Low-Income Housing Tax Credits

Low-Income Housing Tax Credits

ABOUT THE LIHTC DATABASE

USERS NOTE: The LIHTC Database has been revised as of 9/22/11.

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today. The LIHTC database, created by HUD and available to the public since 1997, contains information on 33,777 projects and almost 2,203,000 housing units placed in service between 1987 and 2009.

Created by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the LIHTC program gives State and local LIHTC-allocating agencies the equivalent of nearly $8 billion in annual budget authority to issue tax credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation, or new construction of rental housing targeted to lower-income households. Although some data about the program have been made available by various sources, HUD's database is the only complete national source of information on the size, unit mix, and location of individual projects. With the continued support of the national LIHTC database, HUD hopes to enable researchers to learn more about the effects of the tax credit program.

The database includes project address, number of units and low-income units, number of bedrooms, year the credit was allocated, year the project was placed in service, whether the project was new construction or rehab, type of credit provided, and other sources of project financing. The database has been geocoded, enabling researchers to look at the geographical distribution and neighborhood characteristics of tax credit projects. It may also help show how incentives to locate projects in low-income areas and other underserved markets are working.

An average of almost 1,390 projects and nearly 103,000 units were placed in service in each year of the 1995 to 2009 period, according to HUD's National Low Income Housing Tax credit (LIHTC) database: Projects Placed in Service through 2009.

REVISIONS TO THE LIHTC DATABASE

In late 1996, additional efforts were made to improve the coverage of the LIHTC database for earlier years of the program. These efforts resulted in the addition of 1,989 projects containing 67,056 units to the database. When this revision was first posted in October 1997, the text file LIHTCPUB.TXT containing the entire database was inadvertently created without decimals (i.e., all numerical fields were integer only affecting the tract number, latitude, longitude, and several census data fields). The Excel files were not so affected. The only effect of the January 1998 revision is to correct this error in the LIHTCPUB.TXT file. The Excel files were not revised. Note that the report, Development and Analysis of the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database, has NOT been revised to reflect the additional data.

In January 2001, data for projects placed in service between 1995 and 1998 were added. These projects are described in the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database. Except for some additional geocoding, there were no revisions made to data for projects placed in service from 1987 through 1994.

In May 2002, data for projects placed in service through 1999 were added. This also included 319 projects and 25,000 units placed in service in 1998 and 44 projects and nearly 5,000 units placed in service in 1997 that were not included in the previous update. Projects from all years (1987 through 1999) were geocoded to 1990 and 2000 Census geography. For details see the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 1999.

In March 2003, data for projects placed in service through 2000 were added. This also included 44 projects and 2,123 units placed in service in 1998 and 76 projects and 4,865 units placed in service in 1999 that were not included in the previous update. For details see the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2000.

In May 2004, data for projects placed in service through 2001 were added. This also included 132 projects and 11,832 units placed in service between 1995 and 2000 that were not included in the previous updates. For details see the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2001.

In March 2005, data for projects placed in service through 2002 were added. This also included 102 projects and 8,823 units placed in service between 1995 and 2001 that were not included in the previous updates. For details see the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2002.

In March 2006, data for projects placed in service through 2003 were added. This also included extensive revisions to data on projects placed in service in earlier years. This update was the first to include data from new survey questions on project targeting, use of HUD subsidies in project financing, multiple address information for multi-building projects,and continued monitoring of LIHTC-financed projects for program compliance. For details see the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2003.

In February 2007, data for projects placed in service through 2004 were added. This also included 151 projects and 12,452 units placed in service between 1995 and 2003 that were not included in the previous updates. Due to funding restrictions, the annual report was not produced for the 2004 database update. For summary tables of the data, see HUD National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2004.

In January 2008, data for projects placed in service through 2005 were added. This also included 150 projects and 10,863 units placed in service between 1995 and 2005 that were not included in the previous updates. Due to funding restrictions, the annual report was not produced for the 2004 database update. For summary tables of the data, see HUD National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2005..

In April 2009, data for projects placed in service through 2006 were added. This also included 389 projects and 34,224 units placed in service between 1995 and 2005 that were not included in the previous updates. This update was the first to include data from new survey questions on amount of allocated tax credits, amounts of HUD subsidies in project financing, information on elected set-asides,and the presence of project-based rental assitance. For details see the report Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2006.

In February 2010, data for projects placed in service through 2007 were added. This also included 618 projects and 58,650 units placed in service between 1995 and 2006 that were not included in the previous updates. Due to funding restrictions, the annual report was not produced for the 2007 database update. For summary tables of the data, see Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2007.

In September 2011, data for projects placed in service through 2009 were added. This also included 501 projects and 41,519 units placed in service between 1995 and 2007 that were not included in the previous updates. For a summary of the data, see New Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Property Data Available.

ACCESS LIHTC DATA

All LIHTC data including 2008 and 2009 data are available through the interactive system for accessing the LIHTC Database at http://lihtc.huduser.org/. Users may select variables of interest, retrieve data on all projects in a particular State or group of States, restrict the serach to projects with a particular characteristic or set of characteristics, select only projects in a particular city or county, or all projects within a user-selected radius of the center of a city.

Alternatively, you can download the entire database. The file, LIHTCPUB.ZIP, is a ZIP archive file containing the following:

LIHTCPUB.DBF The LIHTC Database in dBASE format. Approximately 68 MB.
multiadd.DBF Multiple address data for some projects in the LIHTC Database in dBASE format. This file was not updated to include the 2008 and 2009 properties. Approximately 4.8 MB.
DATADCT.PDF The data dictionary for the LIHTC database (multiple address data use same formats) in Adobe Acrobat. 33 KB.

See the data dictionary for the definitions of each variable.

Also available are the tract-level data for the geocoded projects placed in service from 1995 through 2009. Updating the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects Placed in Service Through 2007. The file TRACT9509.ZIP, is a ZIP archive file containing the following:

LIHTC2009_CENDATA.DBF A file of 17,743 records covering the geocoded LIHTC projects placed in service from 1995-2009. Approximately 792 KB. The data fields include: HUD_ID, Unique Project Identifier for the Database; FIPS2000, Unique 2000 Census Tract ID; PCBELO60, Census 2000 tract percent of households with incomes below 60 percent of area median; MINPCT, Census 2000 tract percent minority population; RENTOCCPCT, Census 2000 tract percent renter-occupied housing units; FEMFAMPCT, Census 2000 tract percent female-headed families with children; POVRATE, Census 2000 tract poverty rate.
Data Dictionary 2009 Census 2000.PDF The data dictionary for the file LIHTC2009_CENDATA.DBF in Adobe Acrobat.

Missing Data

Virtually all variables are missing in at least a few cases. Click here for a list of missing data by year projects were placed in service.

If you have technical questions or problems using the LIHTC Database files, contact Michael.K.Hollar@hud.gov . Please include "LIHTC Database" in the "Subject" line.