Louisiana

The National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (NH&RA) has announced five winners and ten finalists across ten competitive categories for this year’s J. Timothy Anderson Awards for Excellence in Historic Rehabilitation. The “Timmy Awards” will be presented at an awards luncheon and ceremony on Tuesday, October 30 at the Langham Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts, held in conjunction with the association’s Annual Fall Developers Forum. The winners and finalists represent fourteen different communities in ten states””Connecticut, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia””as well as the District of Columbia.

The Louisiana Housing Corporation (LHC) has begun operating as the State of Louisiana’s new housing finance agency. The new agency consolidates previous activities from the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency and the Office of Community Development, Department of Health and Hospitals, and the Department of Children and Family Services and will be responsible for the administration of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program and other state and federal housing and community development programs.

The Louisiana Housing Finance Agency (LHFA) has rescheduled its public hearing to address proposed changes to the 2013 Qualified Allocation Plan for administering the low-income housing tax credit.

The Louisiana Housing Finance Agency (LHFA) has released a draft version of its proposed Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) and selection criteria for the 2013 LIHTC allocation round.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued OCC Bulletin 2012-8 which will extend the deadline for consideration of Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activities in areas that were affected by hurricanes Rita and Katrina.

Representative Chris Gibson (R-NY) recently introduced the Irene and Lee Tax Relief Strom Recovery Act, H.R. 3769, which would increase the amount of Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) to be allocated in states damaged by Hurricane Irene or Tropical Storm Lee in 2011.

The IRS issued Notice 2012-3 to provide guidance on current refunding issues for outstanding prior bond issues that qualify for tax-exempt bond financing under disaster relief bond programs including Gulf Opportunity Zone Bonds (GO Zone Bonds), qualified Midwestern disaster area bonds and Hurricane Ike disaster area bonds under the Heartland Disaster Act.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published Revenue Service 2011-57 which dictates the amounts of unused housing credit carryover allowances allocated to qualified states. Nearly $3.66 million of unused credits were divided among the states in the National Pool.

HUD’s Department of Policy Research & Development has published three more Comprehensive Housing Market Analyses for State College, Pennsylvania; Victoria, Texas; and New Orleans, Louisiana.

U.S. Housing and Urban Development recently contracted with Abt Associates Inc. and released a two-part study examining the housing recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

In order to avoid the loss of approximately $1.03 million of returned GO Zone Credits at the end of calendar year 2011, the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency (LHFA) Board of Commissioners approved the following strategies to allocate GO Zone Credits.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed into law HB 348, which extends and improves the residential historic rehabilitation tax credit, and the companion SB 63, which extends the commercial historic rehabilitation tax credit.