Report Warns of Fraud Risks in Low Income Housing Program

Report Warns of Fraud Risks in Low Income Housing Program

SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

by EMMA SCHWARTZ


Agovernment watchdog report released yesterday is raising questions about an $8 billion dollar taxpayer program meant to help house the poor.

The report by the Government Accountability Office found that the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program (LIHTC) is vulnerable to fraud because of a lack of oversight and data on costs.

The report comes at a time when the housing program is already facing increased scrutiny as federal investigators examine whether Wells Fargoand PNC Bank may have improperly benefited from the taxpayer program. (Wells Fargo hasn’t commented directly on the probe; PNC has said it is “fully cooperating.”)

Concerns about the costs of the program were the subject of a FRONTLINE and NPR documentary, Poverty, Politics and Profit.

The LIHTC is the nation’s largest housing construction program for low-income renters. About 20 million families are what housing experts call “rent burdened,” meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their income to keep a roof over their head. Of those, 11 million pay more than half of their income in rent. So at a time of growing need for affordable housing, FRONTLINE and NPR wanted to understand how well this program accomplished its primary mission: creating new units for low-income families.

To do so, FRONTLINE and NPR analyzed data from the program between 1997 and 2014 and found that the annual number of units dropped 16 percent while the annual cost of the program to taxpayers increased 66 percent. The film tried to understand that discrepancy and explored one potential explanation: fraud, which was an increasing concern to federal investigators. They’d found several instances in which developers padded their pockets through shell companies and kickback schemes.

Those cases illustrated that the program required developers to submit only limited accounting about how they used taxpayer money to state agencies, which makes it harder for regulators to spot fraudulent transactions.

The watchdog report flagged the same concerns. The report, which surveyed 12 states, found that the median cost of each unit ranged tremendously by state, from low of $126,000 to a high of $326,000. Some individual projects were almost double that.

At the same time, the report noted, few agencies had a requirement to help “guard against misrepresentation of contractor costs” — which it said was a known fraud risk.

“Because the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) does not require such certifications for LIHTC projects, the vulnerability of the LIHTC program to this fraud risk is heightened,” the report stated.

In practice, just five of the 12 states surveyed had any tracking for construction costs — and the agency was only able to identify four other states that do so.

The report also found that because the federal government has limited data, it was unable to adequately oversee the efficiency and effectiveness of the program. The GAO recommended designating a single agency to better collect and analyze LIHTC costs. The IRS, which oversees the program for the federal government, disagreed with this recommendation, saying it did not have authority to collect all the information the GAO requested.

Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Costly, Complex, and Corruption-Prone

By Chris Edwards and Vanessa Brown Calder

November 13, 2017

The federal government subsidizes housing through numerous tax and spending programs. One of the more inefficient programs is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The program provides $9 billion a year in tax credits to support housing construction. The federal government distributes the credits to the states, which in turn award them to developers to cover part of the costs of constructing apartment buildings and other projects. In return, developers must cap rents for the units they set aside for low-income tenants.

The benefits of the LIHTC are supposed to flow through to tenants in the form of lower rents, but studies suggest that investors, developers, and financial companies gain most of the benefits. The program has complex administration, is prone to abuse, and produces costly low-income housing.

The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are considering major tax reforms aimed at reducing tax rates and ending unjustified tax breaks. They should consider repealing the LIHTC. It complicates the tax code and is a poorly targeted solution to housing affordability problems.

Instead of federal subsidies, a better way to reduce housing costs would be through state and local policy reforms. The states should reduce the burden of building and zoning regulations to increase the supply of housing, including multifamily housing for low-income tenants.

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How the LIHTC Works

Congress enacted the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. That law aimed at simplifying the tax code and eliminating special breaks, but creating the LIHTC did the opposite.1

Under the program, the federal government allots $9 billion a year in tax credits to state housing agencies based on state populations.2 Then the agencies distribute credits to selected housing developers based on a complex and bureaucratic process. Developers who receive credits nearly always sell them to large banks and other investors, often using syndication firms as intermediaries. This provides cash to developers for construction and gives investors equity in the projects, as well as credits to use on their tax returns over a 10-year period. Read More HERE

The Insiders Game of Selling LIHTC Tax Credits for Affordable Housing.

