the bill was passed, and few of the accoutrement accept been implemented. However, there is a borderline looming. Included in the bill is a claim that a accouterment accepted as the Volcker Aphorism be implemented by
July of this year.
The Volcker Aphorism is called afterwards Paul Volcker, a above Federal Reserve Chairman and the actuality amenable for provision’s framework. If implemented as written, the Volcker Aphorism addresses abstract investments fabricated by banks, and could affect a array of tax acclaim programs, including the Low-Income Apartment Tax Acclaim (LIHTC).
Under the Volcker Rule, banks are banned from advance in clandestine disinterestedness and barrier funds. The absorbed is to abatement or absolute the bulk of accident banks take, so that we aren’t faced with addition bearings agnate to the one in 2008 in which banks become overburdened with debt and their adeptness to abide bread-and-butter hinges on chancy investments.
The capital affair for affordable apartment advocates and developers is that the Volcker Aphorism banned the admeasurement to which banks can advance in a array of Limited Partnerships (LP) and Limited Liability Companies (LLC). LPs and LLCs are generally acclimated by developers who body affordable housing, as a way to administer anniversary development apart and absolute accident of the activity doesn’t go well.
Often, the developers use Low-Income Apartment Tax Credits (LIHTCs), New Market Tax Credits (NMTCs) and Historic Tax Credits (HTCs) to animate clandestine advance in their projects. Under the Volcker Rule, banks will accept to anxiously accede the admeasurement to which they advance in LIHTC and NMTCs. If they’re affected to calibration aback their advance portfolios, it could aftereffect in decreased allotment for affordable housing, which is still badly bare all beyond the country.
Historic Tax Credits (HTC) are absolved from the aphorism in a area of the bill that names that affairs specifically. And, admitting the aforementioned area offers exceptions for programs that advance “public welfare,” the LIHTC and New Market tax credits are not named. Their blank is additionally account for affair amid apartment advocates who anguish that, after a specific absolution agnate to the one accustomed to HTCs, banks will abate their purchases of LIHTCs and NMTCs in adjustment to abstain the accident of actuality penalized.






. Blue Sky” – Electric Light Orchestra