How Risk Undermines TIF's Self-Financing Premise
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TIF’s self-financing rhetoric can be used to shift risk onto taxpayers.
"How Risk Undermines TIF's Self-Financing Premise: A Case Study of Hudson Yards" expands the evaluation of TIF by questioning the widespread understanding of TIF as a self-financing tool through analysis of its risks and costs to taxpayers. The authors find that disclosing and assigning project risk is necessary before the project’s public approval to provide a robust cost-benefit analysis to municipalities considering TIF implementation and to ensure taxpayers are fully informed.
This research was published in Cities, the International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning under the title, “Selling TIF: Positioning Hudson Yards as a project that pays for itself."
Cities, Volume 125, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.103661.