Category: Massachusetts

Paradise future? Part 2, operations

12 January, 2009 (10:16) | Chapter 40B, Co-housing, Concepts in housing, Housing, Innovations, Local issues, Massachusetts, Tenure, Zoning and land use | 6 comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
Yesterday’s exploration of the interesting experiment of co-housing, based on a sympathetic Boston Globe account, had reached the point of a completed development, using as an anti-snob crowbar the powerful lever of Massachusetts’ Chapter 40B law to produce a development that the founders swear up down and sideways ‘will’ be green.  [...]

Paradise future? Part 1, development

9 January, 2009 (10:22) | Chapter 40B, Co-housing, Housing, Innovations, Local issues, Massachusetts, Tenure, Zoning and land use | 1 comment

The older I get, the less faith I place in future-tense verbs.
 
Character is what you are in the dark
 
Thus it was with a fair dose of jaundice that I read a sympathetic Boston Globe account of a new approach to affordable housing, co-housing:
 

Co-housing?  Bah, humbug!
 
The idea started small. Kathy Journeay and a few close friends [...]

The LIHTC crisis and states: Part 3, drive thy business

7 January, 2009 (10:24) | Capital markets, Developers, LIHTC, Markets, Massachusetts, Policy, Regulation and Reform, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 2 and the previous Part 1.]
 
“He that is of the opinion money will do everything may well be suspected of doing everything for money.”
– Benjamin Franklin, who was born and raised in Massachusetts
 

Drive thy business or it will drive thee
 
So far our review of the white paper (available in .pdf here [...]

The LIHTC crisis and states: Part 2, go try to borrow some

6 January, 2009 (10:34) | Capital markets, Developers, LIHTC, Markets, Massachusetts, Policy, Regulation and Reform, US News | No comments

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]
 
“If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.”
– Benjamin Franklin, who was born and raised in Massachusetts
 

If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some; for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing
 
Yesterday’s post introduced a white paper (available in .pdf [...]

The LIHTC crisis and states: Part 1, an investment in knowledge

5 January, 2009 (10:54) | Capital markets, Developers, LIHTC, Markets, Massachusetts, Policy, Regulation and Reform, US News | No comments

“If we do not hang together, assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
– Benjamin Franklin, who was born and raised in Massachusetts
 

An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
 
In late December, at the request of the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP, www.mhp.net), my for-profit Recap Advisors released a white paper (available in .pdf here as [...]