Land use decisions are increasingly driven by growth and environmental concerns as communities grapple with the benefits and strains of development. Local governments are tasked with balancing the benefit of revenues generated by growth with the increasing burden of providing the public services and infrastructure to support it. In addition, environmental issues related to development and other projects can also draw the watchful eye of a state’s environmental agency or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).Whether it’s a developer’s proposal or a utility’s plans to support it, the emergence of sophisticated organized opposition to new development increasingly calls for grassroots and grasstops mobilization, public relations, and government relations support to achieve success. McGuireWoods Consulting has assembled a cross-disciplinary team to assist clients with all aspects of real estate development and environmental projects.
Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)
The environmental, social and governance (ESG) framework has become commonplace in discussions on how a company contributes to the communities in which it operates, how it treats its employees and its leadership diversity. McGuireWoods Consulting is positioned to help companies and organizations meet ESG goals, with a focus on how to implement tenets of the ESG framework into your business.
We help companies maximize their ESG efforts by analyzing the public affairs and ESG landscape relevant to our client’s business and creating ESG content that is easily digestible to multiple audiences, including investors, rate and ranker organizations, local leaders and community members, and state and federal regulators.
Environmental Justice
Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. The environmental justice movement was started by individuals, primarily people of color, who sought to address the inequity of environmental protection in their communities. McGuireWoods Consulting’s environmental justice team helps businesses track legislation across the country related to environmental justice initiatives, provides insight on potential federal policy changes and boots-on-the-ground services in public meetings and community education.
Affordable Housing
The McGuireWoods and McGuireWoods Consulting affordable housing team offers the knowledge, experience and strategic insights clients need to navigate the challenging regulations and policies that shape this sector. Drawing on decades of collective experience, lawyers and consultants offer guidance on affordable and mixed-income/mixed-use housing and community development matters. Members of the affordable housing team represent multifamily agency lenders pursuant to the Fannie Mae Multifamily Affordable Housing and Freddie Mac Optigo Lender Targeted Affordable Housing programs, as well as mortgage banking and mortgage brokerage services and letter of credit-backed construction bond transactions. The team also represents clients ranging from closely held, community-based businesses and governmental entities to Fortune 100 companies.
The distinctive value our team brings to solving major public policy challenges lies not only in our ability to help clients craft workable policy proposals, but in the design of sophisticated, multifaceted message development and issue advocacy strategies that successfully convert the proposals into law. Our experience includes representing manufactured housing industry, creating and expanding tax credits for affordable housing, landlord-tenant regulation, finding opportunities for public-private and housing finance opportunities for developers and equity funds, property evaluation structures and successful land use entitlement applications.
