Anthony S. Freedman is a Partner in the Syndication Practice Group in Holland & Knight's Washington, D.C. office. Mr. Freedman's practice consists of transactional, financial, policy and regulatory matters involving housing. His areas of concentration include federal, state and local housing assistance programs, low-income housing tax credits, military housing, public housing privatization, tax-exempt finance and mortgage finance. The breadth of his experience is particularly valuable in complex transactions involving multiple sources of financing and government assistance.
Prior to Holland & Knight, Mr. Freedman practiced for 25 years with the Washington, D.C. offices of two large law firms. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Housing Policy and Budget at HUD from 1978 to 1981.
Mr. Freedman has been involved with the low-income housing tax credit program since its adoption as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, representing developers, lenders, syndicators, investors and housing credit agencies. He represented the National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) and others with respect to the enactment of the program and its early implementation by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and state agencies. He currently provides regular advice and counsel to more than a dozen state agencies on the tax credit program and has represented many others in particular matters involving compliance, allocations and federal relations. Mr. Freedman has rendered leading opinions on such diverse tax credit matters as the treatment of interest reduction payments under The Department of Housing and Urban Development's(HUD) Section 236 “decoupling” program, the timing of issuance and redemption of tax exempt bonds for purposes of obtaining tax credits without an allocation, the implementation of the 6 month period for meeting the “10% test” in carryover allocations and the treatment of public housing operating subsidies received under the HOPE VI program. He has obtained numerous private letter rulings on tax credit matters for housing credit agency clients and for private parties.
Mr. Freedman has assisted the Department of Defense (DoD) in its efforts to privatize military family housing since early 1995, when he worked on the legislation that became the Military Housing Privatization Initiative. As one of the Department’s first two housing privatization contractors, he represented both DoD and the United States Air Force with respect to the privatization program generally and in individual transactions. He currently represents developers, investment bankers, credit enhancers and other private market participants in U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps transactions, having closed deals with a value in excess of $3 billion. He has also represented lenders and developers in the financing of housing pursuant to DoD’s section 801 and 802 leasing programs.
An extensive background in HUD programs has enabled Mr. Freedman to represent a wide range of clients, including developers, lenders, state and local housing agencies and investment bankers, in development, financing and workout transactions involving Section 8, HUD mortgage (and hospital) insurance, and the older assisted housing programs (Section 221(d)(3), Section 236, Section 202, etc.). He has worked with every variant of the Section 8 program on matters ranging from portfolio refinancings and restructurings to individual financing, development, mark-to-market and mark-up-to-market transactions. This work has been particularly active in a preservation context, in which Section 8 and older forms of HUD housing assistance are combined with tax-exempt financing, low-income housing tax credits, McKinney Act assistance, HOME and other current sources of funds in order to maintain the assisted inventory for affordable use.
Mr. Freedman’s experience extends to a range of new initiatives in HUD’s Public Housing program. He represented the Atlanta Housing Authority in closing the first “HOPE VI” transaction, one that combined HUD public housing funds with tax credits for the first time, and since 1996, he has represented developer, lender, syndicator and PHA clients in more than 25 HOPE VI financings. He also served on HUD’s Task Force to evaluate and reform the HOPE VI Program. In 1996, Mr. Freedman’s tax opinion with respect to the treatment of public housing operating subsidies in low-income housing tax credit transactions enabled a number of stalled HOPE VI projects to close. The opinion was subsequently confirmed by Treasury Regulations.
Mr. Freedman played a pivotal role in structuring the first financings (both taxable and tax-exempt) secured by a pledge of public housing Capital Fund Program monies. His work on behalf of the investment bankers for the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) helped to develop the basic security mechanisms and HUD consent agreements that enabled the CHA transaction to achieve a AA rating from all three rating agencies and be chosen as “Deal of the Year” for 2002 by The Bond Buyer. Since that time, he structured the first state housing agency pooled Capital Fund financing and has worked on more than a dozen other Capital Fund financings.
Mr. Freedman’s work has extended to assisting government agencies in implementing new program initiatives. He provided advice to HUD’s Office of Multifamily Housing Assistance Restructuring (OMHAR) with respect to the initial development and subsequent refinement of the mark-to-market program. Ten years earlier, he represented the Resolution Trust Corporation in developing and implementing its Affordable Housing Disposition Program. He has provided leading opinions for housing finance agencies on various HUD issues, testified frequently before Congressional committees and been consulted by HUD and other federal agencies with respect to the implementation and improvement of federal housing programs.
Mr. Freedman served as counsel to the National Housing ("Rouse/Maxwell") Task Force. He has written a number of articles, and conducted numerous seminars, on such topics as national housing policy, low-income housing tax credits and the effect of tax reform on housing.