Subsidized Housing, Private Developers and Place: A Spatial Analysis of the Clustering of Low Income Housing Tax Credit Properties in the 25 Largest U.S. Cities
The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program is the primary federal program for producing new units of affordable housing. The program provides financial incentives to private developers to develop and operate affordable rental housing. In recent years, evidence has emerged that the program has led to clusters of subsidized housing in some cities. It is hardly surprising that some clustering would exist in a program in which the housing is constructed and owned by private developers. Despite the significant number of units produced by the program and despite the potential tendency for clustering of units built under this program, the locational patterns within the LIHTC program remain largely unexamined. Instead, most studies of the LIHTC program have focused on the national level rather than on individual cities. In contrast to previous studies, this study seeks to improve our understanding of variations in the LIHTC program across cities. The hypothesis of this study is that, because private developers produce housing in the LIHTC program and because the factors that influence private developers vary across cities, there is likely to be significant variation in the locational patterns of LIHTC developments across cities. The results of this study show, among other things, that clustering of LIHTC properties exists in the study cities, this clustering is extreme in some cases, and the clusters are associated with high poverty tracts in some cities. Given the LIHTC program\u27s emphasis on market-driven policies and a similar emphasis in some other federal housing programs, such findings will likely be applicable to other affordable housing programs
