Making Best Use of Your LIHTC Dollars: A Planning
Paper for State Policy Makers (March 2004, 27 p.)
This paper is intended to help state officials think about
how to make strategic use of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit
(LIHTC), which since the late 1980s has been the primary vehicle
for building or rehabilitating housing with rents affordable
to low income families and individuals. The paper provides
a framework for state decision-making, based on research and
theory about where and for whom the development of subsidized
rental housing is most effective. The paper draws heavily
on a literature review and empirical analysis conducted for
HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research in 2003
and early 2004. It presents the implications of findings from
a large body of research.
The paper takes no account of “political reality,”
because every state has its own. Every state could implement
some of the approaches that the growing expert literature
suggests, and many states are already trying to do so.
After an introductory description of the way in which states
make decisions about the LIHTC, the first section of the paper
discusses the geographical allocation of the LIHTC resource
among metropolitan housing markets within a state, based on
different levels of need for: 1) rental housing assistance
in general and 2) project-based rental housing assistance
in particular. The second section discusses the targeting
of LIHTC to housing developments designed for occupancy by
different types of households: the poorest households, large
families, the frail elderly, and people with disabilities.
The third section relates to the use of LIHTC developments
as part of a strategy for individual metropolitan areas within
the state. It discusses the potential roles of LIHTC developments
in enabling low-income families to live in high quality neighborhoods
and in revitalizing neighborhoods that are fragile or distressed.
|
| 
