Whittier Choice Neighborhoods Initiative will redevelop and preserve a 200-unit public housing community in Lower Roxbury and add 300 units of new mixed-income housing. Rendering courtesy of Elton & Hampton Architects and the Architectural Team

Residents and public officials stood in a courtyard behind a Whittier Street building late last month, watching together as heavy machinery tore away pieces of the building’s fire escape, dropping them onto the ground below. The demolition work kicked off a construction project – the Whittier Choice Neighborhoods Initiative – that will totally remake public housing in the Whittier Street neighborhood.

The Whittier partnership, which includes MassHousing, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, officials from Gov. Charlie Baker’s administration and the Boston Housing Authority, the nonprofit developers Preservation of Affordable Housing (POAH) and Madison Park Development Corp., and residents of the Whittier Street Apartments public housing complex, is a model for leveraging private markets to transform and preserve public housing. And if federal tax reform had swung in a different direction late last year, the transformation of Whittier Street would not be happening right now.

So, as much as the start of construction at Whittier Street is a cause for celebration, it should also be a reminder that the fight is not won. If the affordable housing community wants to be able to continue celebrating projects like Whittier Street, we have to safeguard the tools that make it possible for the city, the state and a pair of nonprofits to invest in transforming a federally-supported property.

Last month’s demolition ceremony caps five years of planning and advocacy by the Boston Housing Authority, POAH, Madison Park and the residents of the Whittier Street Apartments. Their work was rewarded when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant to the Whittier transformation.a

Chrystal Kornegay

The Whittier Choice Neighborhoods Initiative is a community-driven vision for sparking economic prosperity in Lower Roxbury. The initiative will redevelop and preserve the 200-unit public housing community, while adding an additional 300 units of mixed-income housing to the neighborhood. It will use an investment in housing to build social capital, improve neighborhood health and educational initiatives and connect residents to economic opportunities.

MassHousing is proud to have committed more than $49 million to Whittier’s first phase, to help POAH and Madison Park construct 168 new units of mixed-income housing, including 34 new workforce housing units.

Massachusetts needs strong public-private partnerships like the Whittier Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. But to deliver these projects, the affordable housing community needs a key federal tool: Tax-exempt bonding that allow developers to access low-income housing tax credits.

The combination of tax-exempt private activity bonds and federal housing tax credits is the secret sauce that allows private capital to invest in affordable housing. And last year, as part of its tax reform package, House leadership proposed eliminating private activity bonds altogether.

The effect of the House proposal would have been devastating, costing Massachusetts 3,000 affordable housing units and $240 million in private investment every year.

Housing advocates and residents across the country mobilized and preserved tax-exempt bonds and housing tax credits in the final tax package that passed Congress. But the reprieve might be temporary. Last month, House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady floated the idea of narrowing the scope of tax-exempt bonds, to focus them on infrastructure and industrial development.

On its face, such a move would come at the expense of housing production and preservation. It would cut against the promise of a project like Whittier Street: a neighborhood lifting itself up, on the back of the federal tax code. We need to continue to make the case that federal policy should work to improve the lives of low-income families and seniors, by allowing private investment in affordable housing.

Chrystal Kornegay is executive director of MassHousing.