DeMontford University and Places for People study of LIHTC

Last Wednesday, 20th November, I attended a roundtable session organised by Places for People (PfP) which are to consider the study into Tax Credit funding by DeMontfort University. PfP are jointly funding this study with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The session was chaired by Places for People’s Chief Executive, David Cowans. There was a wide range of representatives from different parts of the development industry present including representatives from: The Royal Town Planning Institute, The National Home Builders Federation The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors Shelter The Building and Social Housing Foundation HM Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) Respublica (a think tank) A number of Staff from DeMontfort University also attended the session including Dr.Tim Brown. Tim is Director of Research at DeMontfort University's Centre for Comparative Housing Reasearch. He is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Housing’s advisory panel for my WCMT funded study of the US LIHTC system. Tim and Mike Oxley, also from DeMontfort, led the discussion. They presented the principles of the French and US systems which both use tax credits to fund affordable housing. There were important differences between the two systems. The French system was mainly funded through individuals investing in housing tax credits and is based on a series of individual tax credit initiatives. Whereas The US system is based on corporations investing in housing projects in return for tax credits. The present US LIHTC system has operated since 1986. The session involved a discussion of the basic principles of LIHTC with the panel. This dicussion assisted the members of the panel becoming more familiar with tax credits. The panel raised a number of questions about the principles involved in the operation of LIHTC. I was able to make some useful contributions to the debate based on my experience from my Churchill Fellowship study; including answering some of the more technical questions that were raised about the operation of the system, e.g. year 15 re-syndication, the failure rate, equity pricing, etc.