Housing Bonds and Tax Reform: The Perils of a Partial Analysis of Low-Income Housing Programs

Abstract

While most persons in the United States live in housing that reflects America's prosperity and high quality of life by global standards, the plight of the nation's growing number of low- and moderate-income households has worsened during the 1980s. A 1988 report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University on the state of housing in America today depicted a distressing picture of the housing prospects for the nation's less wellto- do and portended an affordable housing crisis.' Regrettably, the the Tax Reform Act of 19862 has only worsened this crisis by failing to consider the legislation's deleterious effects on low- and moderate- income families and individuals hoping to find decent and affordable housing.