McCaskill’s Husband Makes Millions Flipping Government Tax Credits

Husband used government program for poor to build own fortune

Sen. Claire McCaskill with her husband, Joseph Shepard / Getty Images



BY: Brent Scher
October 5, 2018 4:59 am

Since Claire McCaskill joined the Senate, her husband Joseph Shepard has made at least $11 million through a business that buys up tax credits awarded to Missouri affordable housing developers and sells them to high-income entities seeking tax relief.

Shepard's company, the Missouri Tax Credit Fund, operates within the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a $9 billion a year federal program that awards tax credits to developers building qualified affordable housing projects. The LIHTC program is designed for developers in need of cash to attract investors for projects by offering them tax credits.

Analysis by policy institutions and government investigators, however, has found the LIHTC program to be inefficient, with much of the money—intended for affordable housing—ending up in the pockets of middlemen syndicators who connect developers with investors, earning lofty fees from both sides.

Shepard plays the lucrative role of syndicator and has made millions off the government program.

Records available on the Missouri secretary of state's website show Shepard’s company acquired tax credits awarded to at least 57 different affordable housing projects in Missouri between 2006 and 2017. Together, the 57 projects were awarded $273.3 million in LIHTCs, a review of the state's tax credit database found.

It can't be determined exactly how much Shepard has made off the tax credit business, due in part to a lack of transparency in the transfer of tax credit, but also because Senate financial disclosure reports don't require specific figures on incomes exceeding $1 million.

McCaskill's disclosures show her husband earned "over $1 million" from the Missouri Tax Credit Fund for 11 consecutive years from 2007 to 2017, meaning that he's earned at least $11 million. McCaskill files taxes separately from Shepard and has never released her husband's returns, which would contain a more specific figure.
The Unknown World of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit

Much remains unknown regarding how Shepard and other syndicators of LIHTCs earn their high profit margins.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office was ordered to look into "the role of syndicators" in the LIHTC process. In its findings, the GAO reported last year that profits were earned generally through both initial and annual fees. The GAO was unable to garner details on the size of the fees.

In a subsequent GAO report on the LIHTC released last month calling for increased oversight of the program due to findings that only a fraction of allocated funds reach their intended goal, the oversight agency places blame on the unknown cost of syndicators.

"Syndication expenses represent a significant cost of producing affordable housing with LIHTCs, but complete data on syndication partnerships generally were lacking," the GAO found.

Chris Edwards, director of tax policy for the Cato Institute and a major critic of the tax credit, characterized it as "absurd" that there's a government program so complex "that the GAO is left scratching its head to figure it out."

"It's modern crony capitalism where insiders earn money on complex, nontransparent, government schemes," Edwards said. "It may be legal, but it undermines the economy and trust in government."

Edwards said he was unable to determine whether the millions of dollars Shepard made off the LIHTCs were out of the ordinary.

"Whether or not McCaskill's husband is earning above-normal returns for the industry is unknown," Edwards said. "Nobody really knows how much money these syndicators are making and how big the fees they earn are. We need more transparency."
Joseph Shepard's Complex Tax Credit Operation

The public sources with the most information on Shepard's complex tax credit operation—where the Missouri Tax Credit Fund is only a cog—are financial documents showing how the fund uses the LIHTCs as collateral for bank loans.

One such document filed on Nov. 26, 2008, shows the Missouri Tax Credit Fund obtained a loan from Heartland Bank by putting up as collateral "any and all Missouri Low Income Housing Tax Credits" awarded to the Martin Luther King Village, a 108-unit project in Kansas City. The project was ultimately awarded $6.5 million in LIHTCs in 2009, according to a Missouri Accountability Portal database.

Another document filed on Dec. 21, 2012, shows a nearly identical structure, with the Missouri Tax Credit Fund obtaining a loan from Enterprise Bank and Trust, this time using "any and all" tax credits awarded to Cedar Valley Apartments for the rehabilitation of 88 affordable housing units. The project was awarded $5.9 million in LIHTCs that year.

Nearly identical documentation exists showing the Missouri Tax Credit Fund obtaining bank loans using tax credits as collateral for 57 different Missouri projects, which together were awarded $273.3 million in LIHTCs, according to the database. It has 15 additional deals in place with projects that are yet to be awarded LIHTCs.

