This course is intended for students interested in the affordable housing crisis. Can governments alone solve this problem or are public-private approaches an answer? The course explores how affordable housing is created, preserved, and managed, as well as how community development strategies incorporate and extend beyond the provision of affordable housing. Specific methods to sponsor, permit, finance, design, construct, manage, and preserve affordable housing are presented, including use of public subsidies and regulatory mandates.

Course SES 5490 is designed for students interested in understanding the fundamentals of affordable housing, its creation and preservation, including its conceptualization, sponsorship, permitting, financing, design, construction, and management. The course begins with an overview of what affordable housing is, why it is needed, and why the market does not provide it, then delves into past and present models for subsidizing the creation and operation of affordable housing.

The course examines the ‘funding gap’ that prohibits the development of affordable housing and teaches methods of filling that gap to enable its creation. Numerous government subsidy programs will be examined along with private subsidy programs used to create rental and owned affordable housing, including but not limited to the following programs:

• Federal IRS Section 42/Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC) and State LIHTC Programs
• Federal Section 8/Housing Choice Vouchers Programs Federal Tax-Exempt Bond Financing
• HUD Programs
• Massachusetts Comprehensive Permit Program (CH-40B) Massachusetts Community Preservation Act (CPA)
• Local inclusionary zoning and other zoning incentive programs
• A variety of other programs including Real Estate Tax Assessment reductions, Federal and State Tax Credits, New Market Tax Credits and Opportunity Zones.
• Overview of programs outside the United States

The course focuses on details, project specifics, real-life examples by for-profit and not-for-profit developers. Review of how each subsidy contributes to creating project feasibility. Studies will include the acquisition and rehabilitation of existing housing, historic redevelopment, new construction, and ‘failed ‘developments (often owned by banks or other financial institutions).

Focus will be further be on design of affordable housing, construction of affordable housing, technology’s role (including ‘Green’ attributes) in affordable housing, operations of affordable housing, and the investment community’s role in affordable housing.

In the United States, approximately 1 out of 1000 developers undertake affordable housing efforts. Why is this? How can this change?

Note regarding the Fall 2026 GSD academic calendar: The first day of classes, Wednesday, September 2nd, is held as a MONDAY schedule at the GSD.