Enacting a Phased-in 50 Percent LIHTC Allocation Increase Could Create More Than 264,000 Affordable Rental Homes

November 9, 2018                                         By: Dirk Wallace, Michael Novogradac, Peter Lawrence

While tax reform is projected to reduce the amount of affordable rental housing production financed by the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) by about 235,000 over 10 years, there existed prior to tax reform and still exists today after tax reform, a tremendous unmet need for more production. According to Harvard’s Joint Center on Housing Studies, more than 11 million renter households pay more than 50 percent of their income on rent. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S. has a shortage of more than 7.2 million rental homes that are affordable and available to extremely low-income households. The provision of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act (S. 548) that would have the biggest impact on that need remains the provision to enact a permanent 50 percent allocation increase, phased in at 10 percent annually over 2019-2023................Read More