The Missouri Tax Credit Fund is just a small piece of Shepard's tax credit operation, serving as the entity that enters into the tax credit purchase agreements with developers.

Once the tax credits are acquired, investors for the projects are brought in by Sugar Creek Capital, which advertises the tax credit investments on its website as "an effective, reliable tax planning opportunity" for "companies and high-income individuals to maximize cash flow."

Both Shepard's companies, the Missouri Tax Credit Fund and Sugar Creek Capital, are located at 17 W. Lockwood Ave. in St. Louis.

Less transparently involved in the operation is a Missouri company called Horizon Asset Management, formed in St. Louis in 2004, the same year the Missouri Tax Credit Fund was formed by Shepard, business filings show.

Horizon Asset Management is involved in nearly all the Missouri Tax Credit Fund's partnerships with developers, including both the above-mentioned arrangements with Martin Luther King Village and the Cedar Valley Apartments. The tax credits awarded appear to be allocated, at least for a period of time, to Horizon Asset Management.

Horizon Asset Management acts as the storehouse for the tax credits in the LIHTC operation, and the reason for this is its ties to a tax-exempt Missouri nonprofit organization, the Horizon Housing Foundation.

The Horizon Housing Foundation's annual tax filings show that it owns Horizon Asset Management, and that the foundation's assets are derived almost entirely from the tax credits allocated from developers to Horizon Asset Management. The foundation lists millions of dollars' worth of tax credits in its control each year and has virtually no tax liabilities.

In its most recent filing for 2016, the foundation reported $52.8 million in income in the form of tax credits earned through Horizon Asset Management's "investments in affordable housing projects." The foundation reported just $1,466 in charitable contributions and paid just $16,772 in taxes for the year, all for payroll, the filing shows.

The foundation's filings also shed light on the large volume of tax credits in Horizon Asset Management's control and how quickly the operation has grown over the years.

The 2016 filing shows Horizon Asset Management with a book value of $228.2 million, a spike from $176.4 million the previous year and the highest its ever been. In 2007, McCaskill's first year as a U.S. senator, its book value was reported as $25.4 million.

The foundation currently has no obvious ties to Shepard aside from being involved in nearly all the partnerships with developers, mainly Shepard's Missouri Tax Credit Fund. But there are strong indications that it's part of the same operation.

The strongest indication is a 2002 Horizon Housing Foundation filing where its listed address, 17 West Lockwood Ave. in St. Louis, and phone number, (314) 968-2205, match exactly with the current contact information for Sugar Creek.

The foundation's current listed address is 23 North Gore Ave. in St. Louis, a location just around the corner from Sugar Creek's offices.

Many of the foundation's officers also have ties to other Shepard businesses.

Sugar Creek did not respond to an inquiry on how Horizon Asset Management and the Horizon Housing Foundation fit into its tax credit operation. Neither are listed in McCaskill's financial disclosures.

A representative for the Horizon Housing Foundation told the Free Beacon it could expect a call back, but the call has yet to come.
The Future of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit

The LIHTC program has come under increased scrutiny in recent years due to findings such as the one reached by the Missouri State Auditor, which found that only 42 cents of each credit dollar awarded actually goes to low-income housing projects, with much of the remainder ending up in the hands of middlemen syndicators like Shepard.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in 2014 that a major obstacle to changing the program is the political clout of syndicators such as Shepard, who declined to be interviewed for the story. Shepard purchased more tax credits than any other syndicator in the state that year, the paper wrote.

Experts on the tax credits such as Cato's Edwards have advocated for ending the "costly, complex, and corruption-prone" program, arguing that a demand-side system where housing vouchers are given to those in need of affordable housing would be more effective.

"The supply-side approach is very inefficient, and a lot of money ends up disappearing with the middle-men," Edwards said. "The great irony of this program is it's intended to help the needy, but it seems to be benefiting the top one percent."

McCaskill's office did not respond to an inquiry into her husband's tax credit operation or on possible changes that could be made to the LIHTC program to make it more efficient.

The Kansas City Star reported earlier this year that Shepard had been on the receiving end of more than $131 million in federal housing subsidies since 2007. McCaskill's Republican opponent Josh Hawley has pointed to Shepard's use of government programs to generate profit for his businesses as a reason she should release his tax returns.

