The Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy at New York University (NYU), recently released the final results of its analysis of the incomes, rent burdens, and economic diversity of tenants residing in LIHTC developments. The report, entitled “What Can We Learn about the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program by Looking at the Tenants?” is the first large scale examination conducted of LIHTC tenants and sheds light on some of the current misnomers regarding the LIHTC program and the renters the program serves. The specific questions the report attempts to answer are: Does the LIHTC program reach tenants with extremely low incomes? and; What rent burdens are experienced and is economic diversity within developments achieved?

The study finds that LIHTC properties include considerable numbers of low (below 60 percent of AMI), very low (below 50 percent of AMI), and extremely low-income (at or below 30 percent of AMI) populations. In fact, the study says that 34 percent of households residing in LIHTC properties had low or very-low incomes and 40 percent of tenants have extremely low incomes. What’s more, the study finds that about 46 percent of all LIHTC households also receive some form of rental assistance (either a federal, state, or local subsidy).

In terms of the rent burdens of LIHTC tenants, the study estimates that the tenants of LIHTC properties generally have greater rent burdens than tenants of HUD-assisted properties. This statistic does however tend to vary between properties and overall LIHTC tenants tend to experience less of a rent burden than the general renter pool. In addition, extremely low-income tenants of LIHTC properties tend to have even less of a severe rent burden (31 percent) than the total extremely low-income renter population (63 percent).

Overall, the report seems to indicate that LIHTC developments are both economically diverse and seemingly have balanced concentrations of households with low, very low, and extremely low-incomes. Given recent trends in federal and state policies to target programs towards the lowest income household, these are certainly promising statistics and can be used to justify the effectiveness of the LIHTC program and its adherence to the program’s stated goals of poverty deconcentration.

Click here to read the report.