Takeaways from AP's report on affordable housing disappearing across the U.S.
While Americans continue to struggle under high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units could disappear in the next five years alone
LOS ANGELES — While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units across the U.S. could disappear in the next five years alone.
It leaves low-income tenants facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.
Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program launched in 1987 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low.
It has pumped out 3.6 million units nationwide, and its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.
The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.
Data on LIHTC units that will lose their affordability nationally remains a rough estimate.
The best nationwide analysis estimated that by 2030 roughly 350,000 LIHTC units are at risk of losing affordability. That’s 1 million units by 2040, according to the National Housing Preservation Database.
Not all units that lose LIHTC’s affordability protections become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep costs low.
Still, it’s a sizeable loss
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