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Robert Greer Tapped to Chair NAHB's Housing Credit Group
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Robert Greer | Robert Greer, president of Michaels Development Company, a leading affordable housing development company, has been appointed vice chair of NAHB’s Housing Credit Group, the premier trade association for developers and other professionals working in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) industry.
He will assume chairmanship of the group in 2011. The appointment marks the second time that Greer, a long-time NAHB member, has been tapped to chair the group.
The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program, enacted by Congress in 1986, provides a financing vehicle for the construction and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing.
As chairman, Greer will help the group set priorities and ensure that issues of importance to tax credit developers across the country are included in the national political agenda. He will also help represent the group before Congress and the Administration.
Currently, the Housing Credit Group is leading the effort to have the tax credit exchange program extended and to increase the pool of investors in Low Income Housing Tax Credits. The Housing Credit Group is also focused on ensuring that the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental housing assistance programs, including Section 8 and project-based assistance, receive adequate funding.
“The recession and the credit crunch have put many tax credit developers under stress during the last two years, making it very difficult to find investors, and, as a result, many new affordable housing developments are in jeopardy,” said Stillman Knight, president of The Knight Company and the 2011 chairman of the NAHB Multifamily Board of Trustees. “We are delighted that Bob, who enjoys such tremendous respect in the industry and who heads one of the industry’s most successful companies, is willing to serve in this important role for the Housing Credit Group.”
Hailed as an effective public-private partnership, the LIHTC program offers tax incentives to investors willing to provide equity for the development of affordable housing. Their investments allow affordable housing owners and developers to offer quality housing at below-market rates to households who earn 60% or less of an area’s median income.
Since its inception two decades ago, the program has been the primary catalyst for more than one million units of affordable housing across the country.
One of the first private development companies to participate in the program, Michaels Development is the nation’s largest owner of LIHTC communities and one of the industry’s most active development companies.
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