A 1986 tax reform financed most of the affordable housing built in America over the past four decades. A preservation-first CEO would like it to get its due — and its next round of expansion — because it is a key policy success story for keeping families housed.
For a resident in an affordable apartment in Coney Island or Far Rockaway, the difference between a home that stays affordable and one that quietly converts to market rate often comes down to a piece of tax policy almost nobody can name. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC in industry shorthand, has since 1986 financed the construction or preservation of more than four million affordable homes. Almost nobody who has lived in a LIHTC apartment could name the credit that built it.
Will Blodgett would like to change that — not because the naming matters, but because the reform behind the naming is a rare American policy success that, in his view, deserves both wider recognition and, in specific ways, expansion…