Assembling and filing the application — Indiana

The shape of the phase: one deadline, a threshold-heavy application

IHCDA administers a single Qualified Allocation Plan covering both the 2026 and 2027 program years, with one competitive 9% deadline and one competitive 4%/bond deadline each year — both on the same date. There is no CTCAC-style multi-round-per-year calendar to plan around; miss the date and the next opportunity is a full year out.

That ratio — 52 pass/fail requirements against a scoring section most applicants clear with room to spare — is the real shape of an Indiana application. Almost everything that can disqualify a deal lives in Section 5, not Section 6.

One deadline, two files, one portal

Unlike CTCAC's USB-drive hand delivery or CDLAC's joint online portal, IHCDA's mechanism runs through Access Indiana, the state's general single-sign-on system, rather than a LIHTC-specific application platform. Schedule G — the QAP's own Application Package Submission Guidelines — spells out the steps: an applicant e-mails the address tied to their Access Indiana account to RHTC@ihcda.in.gov to get access, then searches "rental housing tax credit" or "RHTC" inside Access Indiana to reach what the QAP calls the Online Application Portal.

The Document Checklist inside the portal is organized by QAP section, not by exhibit number, and the QAP's own lettered exhibit tabs run from Tab A through Tab T, skipping Tab I — 19 tabs in total. In the filed 707 North Apartments application (2026A-C-001, one of the 21 awards in the most recent 9% round — application numbers reflect intake order, not score, and 707 North's own 106-point score sat well behind the round's top award, Historic Jeff Centre at 112.5), the Documentation Submission Checklist itself carried 92 separate "Place in Tab" line items spanning Parts 4.1 through 6.5 — a count that will run higher or lower depending on which set-asides and supplemental funding sources a given project checks.

One small, verifiable wrinkle worth flagging: the 2026-2027 Form A's own Development Characteristics instructions still tell an applicant to count amenities "from each column listed under Part 6.2.A. of the 2023-24 QAP" — a stray reference to a prior year's plan that survived into the current workbook. The amenity categories themselves did not change in a way that matters, but it is a reminder to check what a scoring worksheet actually asks against the current QAP text, not just trust the label IHCDA printed on the form.

Threshold is pass/fail; scoring almost doesn't decide who wins

Indiana's own applicant lists use two different labels for the same number at two different moments. The list IHCDA posts after a deadline — the 2027A-C Applicant List, for the round that closed July 27, 2026 — carries a column literally headed "Self Score." The list IHCDA posts after the Board acts on reservations relabels the same figure "FINAL SCORE." Nowhere in the QAP or in either published list does IHCDA show the two side by side for the same project, so — unlike CTCAC, which publishes both an as-applied and an as-verified list every round — there is no public record in Indiana of how much a self-score actually moved under staff review.

Two things IHCDA's QAP does not publish, in the same honest-gap spirit as the site-screening and cost phases: a CTCAC-style statement that staff "shall independently verify" every self-scored item, and any appeal or reconsideration process at all. CDLAC charges $500 for a formal appeal of an adverse determination; nothing in Indiana's 2026-2027 QAP describes an equivalent path. The only defined way back in after a denial is a fresh application in a later round.

Curing a deficient application

Part 5.8 splits every application problem into one of two buckets. A Threshold Deficiency means "a specific requirement of Section 5 of this QAP was not met" — missing documentation, underwriting outside the guidelines, an error in Form A. A Clarification means the requirement was met but "additional information is needed for review." IHCDA sends one letter identifying everything in both buckets, and the Applicant gets a 14-calendar-day Correction Period to respond.

A narrower rule covers corrupted files: if IHCDA staff can't open a submitted document because of file corruption or an incompatible format, IT support tries to fix it first; if that fails, the applicant gets a threshold deficiency for each affected item but may submit a replacement — except "replacement documentation cannot be submitted for scoring items." A corrupted threshold exhibit is curable inside the Correction Period; a corrupted scoring exhibit simply costs the points.

Disqualification is not necessarily final for the program year. "Applications for competitive resources may be resubmitted in the next funding round," while noncompetitive 4%/bond applications can come back "after 90 days as a new complete application, including applicable fees."

How competitive the last two rounds actually were

IHCDA does not publish a CTCAC-style scored-applicant table breaking down self-score versus verified score, or a running tally of how many applicants tied at the maximum. What follows is assembled directly from IHCDA's own posted Awarded and Denied lists for the most recently completed round, and the Applicant List for the round now pending a decision.

Of the 21 denied 9% applications, IHCDA's list codes 5 as "Failed Threshold" (score shown as N/A) and the other 16 simply as "Score" — a bucket that covers both an application that never reached the 85-point floor and one that cleared 85 but still lost the competition inside its own pool. One denied application scored 105 of 165 — higher than nine of the round's twenty-one funded projects, whose lowest funded score was 92.

Treat the 2026A-C and 2026B-C figures as the most recent verified outcome, and the 2027A-C self-scores as a snapshot of the field, not a prediction of who wins — Indiana's own numbers show that a strong self-score is necessary but nowhere near sufficient.