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A bipartisan group of 45 mayors from communities in 19 states and the District of Columbia recently sent a letter to Congressional leaders calling for the addition of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act of 2019 (AHCIA) in any year-end legislative tax package. The letter said the LIHTC is our nation’s primary tool for encouraging private investment in affordable rental housing. And the AHCIA would help strengthen and expand the highly effective Housing Credit, resulting in more than half a million additional affordable homes nationwide over the next decade.

Tax credit sites have recently enjoyed strong occupancy rates and healthy financial conditions, according to CohnReznick’s Tax Credit Investment Services’ annual report on the performance of sites financed with the federal LIHTC. The data in this report provide detailed insights into the performance of LIHTC properties and the latest performance trends observed across the surveyed portfolio, consisting of more than 20,000 properties.

Legislation recently introduced in the South Carolina Legislature would create a state-level LIHTC for sites in Opportunity Zones (OZs). All three co-sponsors are members of the Democratic Party, which is in the minority in the State House. The bill would automatically qualify LIHTC developments in OZs for a new state LIHTC equal to the federal credit and would also create a 25 percent credit for investments in OZs, with an annual cap at $50,000 per taxpayer.

The IRS recently published Revenue Procedure 2019-41, which announced the amounts of unused LIHTC carryovers allocated to qualified states for calendar year 2019. Unused LIHTCs are oftentimes generated from small amounts of LIHTCs returned by affordable housing developments or from otherwise remaining LIHTCs toward the end of the year that could not be matched with new applications before the end of the year. The national pool sweeps up these amounts and distributes the total to other states.

The National Council of State Housing Agencies (NCSHA) recently sent comments to the IRS on how it can improve LIHTC disaster relief guidance provided in Revenue Procedures 2014-49 and 2014-50. NCSHA submitted a letter in response to the IRS’ request for comments in Notice 2019-52. Specifically, NCSHA urged the IRS to expand its disaster relief guidance to:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently released a report finding that in 2018 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac met all their affordable housing goals and their obligations under the Duty-to-Serve Rule. The Duty-to-Serve program requires Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to facilitate a secondary market for mortgages on housing for very low-, low-, and moderate-income families in: Manufactured Housing, Affordable Housing Preservation, and Rural Housing.

Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic candidate for president and former U.S. Congressman from Texas, recently released a housing plan that aims to bring down rent by building six million housing units and rehabilitating existing public housing. According to his plan, low-income housing funded by LIHTCs wouldn’t be eligible to return to market rate after 15 or 30 years. Currently, investors get the tax credit while taxpayers subsidize construction of units that could become market rate or condos in the long run.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) this week released the 2019–2020 priority guidance plan, which established guidance priorities for the Department of the Treasury and IRS for the period from July 1, 2019, through June 30, 2020. The priority guidance plan contains 203 guidance projects. As of Sept. 30, 2019, 31 guidance items have been released. In addition to the projects on the 2019–2020 plan, the Appendix lists routine or ministerial guidance that’s generally published each year.

An affordable housing community in Tennessee catering to seniors and disabled residents became the first property financed by HUD’s Atlanta office under the new Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) Pilot Program. The site, designed for elderly and disabled renters, is in Marshall County, one of Tennessee’s designated Opportunity Zone census tracts. It’s supported by an allocation of 4 percent Low-Income Housing Tax Credits.

Maintaining the minimum set-aside and applicable fraction are a tax credit site manager’s two most important occupancy goals during the compliance period. But you must also be sure to find out whether the site owner made any extra promises to your state housing agency in return for its tax credit allocation.