Affordable Senior Housing: A Scan of State Housing Credit Allocation Plans
About the Report
Affordable Senior Housing: A Scan of State Housing Credit Allocation Plans, completed by the National Housing Trust for LeadingAge, describes how states use their Low Income Housing Tax Credit (Housing Credit) allocations to incentivize affordable senior housing.
Housing Credits come to state tax credit allocating agencies from the U.S. Department of the Treasury with certain requirements. State allocating agencies have significant latitude in their distribution of Housing Credits.
How states use their Low Income Housing Tax Credits is of great interest to LeadingAge, where our top housing policy priority is to expand the supply of affordable senior housing.
This report will help stakeholders understand states’ use of Housing Credits, by far the largest annual federal expenditure for affordable housing, for seniors with low incomes. The shortage of homes affordable to older adults with low incomes is nationwide.
Each state has a responsibility to use its affordable housing resources commensurate with current and projected needs. Review the states-by-state overviews of the report here.
LeadingAge hopes this report will help align scarce housing resources with needs.
Additional Resources
Housing Needs Data
The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University’s Housing America’s Older Adults 2019 includes data, see “DATA” near the bottom of this landing page. Tabs W11 and W12 of this dataset includes housing affordability statistics for states and metropolitan areas, respectively, for older adult renters and homeowners. This data may be helpful as stakeholders advocate their state allocating agencies to focus greater Housing Credit resources on affordable senior housing.
The ACTION Campaign
LeadingAge is on the Steering Committee of The ACTION Campaign, a coalition of over 2,300 national, state, and local organizations and businesses working to address our nation’s severe shortage of affordable rental housing by protecting, expanding, and strengthening the Low Income Housing Tax Credit. Visit To join or for more information, visit The ACTION Campaign’s website.