Archinect - News

Billions could flow toward addressing National Park Service maintenance backlog

2020-07-14T15:18:00-04:00

Progress is being made toward enacting the Great American Outdoors Act, a legislative effort recently passed by the United States Senate and due to be taken up by the US House of Representatives next week that could begin to address the $11 billion backlog of road, building, and facilities maintenance that has plagued the National Park Service (NPS) for years.

President Donald Trump has indicated that he would sign the rare bipartisan bill once it reaches his desk, The Los Angeles Times reports.

The bill aims to bring $1.9 billion in funding per year for the next five years to the NPS to help meet these deferred maintenance needs, which include building improvements, bathroom facilities, accessibility upgrades, and other infrastructural building programs.

"Housing is Infrastructure Act" could bring $100 billion to affordable housing

2019-11-27T13:00:00-05:00

California Senator and presidential contender Kamala Harris and California Representative Maxine Waters have introduced the "Housing is Infrastructure Act," a $107 billion bill that aims to upgrade and expand affordable housing across the country. The bill is the latest in a series of efforts geared toward bringing new sources of funding for the retrofitting and expansion of America's affordable and public housing stocks.

Terrace 459 Parkside affordable housing project by Landon Bone Baker Architects in Chicago. Photo by David Schalliol.

Funding Breakdown

A breakdown of the funding package highlights the wide-ranging and targeted nature of the proposal. The package, for example, aims to bring $70 billion to a Public Housing Capital Fund that would be tapped to build new public housing units and renovate existing public housing complexes, CNBC reports. $10 billion would head to the Community Development Block Grant program to focus on eliminating zoning impediments and "other requir...

Private funding for repairs and improvements could come to America's senior housing for the first time under new HUD rule

2019-08-01T19:09:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is close to finalizing a major reform of its extensive senior housing portfolio, allowing nonprofit owners of 125,000 apartments to tap private sources of financing for the first time. HUD built nearly 2,900 of these properties over the past three decades. Though owned by nonprofits, the federal government funded their construction and subsidized tenant rents.

The nation's recent crop of senior housing projects could see much-needed improvements come to reality as the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) loosens rules dictating where nonprofit building owners can draw funds from to make building repairs.

Tom Davis, director of the Office of Recapitalization at HUD told The Wall Street Journal, “Fundamentally what we’re trying to do is avoid the kind of capital backlog problem that other parts of the affordable housing portfolio have, like public housing."