I have already met a lot of nice, helpful people and am looking forward to meeting plenty more. 

My advice is not to attend and send them the ugliest large-sized oil painting you can find at a starving artists sale, preferably with obvious overtones of sexuality, religion, or dementia.

@Lee Ripma  as Lee stated affordable housing in the private sector is handled with Tax credits.. there are developers who specialize in this asset class.. 

Hey folks,I have a nice deal under contract right now.

Many of the things we learned in the service have helped us, such as developing systems and procedures. 

Getting started sooner rather than later would also be nice but location is now my main concern,  I am going to try and go to a meet in San Antonio as soon as possible to get some FaceTime with real investors.Side note my post above looks completely awful i tried to put it back to formatted but ended up just reposting the whole thing,  I will never post from mobile again.

I know school districts are a big indicator and have also read about looking at the city planning website for future developments...but not sure what to look for specifically. 

Purchase price: $14,000 Cash invested: $14,000 Mobile home on 5 nice but garbage filled acres.

An overview can be found here.The CMHC web-site also has a mortgage calculator which will accommodate high-ratio, insured mortgages.My recommendation is to learn the underlaying principals, be able to perform the calculations manually and develop your own spreadsheet.  

nice summary @Andrew Postell !