permanent affordable housing fund the House version,

The bill's successful passage to the Senate floor, not to mention the delays in funding it, also serves to highlight larger difficulties in finding financing for affordable housing – a state of affairs that has been building for the last year or so. For instance, the funding delay is a story that is being replayed in state and local legislatures throughout the country as the economy slows, according to George T. Faris, an attorney with Lamm Rubenstone. "Whenever there is a general tightening of budgets, one of the first programs hit is affordable housing," he tells GlobeSt.com.

At the same time, developers are grappling with a steady erosion in tax credit prices. "Tax credit prices have gone down by 15% over the last year or so," Bernard Carr, executive director with the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, tells GlobeSt.com.

The impact of these duel trends translates into less funding available for affordable housing construction. "Successful developers pull together funding sources from a variety of disparate places and make it work as a project," Faris says. "But rule number one with affordable housing is that margins are slender, so if one piece is out of alignment the numbers for a project can easily get out of whack."