Niches filled and unfilled
By Caitlin Jones
1 min read
Tax Credit Advisor, November 2011: No matter how carefully you pack a box, there are always empty spaces between objects. When the packing is done by the private market, big swaths of tenure configurations — say, above-median-income households and homeownership, or median-income households and conventional rental — are readily accommodated by straightforward mechanisms.
What remains unfilled by the market (called by economists, inaccurately, “market failure”) becomes the domain of affordable housing. Within affordable housing, by far the most effective niche-filler is our friend the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. Indeed, if all market development is largely similar, each niche development is unusual in its own way, so their filling takes adaptation and customization. Read More…
