Good Cause Eviction and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit

Abstract

Since its inception in 1986, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)' has emerged as the federal government's largest affordable housing development program.2 The LIHTC was enacted as part of the shift toward localized and privatized federal social programs that occurred during the Reagan Administration.3 In some respects the LIHTC's design reflects these trends. The program is written into the tax code, rather than into the United States Housing Act of 1937.' Primary administrative responsibility is assigned to state housing finance agencies, rather than to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the program offers an income tax credit that can be sold by developers to investors in exchange for needed construction capital, rather than a direct subsidy to lowincome housing developers. Given these elements, one might have expected the LIHTC to embody another common feature of privatization, the reduction of federal regulation. This Comment argues, however, that this expectation is unsupported, at least with respect to federally mandated good cause eviction protection. Good cause eviction protection is a well established feature of federal low-income housing programs created under the United States