The Geography of Absence: Cities, Towns, and Suburbs with No LIHTC Housing

Abstract

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the largest affordable housing production program in the United States. The program has been the subject of some criticism because it has done an unimpressive job of placing low-income renter households in high-opportunity neighborhoods, especially in suburban jurisdictions. This research examines, at the municipal level, what kinds of communities do not contain LIHTC properties. Communities with no LIHTC properties are compared with places that include LITHC housing in terms of geographic, demographic, socioeconomic, and housing-stock characteristics. The analysis focuses on all municipalities in the US and those that grew in population and multifamily housing from 2010 to 2019. It finds that 72% of all municipalities, and 52% of all growing municipalities contain no LIHTC housing. A logit analysis of the factors that influence the likelihood that LIHTC housing is absent from a municipality finds that the most important predictors are population size, being a suburb in a large metropolitan area, and the percentage of rental and multifamily housing.