Affordable Housing Program Costs More, Shelters Fewer

Affordable Housing Program Costs More, Shelters Fewer

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May 9, 201712:31 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered


LAURA SULLIVANTwitter


MEG ANDERSON




The $25 million Labre Place in Miami was built using the low-income housing tax credit program. It's named for the patron saint for the homeless and is now home to 90 low-income residents, about half of whom were once homeless.Screenshot courtesy of Frontline (PBS)

On the south side of Dallas, Nena Eldridge lives in a sparse but spotless bungalow on a dusty lot. At $550 each month, her rent is just about the cheapest she could find in the city.

After an injury left her unable to work, the only income she receives is a $780 monthly disability check. So she has to make tough financial choices, like living without running water.

About This Story



This story was produced in partnership with the PBS series Frontline.

WATCH 'Poverty, Politics and Profit'

The episode investigates the billions spent on housing low-income people, and why so few get the help they need.

From Frontline: How We Did The Math

From Frontline: A Housing Affordability Crisis That's Worse for the Lowest Income Americans

From NPR: Section 8 Vouchers Help The Poor — But Only If Housing Is Available

Watch a teaser here:

PBS Frontline YouTube

Every day, she fills bottles with water from a neighbor's house and takes them home. She washes her hands with water heated in an electric slow cooker. She uses a bucket to flush the toilet.

"I'm tired, but I don't have nowhere to go and I don't have enough money to do it," she says, fighting back tears. But she adds, "I'm not living on the streets. I'm not homeless."

Eldridge is among the 11 million people nationwide making these kinds of choices every day. The government calls them "severely rent burdened" — people paying more than half their income in rent.

Thirty years ago, Eldridge was the type of person Congress sought to help when it created the low-income housing tax credit program, which is now the government's primary program to build housing for the poor.

But the tax-credit building that's only a little more than 2 miles from Eldridge's house, where she might pay as little as $200 or $300 in rent based on her income, has a waiting list up to four years long. In Dallas and nationwide, many of these buildings don't have any vacancies.

In a joint investigation, NPR — together with the PBS series Frontline — found that with little federal oversight, LIHTC has produced fewer units than it did 20 years ago, even though it's costing taxpayers 66 percent more in tax credits.

In 1997, the program produced more than 70,000 housing units. But in 2014, fewer than 59,000 units were built, according to data provided by the National Council of State Housing Agencies.


Industry representatives don't dispute the numbers; they say these trends are the result of rising construction costs, decreasing federal dollars that funded other housing subsidy programs, and stricter state requirements to build homes for the lowest-income households. They also say the business is less profitable than it used to be.

But NPR and Frontline also found that little public accounting of the costs exists, even among government officials and regulators charged with monitoring the program. Some key lawmakers say that needs to change.

"My suspicion is, there's a lot of things wrong with the program," says Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. "If you aren't following the money, how do you know if the low-income housing tax credit is working?"

How the low-income tax credit housing program works

The federal government used to build its own public housing, which still houses more than 2 million people today. The model was simple: The government built the apartment and became the landlord.

Some of the big, concrete high-rises became infamous for high rates of crime and their concentration of poverty. The government banned public housing construction in 1968 and began demolishing many of the buildings in the 1990s. But while direct federal construction went away, the need for new buildings did not.

From NPR's Archive


CITIES PROJECT
Demolished: The End Of Chicago Public Housing

So, in 1986, Congress developed a strategy to entice private businesses to build better affordable housing. That incentive came in the form of a tax credit. Since then, an $8 billion industry has evolved to help the government house the poor.

There are two types of tax credits, the smaller of which is financed by tax-exempt state and local bonds. NPR and Frontline focused our investigation on the largest part of the LIHTC program.

Here's how that tax credit works: Every year, the IRS distributes a pool of tax credits to state and local housing agencies. Those agencies pass them on to developers. The developers then sell the credits to banks and investors for cash. Often, to find investors, developers will use middlemen called syndicators.

The banks and investors get to take tax deductions, while the developers now have cash to build the apartments.


Because taxpayers essentially paid for the construction, the buildings can have much lower rent than market-rate developments.

