BROADCAST EMAIL – Regulatory Update

November 24, 2015

In today’s Federal Register, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a Notice of Statutorily Mandated Designation of Difficult Development Areas and Qualified Census Tracts for 2015 for purposes of the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC). LIHTC developments in DDAs or QCTs are eligible for as much as 30 percent more LIHTC subsidy.

For the first time, the 2016 metropolitan DDA designations use Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs), rather than metropolitan-area Fair Market Rents (FMRs), for designating metropolitan DDAs. Compared to previous years’ designations, the published Notice:

1. Describes a strengthening of the data quality standard HUD uses in designating the 2016 QCTs;
2. Extends from 365 days to 730 days the period for which the 2016 lists of QCTs and DDAs are effective for projects located in areas not on a subsequent list of DDAs or QCTs but having submitted applications while the area was a 2016 QCT or DDA; and
3. Establishes the effective date of the new QCTs and DDAs as July 1, 2016 rather than January 1.