Guide provides strategies to overcome barriers to sustainable affordable housing

The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) recently released a guide to aid affordable housing developers and designers to construct new sustainable affordable housing.

The Guide for Greener QAPs identifies strategies to overcome social, regulatory, and financial barriers for new development. Affordable housing projects typically submit Qualified Allocation Plans (QAPs) when applying for federal low-income housing tax credit programs that are administered by state housing finance agencies.

QAPs have a significant influence on the type of housing that gets built and can be used to incentivize certain building types and features. Many state finance agencies have found that adding sustainability criteria to their QAPs can be an effective method to encourage projects to consider health and energy efficiency, according to ILFI.

The guide is the result of three years of work by ILFI working with state finance agencies around the country to encourage sustainability and healthy materials use in affordable housing projects through QAPs.