Mercury News: GOP tax proposal would gut affordable housing, state officials say

Less than two months after California passed hard-fought bills to build more subsidized rental housing for the poor, affordable-housing advocates are reeling from a federal tax-reform proposal that could grind that momentum to a halt and wipe out an existing program that created roughly 20,000 such homes last year. The GOP tax proposal, if passed in its current form, would take away tax exemptions that generate $2.2 billion annually for affordable housing construction in California. For context: The recession-era elimination of state redevelopment funding in 2011 — a move widely criticized as devastating to affordable housing — amounted to losses of roughly $1 billion per year. “This is definitely a red alert for California,” said Matt Schwartz, president and CEO of California Housing Partnership, a San Francisco-based nonprofit housing organization. “The time is now for anybody who cares about our continued ability to produce affordable rental homes to engage.”