People and Place in California's LIHTC Program

The UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies is hosting a research talk by Professor Ann Owens of the UCLA Department of Sociology on her research on California's Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. Lunch will be provided.

About the Research:

Federally-subsidized affordable housing in the U.S. is produced primarily via the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program. Key components in the program include where housing units are located and who lives in them. Drawing on ongoing research, Professor Owens will discuss changing priorities around where LIHTC is located, how neighborhoods change around LIHTC properties, whether LIHTC serves the lowest-income households, and how tenants find LIHTC units, with a particular focus on California. Overall, she will discuss implications of her work for whether and how affordable housing is providing access to opportunity, an ongoing focus of federal housing policy.

About the Speaker: 

Ann Owens is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research centers on the causes and consequences of social inequality, with a focus on urban neighborhoods, housing, education, and geographic and social mobility. Ann has particular expertise on neighborhood and school segregation, and her research also examines how housing and educational policies cause or alleviate social inequalities. Ann is a recipient of the William T. Grant Foundation Scholar award, Spencer Foundation/National Academy of Education Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the 2022 William Julius Wilson Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association. With sean f. reardon, Ann co-leads the Segregation Tracking Project, aimed at generating comprehensive residential and school segregation data. She is currently co-editor of City & Community, the journal of the American Sociological Association’s Community and Urban Sociology section. Ann received her PhD in Sociology and Social Policy from Harvard University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.