This past Monday, the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) presented its draft 2012 Qualified Allocation Plan for the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) application to the public and received comments.  Overall, the meeting went very well and the tenor of the meetings and comments were extremely positive and constructive.  You can find the draft 2012 Qualified Allocation Plan here. 

Some highlights include the following:

• A new proposed contractor bidding protocol that allows for negotiated bidding at a reduced profit and overhead and reduced general requirements.
• The removal of the Community Notice requirement as a threshold requirement.
• Increased Developer’s Fee percentage allowed (essentially increasing the Developer’s Fee on smaller affordable housing projects) but the maximum Developer’s Fee is still $1 million.
• A new category for Promoting Balanced Housing Opportunties – a refreshed attempt to address the concept raised last year of concentrated affordable housing areas.
• A new category for Access to Transit – to include public transportation planning and the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) in the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) application process.
• A first time move to allow part of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) application to be filed electronically through a web based application site being developed.
• In an effort to avoid continually forward committing Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC’s), the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) through the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) will no longer permit an applicant to request more tax credits than provided in the specific set aside.  In practice, this will allow the Delaware State Housing Authority to fund more smaller affordable housing projects, but larger projects will be difficult to finance in the manner they have been financed in the past.  Those projects will need to use other financing tools.