Affordable housing program concentrates family housing development in highly-segregated poor neighborhoods, according to new report

Groups urge Ohio Housing Finance Agency to broaden opportunities for families with children to live in areas of high opportunity

Click to read the report on
LIHTC housing in Ohio.

August 16, 2016 — According to a new report—LIHTC Awards in Ohio, 2006–2015: Where Are They Providing Housing for Families with Children?—Ohio’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has maintained historic patterns of racial and economic segregation. The report, commissioned by legal aid and fair housing programs in Ohio and prepared by Abt Associates (a national research firm with expertise in housing), found that in Montgomery County and all of Ohio virtually all affordable rental housing developed through the program for families has been placed in highly-segregated, high poverty areas. Moreover, the LIHTC program has also cut back on development of housing serving families with children.

People on low incomes continue to find it more difficult to find housing they can afford. In Ohio, the LIHTC program helps finance affordable rental-housing units for low-income households and is administered by the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA). The LIHTC program is designed to provide families access safe and affordable housing. It helps non-profit and for-profit developers finance affordable housing through federal tax breaks. Yet, through prioritization within its Qualified Allocation Plan and through the awards granted by LIHTC, OFHA perpetuates segregation and reduces housing choice for low-income, African American households and households with children.

The report documents that:

In Ohio only 3.8 percent of LIHTC family units are in census areas with a poverty rate of less than 10 percent.
In the Dayton Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), more than 58 percent of the awards for units in family properties were in census tracts that are more than 75 percent African American, while such census tracts only include 9.3 percent of the MSA’s housing units.
In the Dayton MSA, only 3.4 percent of units in LIHTC family properties were awarded in areas with less than 10 percent poverty, where 35.6 percent of all housing units in the MSA are in such areas. Areas with extreme poverty concentrations have 37 percent of LIHTC family units but only 9.4 percent of all housing units. Looking at areas by percent black or African American, an overwhelming majority of housing units—81.2 percent—is in areas with low concentrations of African Americans, but only 21.3 percent of LIHTC family units.

“This report could not be any clearer. OHFA is failing in its obligation to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing,” said Jim McCarthy, President/CEO of the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center (MVFHC) and the Central Ohio Fair Housing Association (COFHA).

“This has been a long-standing problem with the LIHTC program,” McCarthy added. “A 2008 report to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination found that the implementation of LIHTC had replicated the public housing trend of concentrating developments in highly segregated, poor neighborhoods throughout the United States. This report just brings it home and quantifies the extent of the Ohio problem—particularly in the six largest Ohio metropolitan areas.”

The neighborhood in which a child grows up has a profound influence on that child’s life opportunities including their educational attainment, overall health, income, exposure to dangers and life expectancy. A recent survey by Housing Research & Advocacy Center in Cleveland shows that low income families want housing near good schools in safe neighborhoods. Properties funded under the LIHTC program have not improved access to housing choices for low income families, instead resulting in LIHTC awards steadily placing family housing in high-poverty and racially segregated areas.

“As this report also demonstrates, there is a desperate need for economic development efforts in areas where affordable housing currently exists that will transform these distressed urban neighborhoods into diverse communities with high opportunity, access to jobs, transit, and quality education,” says Matthew Currie, Managing Attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality, Inc. (ABLE).

“OHFA must correct for the historical imbalance in its LIHTC allocations, as shown in Abt’s report, through bold action in its future awards,” continued Currie.

Legal aid programs and fair housing organizations in Ohio represent clients and communities that seek and support fair housing choice through the LIHTC program. In addition to MVFHC, COFHA and ABLE, they include Community Legal Aid Services, Inc.; Fair Housing Contact Service; Housing Opportunities Made Equal; Housing Research & Advocacy Center; The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland; The Legal Aid Society of Columbus; Legal Aid Society of Southwest Ohio, LLC; Ohio Disability Rights Law and Policy Center, Inc.; Ohio Poverty Law Center; Southeastern Ohio Legal Services; and Toledo Fair Housing Center.