Q&A
Discussion on Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) needs and projections
0:22:04
·
151 sec
Council Member De La Rosa and Ahmed Tigani discuss the impact of the proposed bill on Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) needs and projections.
- Tigani explains that New York City has been fighting for a greater share of LIHTC
- Discusses the potential risk to fully leveraging LIHTC resources due to increased project costs
- Explains how increased costs could lead to using more LIHTC per project, reducing availability for other projects
- Highlights the potential consequence of funding fewer projects, resulting in thousands of units not being built annually
Carmen N. De La Rosa
0:22:04
Got it.
0:22:06
On that same page, one of the things you testified about the beauty commissioner was the 4 different areas of needs that the new wage requirement would result at would result in a higher cost.
0:22:17
One of those is the Lihtc, the low income tax credits, What are the additional low income tax credit needs?
0:22:25
Do you have a projection for that?
0:22:28
So if this bill were to be obviously
Ahmed Tigani
0:22:30
So just to take a step back, on low income tax credits, you know, independent of this piece of legislation, New York City has been fighting for a greater share.
0:22:38
It's made a huge impact in being able to deliver deeply affordable units of affordable housing.
0:22:44
We have been asking that we actually have a federal legislative package that we have been working to advance, to increase that number.
0:22:54
Oh, and we've had we've seen some movement in Congress and look forward.
0:22:58
And I know we've had council support in the past for seeing seen changes made so that we can better use it.
0:23:06
For here, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, the main fear because we have to see how this would play out on a project by project basis, is that the increased cost of those projects would end up putting at risk our ability to fully leverage our light tech resource.
0:23:23
And in fact, we would end up because the the cost of the projects would go up, we would end up using more light tech for each project because Litech comes with a requirement that you have to you you have to fund 50% of that project with LiTech for it to be eligible for LiTech.
0:23:40
So if the cost of the project goes up, then the LiTech allocation goes up, which means it's less available for other projects.
0:23:48
And then once you take Litek out of the equation, then you're then you're funding projects with just straight city capital.
0:23:55
And that those city capital dollars are are are are enormous.
0:23:59
So we we basically look and we can talk a little bit about the specific numbers here.
0:24:03
But we are looking at balance or we try to use different sources to balance out how much of the city capital we can use.
0:24:12
This way, we can fund a greater number of projects across the board with these different funding sources.
0:24:17
By making projects more expensive than need LiTech, we increased the number of much, again, repeating, but increased the LiTech allocation, meaning we have less LiTech to spread across more projects.
0:24:28
And we ultimately will likely look at less projects resulting in thousands of units not done every year.
