Affordable-housing advocates should be alarmed by the handwringing on display by some developers invested in maintaining a status quo that isn’t serving our state. (Maryland wants more housing for the homeless – and it could cost developers, 12/5/24).

Since the mid-1980s, the federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has allowed states to leverage private investment to build affordable housing. While the tax credit program has helped low-income workers and seniors on fixed incomes, developers produce limited housing for the lowest-income renters. Not surprisingly, these renters face a dearth of affordable options and the greatest risk of homelessness.

State leaders are taking decisive action to narrow this gap by proposing that all LIHTC applicants incorporate the greater of five units or 15% of a project as “permanent supportive housing” for households exiting homelessness. This housing model is highly effective, promotes “mixed income” communities, and avoids large concentrations of extremely low-income households. The state will even guarantee rent and services to make developments financially and programmatically viable.

Ensuring that the low-income tax program works for everyone advances racial equity. While 30% of Marylanders identify as Black or African American, 60% of those experiencing homelessness are Black. During a recent forum, opponents hedged that the goals were laudable but that now wasn’t the time. These comments evoke Dr. Martin Luther King’s words about those who called his demands for justice not “well timed.”

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“This ‘wait,’ ” he writes, “has almost always meant ‘never.’ We must come to see … that ‘justice too long delayed is justice denied.’ ”

Modest requirements to incorporate a handful of PSH units will not bring about the “collapse of the industry.” Such hyperbolic catastrophizing in proximity to the life-threatening realities of homelessness is unhelpful at best and, at worst, disingenuous. Plenty of local developers — for-profit and nonprofit — will step into the void if a company chooses not to develop in Maryland.

Gov. Wes Moore and Housing Secretary Jacob Day should be applauded for ensuring that limited tax credits benefit all Marylanders, especially the most vulnerable. We urge them to stay the course toward a vibrant Maryland in which we all can live.

Kevin Lindamood is president and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless and president of HCH Real Estate Co.

Daniel McCarthy is executive director of the Episcopal Housing Corporation