
ProPublica | Travelwild/Getty
Four and a half years ago, a newly formed corporate entity purchased a low-income housing complex with 264 apartments in Phoenix. The property had received more than $4 million in federal tax credits and, in exchange, was supposed to remain affordable for decades. The company then used a legal loophole that stripped the affordability protections from the apartments. The maneuver appears to have been lucrative for the company, which bought the property for under $20 million and flipped it two years later for $63 million. Today, advertised rents there have gone up by around 50%.