Designing Affordable Housing: Evaluating Award‑Winning Affordable Housing Developments in the United States

Cody Price (Ohio Housing)

The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC) is the federal government’s primary program for encouraging neighborhood investment in the production of affordable rental housing in the United States. Despite the importance of post-occupancy evaluations, little is known about how LIHTC developments meet the needs of its residents or how neighboring residents feel about it once the affordable housing has been built. This paper uses an innovative survey to examine residents and neighbors’ attitudes of six LIHTC developments that were named a finalist or winner in the Affordable Housing Finance Readers’ Choice Awards for best affordable housing developments in the United States. We are particularly interested in understanding how they respond and feel about the development post-occupancy. Thus, our study has three major objectives: (1) to understand what the residents like and dislike about their home, building, and neighborhood; (2) to understand what the neighbors like and dislike about their neighborhood; and (3) to evaluate how well the winners performed relative to their stated criteria for the residents and neighbors. The study revealed consistent patterns of resident and neighbor satisfaction of the development in relation to its award-winning characteristics; and a factor analysis suggested ways to improve satisfaction with affordable housing. The paper discusses the policy implications of these findings, and calls for more post-occupancy evaluation research to examine other affordable housing properties, other locations, and focus groups with neighbors to these developments.