In Advance of Fair Housing Month: One Easy Thing HUD Could Do to Promote Fair Housing in LIHTC Program.

HUD publishes an annual database of LIHTC projects placed into service HERE. It includes a data field showing the 2010 Census Tract ID as well as the zip code. (Most recent data dictionary is HERE).

ACS 5 Year poverty data is available at the census tract AND zip code level. 

My prior post HERE has an Excel file that matches up Oregon LIHTC projects with ACS 5 Year poverty rates at the census tract level.   

HUD could do a similar match each year to include the most recent poverty rate (and counts) at the zip code AND census tract level for all LIHTC projects in their database.  This would allow users and researchers to parse out the percentages and counts of LIHTC projects and units in a given locality that are located in areas with high or low poverty rates. 

In addition to assisting in evaluating access to opportunity it would also help evaluate housing choice available to voucher holders who are a key eligible population for LIHTC projects. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.