Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Tenant Data

Demographic information is collected each year for LIHTC tenants and compiled for a HUD report, Understanding Whom the LIHTC Serves: Data on Tenants in LIHTC Units. The 2017 report, the most recent available, included information on 17,289 Nevada LIHTC units, 16,669 of which were occupied. That's about 62% of all the Nevada LIHTC units, according to the report.*

The data shows that Nevada tax credit properties are housing many families from even the poorest income groups. However, 43% of the LIHTC households included in the report experienced moderate rent burden and an additional 14% experienced severe rent burden. Rent burden occurs when a household pays more than 30% of its income for rent and utilities and severe rent burden occurs when a household pays more than 50% of its income for rent and utilities. This means that about 58% of the Nevada households living in LIHTC properties experienced moderate to severe rent burden. For the United States as a whole, only 32% of LIHTC tenants experienced rent burden.

It is likely that a part of the difference in the levels of rent burden for the nation and Nevada is due to the larger proportion of LIHTC renters nationwide that receive rental assistance. Twenty-five percent of the Nevada LIHTC households reported receiving some sort of sliding scale rental assistance (4,279 households), whether project or tenant based. This compared to 40% of LIHTC households with rental assistance for the United States as a whole. 

Median annual income for Nevada LIHTC households included in the report was $19,200. Few of Nevada's LIHTC units are targeted to be affordable to tenants with less than 30% of HUD family area median income (AMI) without assistance from either project based rental assistance or tenant based vouchers. Despite this, 35.1% of households (5,844) in Nevada's LIHTC housing were reported to be in this category. Fifty-four percent of these extremely low-income households did have rental assistance. The remaining 2,701 households did not have rental assistance.  For the United States as a whole, an even greater proportion of LIHTC households, 44%, were extremely low-income renters.

An additional 41% of Nevada LIHTC tenant households were in the income group between 30% AMI and 50% AMI. In this group, 86% (5,897 households) did not have rental assistance. Sixteen percent of the LIHTC tenant households were in the income category from 50% to 60% of AMI. An additional 8% of Nevada LIHTC tenant households had an income greater than 60% of AMI.

Other characteristics of interest are below:

• Nevada households included in the report averaged 1.89 people per occupied unit.
• Thirty percent of the units had at least one household member under 18 years of age and 43% of the units had at least one household member age 62 or older. For the United States as a whole, 33% of LIHTC tenant households had children and 32% had at least one senior household member. It would appear that Nevada is using a greater percentage of its LIHTC units to house seniors. According to HUD CHAS data for 2012-2016 about one third of Nevada households with incomes of 50% AMI or below had one or more individuals age 62 or older. 
• For 40% of the tenants, no information on race was available. Twenty-three percent of the tenants reported being white alone and 11% reported being black alone. For ethnicity, 20% of tenants were reported to be Hispanic of any race.
• Six percent of the 16,669 units did not have information on disability status and in 12% of the units tenants reported at least one disabled household member.

*The report total did not match Nevada Housing Division totals for 2017. However, approximately 25% of units still appear to be missing from the tenant dataset.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. December 2019. Understanding Whom the LIHTC Serves: Data on Tenants in LIHTC Units as of December 31, 2017, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/LIHTC-TenantReport-2017.pdf