Created by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the LIHTC program gives States the equivalent of more than $3 billion in annual budget authority to issue tax credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation, or new construction of rental housing targeted to lower income households. Although the National Council of State Housing Agencies has compiled some data about the program, information on the size, unit mix, and location of individual projects has been particularly difficult for researchers to obtain. With the creation of a national LIHTC database, HUD hopes to fill these information gaps and enable researchers to learn more about the effects of the tax credit program.
The database includes project address, number of units and low-income units, number of bedrooms, year the credit was allocated, year the project was placed in service, whether the project was new construction or rehabilitation, type of credit provided, and other sources of project financing. Although coverage for the earlier years (1987-1989) is spotty, the database covers almost all LIHTC projects from 1992 to 1994 and most projects from 1991 and 1992. The database has been geocoded, enabling researchers to look at the geographical distribution and neighborhood characteristics of tax credit projects. It may also help show how incentives to locate projects in low-income areas and other underserved markets are working.
Between 1990 and 1994, a yearly average of 1,228 projects and 49,496 units were placed in service. A majority of these projects were relatively small, with more than three-fourths of the projects containing 50 or fewer units and the average LIHTC project containing 40.6 units. More than half (53.6 percent) of all LIHTC units placed in service during this time were located in central cities. Of the remaining units, 26.6 percent were located in suburban metropolitan areas and 19.8 percent in non-metropolitan areas. From 1992 to 1994, LIHTC projects produced a substantial proportion of units (37 percent) in Difficult Development Areas or Qualified Census Tracts -- areas with challenging development conditions, such as concentrations of low-income residents and high construction costs.
The LIHTC database is part of HUD's program to "democratize data" by making them more accessible to researchers, advocates, policymakers, and other concerned citizens. The database and a summary report, Development and Analysis of the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database, are available on the Internet at HUD's World Wide Web Homepage or can be ordered from HUD USER at $10 for the database and $5 for the report.
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