Takeaways from AP’s report on affordable housing disappearing across the U.S.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,0000 affordable housing units across the U.S. could disappear in the next five years alone.

It leaves low-income tenants facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program launched in 1987 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low.

It has pumped out 3.6 million units nationwide, and its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

How many affordable units could be lost in the coming decades?

Data on LIHTC units that will lose their affordability nationally remains a rough estimate.

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