Traditionally housing advocates in the United States have long sought a fundamental overhaul of the country’s federal housing policy to respond to increasing housing costs.

Subsidies such as Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), along with programs that reduce tenants’ expenditures on rent, such as the Housing Choice Voucher Homeownership program, are widely used but cannot fully address the extent of the need. Casey Dawkins of APA puts forth a proposal to redistribute income tax resources to low-income households on a national scale and considers the geographical ramifications of such a program, as well as potential impacts at the household level. The Securing Housing Equality by Leveraging Tax Expenditure Reform (SHELTER) plan is a series of redistributive policy reforms that seek to alleviate the housing cost burdens of low-income households through innovative repurposing of existing homeownership tax expenditures. The plan is threefold and includes: Reallocating four current federal homeownership tax expenditures to fund both, a universal housing allowance (UHA) in the form of a refundable tax credit to low-income Housing Choice Voucher-eligible households, and an affordable housing block grant (AHBG).

https://www.planning.org/blog/9273231/shelter-a-redistributive-affordable-housing-policy