"A very enduring public-private partnership"

The program is often described as a win-win. Low-income people receive well-built, affordable places to live, and private industry players — developers, syndicators and investors — make a profit for their involvement. Years later, the private industry continues to profit, but it's no longer clear whether the poor benefit as much as they could.

Betsy Julian and Mike Daniel, civil rights lawyers who have been investigating the program for years, say the thriving private industry is a sign that the scales may have tilted away from the tenants.

"It's a frightfully expensive way to provide low-income housing and it's got layers of profit built into it that we think we have to provide in order to get people to do something for poor people," Daniel says.

Julian says 30 years ago, attending affordable housing conferences was different than it is today.

"I have the feeling that I'm in the room with nothing but a bunch of rich guys and gals," she says. "That's an impression that has to do with the ambience and the sense that there's a lot of money to be made around affordable housing."



Betsy Julian, a civil rights lawyer who has been investigating the LIHTC program for years, says she has noticed a significant shift in the industry.Screenshot courtesy of Frontline (PBS)

Some attendees at a conference for the LIHTC industry last fall told NPR and Frontline that business is booming.

Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: Costly, Complex, and Corruption-Prone

By Chris Edwards and Vanessa Brown Calder

November 13, 2017

The federal government subsidizes housing through numerous tax and spending programs. One of the more inefficient programs is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). The program provides $9 billion a year in tax credits to support housing construction. The federal government distributes the credits to the states, which in turn award them to developers to cover part of the costs of constructing apartment buildings and other projects. In return, developers must cap rents for the units they set aside for low-income tenants.

The benefits of the LIHTC are supposed to flow through to tenants in the form of lower rents, but studies suggest that investors, developers, and financial companies gain most of the benefits. The program has complex administration, is prone to abuse, and produces costly low-income housing.

The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are considering major tax reforms aimed at reducing tax rates and ending unjustified tax breaks. They should consider repealing the LIHTC. It complicates the tax code and is a poorly targeted solution to housing affordability problems.

Instead of federal subsidies, a better way to reduce housing costs would be through state and local policy reforms. The states should reduce the burden of building and zoning regulations to increase the supply of housing, including multifamily housing for low-income tenants.

Continue to full version 

Downloads

•  PDF (132.54 KB)

How the LIHTC Works

Congress enacted the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. That law aimed at simplifying the tax code and eliminating special breaks, but creating the LIHTC did the opposite.1

Under the program, the federal government allots $9 billion a year in tax credits to state housing agencies based on state populations.2 Then the agencies distribute credits to selected housing developers based on a complex and bureaucratic process. Developers who

Politicians give special favors to Campaign Donors.

California Gubernatorial Candidate Steered Low-Income Housing Funds To Campaign Contributors

California Treasurer John Chiang's conflicts of interest are not the first in the program's long and sordid history.

Christian Britschgi|Aug. 15, 2017 10:40 am

hEnDeRsOn, kY/Wikimedia CommonsThe federal government's Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program is supposedly "the most important resource for creating affordable housing in the United States today." But since its creation in 1986, the $8 billion program has been plagued by scandals and other problems.

The latest involves California treasurer and 2018 gubernatorial candidate John Chiang, who has helped funnel millions in LIHTC tax credits to developers who have given him some $100,000 in campaign donations.

The Sacramento Bee reports that Chiang, through his role on various committees charged with dispensing LIHTC money, was able to steer $60 million in federal tax credits to the developer Pacific West Communities, which has since donated $37,000 to his various campaign committees.

Another developer, Domus, has gotten Chiang's signoff on tax credits for three separate projects since 2013. The company has donated $40,000 to Chiang over the same period.

The problem, say LIHTC's critics, is that there is little accountability for how the program's credits get handed out.

"Really, there is no federal oversight of the process," says Daniel Diaz-Garcia of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which has now published three reports on LIHTC.

In theory, the Internal Revenue Service provides oversight for LIHTC. But the agency isn't very well-suited to oversee such a complex program. "The IRS is a tax collection agency," says Diaz-Garcia. "It's not involved in housing policy. It's not involved in administering programs on the part of the federal government."

Each year, the IRS gives each state a pool of LIHTC dollars. (The amount each state gets is based on its population.) The states then—through what are known as Housing Finance Authorities, or HFAs—award these tax credits to developers of affordable housing projects. Those companies then sell the tax credits to investors in their developments.

