Month: July, 2006

Experience counts

18 July, 2006 (09:29) | Uncategorized |

What’s the professional value of experience? 
 

What’s this house worth?
 
If you have to play only one hand of poker, will you play better knowing the chips are your own real money?
 

I think the house is worth $750,000; what do you think?
 
Anyone who hires a consulting professional — such as a broker or advisor — pays [...]

Why housing tax credits work

17 July, 2006 (09:18) | Uncategorized |

Although a case can be made for other programs (Section 202 non-profit elderly new construction and Section 515 rural family), most observers would rate the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), Section 42 of the Internal Revenue Code, as America’s most successful affordable rental housing production program ever:
 

Politically, it’s existed for two decades, been made [...]

NNO: Cracking the shell

14 July, 2006 (09:55) | Uncategorized |

As the baby phoenix that will be New New Orleans cracks through the shell of Old New Orleans, its emergence comes not continuously but in scattered fragments,
 

 
as illustrated by these various stories, starting with the New York Times and Katrina’s bounty:
 
BATON ROUGE, La. — State officials assumed that Louisiana’s tax base had been [...]

Eminent domain reform: spot the joker! Part 2

13 July, 2006 (09:33) | Uncategorized |

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
As we explored yesterday, California’s ballot initiative seeks not only to narrow the range of permissible eminent domain takings of the kind that caused so much post­-Kelo backlash, but also to expand the definition of compensable activities to include:
 
… statutes, charter provisions, ordinances, resolutions, laws, rules or regulations not related to [...]

Eminent domain reform: spot the joker! Part 1

12 July, 2006 (09:55) | Uncategorized |

 

Even as New London’s story is ending in farce, proving that the post­-Kelo backlash against local governments’ using eminent domain defies simplistic right-left labels, the campaign is gathering steam: the San Francisco Chronicle brings an update on a California initiative (with a grimacing joker in its language) that appears certain to make the ballot:

“Please [...]