Please Help Us Pass HB 665, Low-Income Housing Tax Credit reform & oppose reducing the tax credit.
With likely only 17 session days to go, the possibility of enacting reforms to the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program are still very much up in the air.
It is likely that on Wednesday, April 24, the Missouri House will take up HCS for HB 665, LIHTC reform. The substitute that passed out of the House Economic Development committee is like SB 28, Senate version of LIHTC reform but adds a requirement that the Missouri Housing Development Commission create an evaluation rubric and score all applications accordingly.
Currently, the credits are paid out over ten years, (the stream) every expert that I’ve asked believes any change in that plan will create uncertainties that will likely hurt the value of the credits. Rep. Derek Grier, Chairman of the Economic Development committee sincerely believes that moving the stream to six years will increase the amount of equity in the program. Based on my research,I must respectfully disagree. Taken in isolation six years vs. ten years may appear to be reasonable but when you are dealing with a program this complex, in terms of the interaction with the federal program and with the Internal Revenue Service the best response is to take the most conservative approach and stay with a ten-year stream.
Representatives may offer other changes, but it is likely that few have the potential to do the damage to the program that changing the stream from ten to six will. Because of this, there are only three “asks” in the email to your Representative. The first is to vote for the HCS; the second is to reject any attempt to change the stream of credits from the current ten-year plan; the third is to encourage your representative to support Rep. David Gregory’s position on any amendments. Rep. Gregory has spent significant time researching the issues involved, and he is uniquely qualified to make the analysis necessary on this legislation.