The Department of Housing and Urban Development designated the Difficult to Develop Areas (DDA) and Qualified Census Tracts (QCT) for 2016. DDAs and QCTs are important components of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program.
Compared to previous designations, this notice:
- Describes a strengthening of the data quality standard HUD uses in designating the 2016 QCTs
- Extends from 365 days to 730 days the period for which the 2015 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.
- Establishes the effective date of the new QCTs and DDAs as July 1, 2016 rather than January 1.
The notice designates DDAs for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The designations of DDAs in this notice are based on modified Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs), FY2015 income limits, and 2010 Census population counts. As previously announced, HUD is now using Small Area Fair Market Rents (SAFMRs) instead of metropolitan-area Fair Market Rents (FMRs) to designate metropolitan DDAs.
This notice also designates QCTs based on new income and poverty data released in the American Community Survey (ACS). HUD relies on the most recent three sets of ACS 3 estimates to ensure that anomalous estimates, due to sampling, do not affect the QCT status of tracts.
