Low-Income Housing Tax Credits
ABOUT THE LIHTC
DATABASE
USERS NOTE: The LIHTC Database has been revised as
of 2/20/07.
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) is the most
important resource for creating affordable housing in the
United States today. The LIHTC database, created by HUD and
available to the public since 1997, contains information on nearly
25,500 projects and over 1,415,000 housing units placed in
service between 1987 and 2004.
Created by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the LIHTC program
gives State and local LIHTC-allocating agencies the equivalent
of nearly $5 billion in annual budget authority to issue tax
credits for the acquisition, rehabilitation, or new
construction of rental housing targeted to lower-income
households. Although some data about the program have been made
available by various sources, HUD's database is the only
complete national source of information on the size, unit mix,
and location of individual projects. With the continued
support of the national LIHTC database, HUD hopes to enable
researchers to learn more about the effects of the tax credit
program.
The database includes project address, number of units and
low-income units, number of bedrooms, year the credit was
allocated, year the project was placed in service, whether the
project was new construction or rehab, type of credit
provided, and other sources of project financing. The database
has been geocoded, enabling researchers to look at the
geographical distribution and neighborhood characteristics of
tax credit projects. It may also help show how incentives to
locate projects in low-income areas and other underserved
markets are working.
An average of almost 1,400 projects and 99,000 units were placed in
service in each year of the 1995 to 2004 period,
according to HUD National Low Income Housing Tax credit (LIHTC) database: Projects Placed in
Service through 2004, summary tables of the
database.
Note: Due to a funding restrictions, the annual report was
not produced for the 2004 database update.
REVISIONS TO THE LIHTC
DATABASE
In late 1996, additional efforts were made to improve the
coverage of the LIHTC database for earlier years of the
program. These efforts resulted in the addition of 1,989
projects containing 67,056 units to the database. When this
revision was first posted in October 1997, the text file
LIHTCPUB.TXT containing the entire database was inadvertently
created without decimals (i.e., all numerical fields were
integer only affecting the tract number, latitude, longitude,
and several census data fields). The Excel files were not so
affected. The only effect of the January 1998 revision is to
correct this error in the LIHTCPUB.TXT file. The Excel files
were not revised. Note that the report, Development
and Analysis of the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
Database, has NOT been revised to reflect the
additional data.
In January 2001, data for projects placed in service
between 1995 and 1998 were added. These projects are described
in the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database.
Except for some additional geocoding, there were no revisions
made to data for projects placed in service from 1987 through
1994.
In May 2002, data for projects placed in service through
1999 were added. This also included 319 projects and 25,000
units placed in service in 1998 and 44 projects and nearly
5,000 units placed in service in 1997 that were not included
in the previous update. Projects from all years (1987 through
1999) were geocoded to 1990 and 2000 Census geography. For
details see the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 1999.
In March 2003, data for projects placed in service through
2000 were added. This also included 44 projects and 2,123
units placed in service in 1998 and 76 projects and 4,865
units placed in service in 1999 that were not included
in the previous update. For details see the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 2000.
In May 2004, data for projects placed in service through
2001 were added. This also included 132 projects and 11,832
units placed in service between 1995 and 2000 that were not included
in the previous updates. For details see the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 2001.
In March 2005, data for projects placed in service through
2002 were added. This also included 102 projects and 8,823
units placed in service between 1995 and 2001 that were not included
in the previous updates. For details see the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 2002.
In March 2006, data for projects placed in service through
2003 were added. This also included extensive revisions to data on projects placed in service in
earlier years. This update was the first to include data from new survey questions
on project targeting, use of HUD subsidies in project financing,
multiple address information for multi-building projects,and continued monitoring
of LIHTC-financed projects for program compliance.
For details see the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 2003.
In February 2007, data for projects placed in service through
2004 were added. This also included 151 projects and 12,452
units placed in service between 1995 and 2003 that were not included
in the previous updates.
Due to funding restrictions, the annual report was not produced for the 2004
database update. For summary tables of the data, see HUD National
Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 2004.
ACCESS LIHTC DATA
All LIHTC data including 2004 data are available through the
interactive system for accessing the LIHTC Database at http://lihtc.huduser.org/.
Users may select variables of interest, retrieve data on all
projects in a particular State or group of States, restrict
the serach to projects with a particular characteristic or set
of characteristics, select only projects in a particular city
or county, or all projects within a user-selected radius of
the center of a city.
Alternatively, you can download the entire database. The
file, LIHTCPUB.ZIP,
is a ZIP archive file containing the following:
| LIHTCPUB.DBF |
The LIHTC
Database in dBASE format. Approximately 29
MB. |
| multiadd.DBF |
Multiple address data for some projects in the LIHTC
Database in dBASE format. Approximately 2.3
MB. |
| DATADCT.PDF |
The data dictionary for the
LIHTC database (multiple address data use same formats) in Adobe Acrobat. 26
KB. |
See the data
dictionary for the definitions of each variable.
Also available are the tract-level data for the
geocoded projects placed in service from 1995 through 2004 used for
the locational analysis in the report Updating
the National Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Database: Projects
Placed in Service Through 2004. The file TRACT9504.ZIP,
is a ZIP archive file containing the following:
| LIHTC2004_CENDATA.DBF |
A file of 12,570 records
covering the geocoded LIHTC projects placed in service from 1995-2004.
Approximately 1 MB. The data fields include:
HUD_ID, Unique Project Identifier for the Database;
FIPS2000, Unique 2000 Census Tract ID;
PCBELO60, Census 2000 tract percent of households with incomes below 60
percent of area median;
MINPCT, Census 2000 tract percent minority population;
RENTOCCPCT, Census 2000 tract percent renter-occupied housing units;
FEMFAMPCT, Census 2000 tract percent female-headed families with children;
POVRATE, Census 2000 tract poverty rate. 1.2MB
|
| Data Dictionary 2004 Census 2000.PDF |
The data dictionary for the file LIHTC2004_CENDATA.DBF
in Adobe Acrobat. 15 KB. |
Missing Data
Virtually all variables are missing in at least a few
cases. Click here for a
list of missing data by year projects were placed in service.
If you have technical questions or problems using the LIHTC
Database files, contact Michael.K.Hollar@hud.gov
. Please include "LIHTC Database" in the "Subject"
line.
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