Important steps 
for affirmatively furthering fair housing – good work by the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA)
“These Changes to Tax Credit Criteria Are Breaking Up Concentrated Poverty” [a New Jersey example]
Posted by Tim Evans in Rooflines, The Shelterforce blog, June 13, 2017 edition. This excerpt copied with permission of the National Housing Institute
While recent news reports have highlighted the low number of affordable housing projects using federal tax credits that are built in high-opportunity areas, a recent examination by New Jersey Future has found that strategic changes in the way federal funds are allocated for affordable housing in the state have meant that many more affordable housing projects have been directed away from high-poverty neighborhoods and toward areas that offer greater economic opportunity.
To evaluate whether those changes had their intended effect, New Jersey Future compared affordable housing projects that received federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits between 2005 and 2012 with projects that received credits between 2013 and 2015, after the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (NJHMFA), which administers the tax credits in the state, made significant changes to the criteria it uses to award them. The agency made the changes with the specific goal of steering new construction of affordable housing away from areas of concentrated poverty and toward areas where public transit and major job centers existed, and that have higher-performing school districts.
Before the adjustment, a full two-thirds of projects near transit were located in . . .