The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit is the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today.   The LIHTC program gives State and local LIHTC-allocating agencies the equivalent of nearly $8 billion in annual budget authority to issue tax credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation, or new construction of rental housing targeted to lower-income households.

New York State Homes and Community Renewal sets the scoring criteria and preferences by which LIHTC are to be awarded.  Unfortunately, current scoring criteria place scant emphasis on building projects in high-opportunity neighborhoods.   Characteristics of high opportunity communities include: low-need, high-performing schools, poverty rates below 10%, and an area median income that falls at or above 80%.

According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development LIHTC database, updated through 2013, out of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) projects on Long Island, more than half are located in low-income neighborhoods that are either majority-minority areas, or have large concentrations of black and Latino residents. As a result, the high levels of discrimination that African American's and Latinos endure are only exacerbated by the LIHTC scoring criteria policy.

For more information about LIHTC projects on Long Island read our article "Impediments to Fair Housing on Long Island."

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