Title
Authorizing the Council Committee on Housing Neighborhood Development and the Homeless to hold hearings and calling on the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency Board of Directors to reject the Agency's proposed 2008 Low Income Housing Tax Credit Allocation Plan which is discriminatory towards projects located in low income neighborhoods.
Body
WHEREAS, The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program was established by Congress under the Tax Reform Act of 1986; and
WHEREAS, The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program is administered in Pennsylvania by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency; and
WHEREAS, The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program has provided tax incentives for the development of thousands of units of affordable housing for families, the elderly and those persons with special needs in the City of Philadelphia; and
WHEREAS, The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program has stimulated development in the City's poorest neighborhoods and often was the first new housing constructed in such neighborhoods for more than forty years. In many cases, these developments spurred other development and gave hope to many residents and assurance that their communities were no longer locations of disinvestment; and
WHEREAS, The Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program has been used by the Philadelphia Housing Authority to reinvent and transform low income neighborhoods and change the face of public housing in Philadelphia; and
WHEREAS, In Philadelphia's dynamic real estate market, where values in some neighborhoods have increased tenfold in the last ten years, the only remaining affordable housing are those housing developments built using the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program; and
WHEREAS, The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency awards tax credits on a competitive basis using a points ranking system; and
WHEREAS, The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency proposes to adopt a Low Income Housing Tax Credit Allocation Plan that discriminates...
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