Throughout the program's 30-year history, according to those GAO reports, the IRS has audited only seven of the now 58 HFAs.

In California, the tax credits are awarded by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC). As treasurer, Chiang is one of three voting members of CTCAC, which gives him enormous influence over where the state's $94.9 million in federal LIHTC money goes.

Potential conflicts of interest—or in Chiang's case, actual conflicts of interest—in awarding the tax credits highlight the need for internal safeguards and regular reviews of the program. But thanks to the IRS's "minimal" oversight, the GAO has found that the agency "cannot determine the extent of noncompliance and other issues at HFAs."

This is not the only high-profile scandal related to the program. In Florida, developers fraudulently inflated construction costs in order to squeeze some $34 million out of 14 separate LIHTC-funded projects. The head of Florida's HFA—who was supposed to be monitoring these projects for this kind of fraud—resigned in 2016 after an audit found he had spent $50,000 on a single steak and lobster dinner for those same affordable housing lenders he was supposed to be monitoring.

Another problem with LIHTC is its system of "boosts." Not only can developers reclaim up to 70 percent of a project's initial costs through tax credits, but states can also give out a "boost" of extra tax credits should a developer demonstrate this is necessary to make their project financially viable. A 2016 GAO report found that states often failed to determine those additional credits' financial necessity before doling them out.

Virginia awarded boosts to all LIHTC projects that received certain green building certifications, including in one case a developer who didn't even ask for the bonus credits. Arizona just gives the boosts to all LIHTC projects, no questions asked.

All this has led to a situation where LIHTC recipients are spending more money on a decreasing number of projects. A recent investigation by NPR and Frontline found that 70,220 units were constructed with LIHTC funds in 1998 at the cost of $4.1 billion in tax credits. In 2014, LIHTC handed out $6.8 billion to build just 58,735 units.

California's data show a similar trend at the state level, with the tax credit allocations per unit (including state tax credits) rising from $195,764 in 2010 to $219,946 in 2016.

These mounting costs and diminishing returns are a natural consequence of the program's complex design, says Vanessa Brown Calder, an urban policy analyst with the Cato Institute.

"You lose a lot of value along the way from the IRS to the developer to the tenant," Calder tells Reason. Academic research has found that only about 35 percent of the value of the credits provided to developers shows up as rent savings for tenants.

Calder says the only real way to increase affordable housing is to reform the state and local zoning regulations that drive up the costs of home construction (and, as a result, raise rents). "All these federal subsidies coming in are just band-aid solutions," she comments. "They're just kind of like the federal government chasing its tail."

At $8 billion a year, LIHTC is a pretty expensive band-aid.

In America’s Affordable Housing Crisis, More Demand but Less Supply

In America’s Affordable Housing Crisis, More Demand but Less Supply

MAY 9, 2017

by PATRICE TADDONIO Assistant Director of Audience Development




More and more Americans are struggling to make rent. Each year, an estimated 2.5 million people across the country are evicted.

Today, in a joint investigation called Poverty, Politics and Profit, FRONTLINE and NPR join forces to examine the crisis in affordable housing, exploring why so few people are getting the help they need, and whether government programs designed to aid low-income Americans with rent are working as they should.

One of those programs, called the low-income housing tax credit, relies on partnerships between the federal government and the private sector. The IRS gives billions in tax credits to the states, who then award the credits to developers. The developers sell them for cash to investors, mostly banks, and then use that money to help build apartment buildings. And because taxpayer money pays for most of it, they can charge the lower rents required.

The program, which has cost about $8 billion annually in recent years, is often described by supporters as a win-win: Low-income people get quality affordable housing and the private sector makes money. But in Poverty, Politics, and Profit, NPR and FRONTLINE crunch the numbers — and find that the program is costing taxpayers more in tax credits, but producing fewer units.

In the above excerpt from tonight’s documentary, produced by FRONTLINE’s Rick Young and his team, follow Laura Sullivan of NPR as she tries to find out why.

Then for more on the story, listen to All Things Considered today and watch FRONTLINE tonight. From exploring why those who receive Section 8 vouchers often struggle to find housing, to examining charges that developers have stolen money meant to house low-income people, to delving into the legacy of segregation in government housing programs, Poverty, Politics and Profit is a probing exploration of a system in crisis.