LIHTC: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Complicated

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program awards billions in tax credits each year to private market investors and developers who promise to build or preserve affordable housing. But the program is notoriously complex. Who enforces its rules? Why is it so dominant in the housing sector? What’s the current state of efforts to reform it? In LIHTC: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Complicated, we’ll answer those questions and many more. We hope to provide enough information to help those unfamiliar with LIHTC to understand it and engage with it. Don’t miss a story—sign up for our newsletter today.

A graphic showing buildings, some shaded in red, to illustrate Shelterforce's new Under the Lens series, LIHTC: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Complicated

LIHTC: How It Started, How It’s Going

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit was created in a moment when other real estate tax preferences were going away—but at the time, no one expected it to grow into the main source of affordable housing finance in the country.