Reno & Cavanaugh PLLC

Reno & Cavanaugh, PLLC, is a national law firm with offices in Washington, DC and Nashville, TN. The firm was founded in 1977 to provide quality legal services to organizations dedicated to improving housing and communities throughout the country. Our practice now includes a broad range of legal and legislative advocacy services.

Reno & Cavanaugh represents clients engaged in some of the largest redevelopment efforts in the country, including Chicago's Plan for Transformation and the District of Columbia's Anacostia Waterfront Initiative. We dedicate the same level of expertise to our many clients who work in smaller cities and in rural areas, and we share all our clients' deep commitment to improving and diversifying their local communities.

Our firm has a wide variety of transactional clients seeking to use national and local programs in innovative and often groundbreaking ways. Reno & Cavanaugh 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.

From its inception, Reno & Cavanaugh has been at the forefront of affordable housing and community development law and policy at a national level. Our firm has worked on every major public and affordable housing legislative reform since 1977, including 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, and the Moving to Work program (MTW). Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, Reno & Cavanaugh was intimately involved with drafting and seeking passage of much of the legislation that defines the rural housing programs presently administered by the United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development Agency. Additionally, we have supported our clients in identifying innovative solutions, such as in the Liability Risk Retention Act of 1986, where affinity groups such as housing authorities were enabled to pool resources to create insurance companies focused on and responsive to their needs.

Reno & Cavanaugh’s 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. Our dual local/national concentration focuses on the entire real estate, affordable housing and community development industry, not just the transactional aspects. We believe this combination results in representation that is better informed and more complete than that available from any other law firm.