By Marc Shi, Abigail Baum, and Craig E. Pollack, Housing Matters, July 2020
In recent years, housing has emerged as one of the most talked about and researched social determinants of health. Several decades of research examining the impact of hazards like lead paint, asbestos, and mold on children’s health have highlighted the connection of housing quality to health in communities across the US. And housing’s impact on health has broadened from a focus solely on quality to include housing characteristics such as affordability and location. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Program is the nation’s largest initiative that incentivizes affordable housing production. To allocate tax credits, state housing finance agencies develop a Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP), which establishes the criteria for competitive applications and awards points for development plans that meet these criteria. Because of the desirability of LIHTC funds, housing developers must try to maximize points to get funding. A new study explores the opportunities and obstacles involved in including health-related criteria in LIHTC funding plans.
The authors interviewed 22 stakeholders in the affordable housing field with experience using or studying the LIHTC—including private and nonprofit affordable housing developers, representatives of state and local housing finance agencies, public health and public policy researchers, and members of advocacy groups (the study did not include interviews with residents of LIHTC affordable housing). The researchers asked interviewees about the health-promoting criteria—such as the prioritization of energy efficiency in construction, provision of onsite health-related services, and the siting of housing near health care facilities—that were proposed or integrated into QAPs, the ways interviewees developed or finalized new criteria, the benefits developers can receive when they meet QAP criteria, and the ways location was factored into QAPs.
Key findings
Housing finance agencies incentivize health in LIHTC developments in four main ways: construction materials and methods, on-site services, siting near specific health amenities, and location in areas that score high on an opportunity index.
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