HUD Statutorily Mandated Designation of Difficult Development Areas and Qualified Census Tracts for 2024

CARH’S BROADCAST E-MAIL – Regulatory Update

September 21, 2023

In today’s Federal Register, HUD published a Notice entitled, “Statutorily Mandated Designation of Difficult Development Areas and Qualified Census Tracts for 2024” for purposes of the low-income housing tax credit (Housing Credit). Housing Credit developments in Designation of Difficult Development Areas (DDAs) or Qualified Census Tracts (QCTs) are eligible for as much as 30 percent more Housing Credit subsidy.

Annually, for the purpose of the Housing Credit, the Secretary of HUD must designate DDAs, which are areas with high construction, land, and utility costs relative to area median gross income (AMGI). HUD makes the designations of DDAs based on modified Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Small Area Fair Market Rents (Small Area FMRs), FY 2023 nonmetropolitan county FMRs, FY 2023 income limits, and 2020 Census population counts. Similarly, the Secretary of HUD must designate QCTs, which are areas where either 50 percent or more of the households have an income less than 60 percent of the AMGI or have a poverty rate of at least 25 percent. The notice published today designates QCTs based on new income and poverty data released in the American Community Survey (ACS). Specifically, HUD relies on the most recent three sets of ACS data to ensure that anomalous estimates, due to sampling, do not affect the QCT status of tracts.

The effective date of the new DDAs and QCTs is January 1, 2024.

For other news and information affecting the affordable rural housing industry, please visit the Newsroom on CARH’s website, www.carh.org.