For examples of R&C's past work, please visit the Our Work section of our website at http://www.renocavanaugh.com/Our_Work.htm.
Reno & Cavanaugh, PLLC, is a national law firm with offices in Washington, DC, Columbia, MD, Friday Harbor, WA and Nashville, TN. R&C offers an unparalleled team of 26 attorneys with highly specialized training in public housing and aff...
For examples of R&C's past work, please visit the Our Work section of our website at http://www.renocavanaugh.com/Our_Work.htm.
Reno & Cavanaugh, PLLC, is a national law firm with offices in Washington, DC, Columbia, MD, Friday Harbor, WA and Nashville, TN. R&C offers an unparalleled team of 26 attorneys with highly specialized training in public housing and affordable housing development transactions.
From its inception, R&C has been at the forefront of affordable housing and community development legislation and policy at a national level. Our firm has worked on every major public and affordable housing legislative reform since 1977, including authorization of the HOPE VI program, the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (QHWRA), the Native American Housing and Self Determination Act (NAHSDA), the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, the Moving to Work demonstration program (MTW), and the pending Section 8 Voucher Reform Act (SEVRA). R&C is also closely involved in the proposals pending in Congress on Transforming Rental Assistance (formerly TRA, now PETRA) and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI).
We are well known for our technical expertise, our individualized counseling skills, our understanding of the challenges faced by public housing authorities, and our zealous defense of our clients’ interests. While our representation of housing authorities has been and continues to be a cornerstone of our practice, our effectiveness in such representations is bolstered because our firm has developed a much broader affordable housing practice that involves representation of developers, FHA lenders, and commercial developers. The end result of this targeted but diversified practice is that R&C attorneys blend a private marketplace deal mentality with an in depth understanding of the regulatory environment within which PHAs operate.
Our efforts have led to the development of over 89,000 housing units nationwide. We have closed over 300 mixed-finance transactions, including many where the housing authority’s affiliate or instrumentality acts as the developer. While we have represented clients engaged in some of the largest redevelopment efforts in the country, we also dedicate the same level of expertise to our many clients who work in smaller cities and in rural areas. R&C is a nationally recognized advocate for public housing authorities and other organizations working to improve housing and economic opportunities in their communities.
Our firm has a wide variety of transactional clients seeking to use national and local programs in innovative ways. R&C has worked on low income housing tax credit transactions since the programs started. We also represented the Fairfax County Redevelopment and Housing Authority in one of two transactions cited by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development when creating the mixed-finance development process, which is today used to revitalize communities around the country. Additionally, our attorneys worked on some of the very first transactions involving the pledge of future housing authority Capital Funds to support the issuance of bonds--a financing technique that has greatly expanded the resources available to local agencies for redevelopment efforts. Similarly, when the New Markets Tax Credit program was implemented, we assisted in training potential applicants on how to structure organizations that could benefit from the program, and assisted clients in forming such entities and negotiating transactions with investors.
R&C’s dual local/national concentration focuses on the entire real estate, affordable housing and community development industry, not just the transactional aspects. Our mission is not simply to provide legal counsel, but to provide legal counsel that makes a difference in the lives of the people and the communities we serve.