"Is this a DHCR 9% competitive submission or an HFA/HDC bond deal — because the portal, the exhibits, and the fee schedule are entirely different?"
DHCR's 9% round: one Aspera dropbox, nine tabs, and a hard annual deadline
Applications aren't submitted through a web portal — they go into an Internet dropbox HCR sets up per project, built on Aspera's file-transfer platform. A sponsor emails MSR@hcr.ny.gov before the access deadline with the project name, county/municipality, and up to two user emails; each user then gets a one-time 'Dropbox Invitation' link from NYS mySend that functions as that user's ID and password. A new dropbox is required for every project, every round — a dropbox used in a prior submission cannot be reused. In the 2025 round, dropbox access had to be requested by August 28 at 3:00 PM ET, with the complete application due September 11 at 11:59 PM ET; HCR explicitly warns that staff won't provide technical support after 4:00 PM on deadline day, despite the 11:59 PM cutoff.
| Tab | Contents | Exhibits |
|---|---|---|
| A | Application & Development Team | A-1 – A-5 |
| B | Project/Site Information | B-1 – B-7 |
| C | Community Needs/Market Information | C-1 – C-2 |
| D | Design & Construction Documents | D-1 – D-7 |
| E | Environmental Documents | E-1 – E-6 |
| F | Financial Analysis | F-1 – F-5 |
| G | Preservation Documents | G-1 – G-9 |
| H | LIHTC/SLIHC | H-1 – H-2 |
| I | Consents and Certifications | I-1 – I-5 |
Threshold review gates the whole application before scoring even happens: a Technical Assistance session with HCR staff must have occurred within 12 months of submission; site control must remain valid through the later of the construction-finance closing date or six months beyond the application deadline; private lender letters of interest can't be dated more than 45 days before submission, and for 9% LIHTC/SLIHC requests, the equity investor or syndicator letter carries the same 45-day freshness requirement. HCR also enforces a Single Financing Plan rule — an applicant may present only one consistent plan of financing to all funding agencies; submitting multiple financing scenarios makes the application ineligible outright, not just weaker.
Fees, and the binding agreement gate that comes after the initial submission
The 9% LIHTC and/or SLIHC application fee is $3,000 per credit program requested at submission — $6,000 for a sponsor requesting both. Payment is made by check to 'NYS DHCR,' mailed via USPS overnight with a Credit Fee Transmittal Letter to a JPMorgan Chase lockbox address in Brooklyn (HCR does not accept payment at any other office). A not-for-profit applicant (or its wholly-owned subsidiary) or a NYS-certified M/WBE or SDVOB applicant — in each case serving as sole general partner or sole managing member, and not having received an HCR capital award since 2021 — may request deferral of that fee to the time of carryover allocation, but the request has to be filed before the RFP's own deferral deadline, not decided later.
A separate $1,000 fee applies only if and when a binding agreement or similar document is requested — a later-stage step that comes after HCR issues a credit reservation, once the applicant has obtained commitments for all sources of construction and permanent financing and all necessary local approvals. The credit allocation fee itself — 8% of the first-year credit allocation for the 9% program — isn't due at application at all; it's due when the applicant requests issuance of the carryover allocation, well after the award.
HFA's (and, in NYC, HDC's) 4% bond track skips the RFP entirely
Once a project is financed by tax-exempt private activity bonds, it leaves DHCR's competitive process altogether: since March 1, 2008, bond-financed applications are processed by the New York State Housing Finance Agency under HFA's own procedures, not the annual 9% RFP cycle. The published entry point is a pre-application concept paper submitted to the applicable regional Development Director, followed by the HFA Financing Application, the HFA Underwriting Application, a Site Suitability Worksheet, and — where applicable — Historic Preservation Certification. There's no fixed round: a project applies when it's ready, not against a once-a-year deadline.
The regulatory fee schedule for this track — a $2,000 application fee (deferrable for a qualifying not-for-profit sole general partner or managing member) and a 3% credit allocation fee on the first-year allocation, due at final allocation — sits in the same QAP section that governs bond-financed applications, though that section's older submission-timing language (filing 60 days before a proposed construction start, with a 60-day DHCR findings turnaround) reads as carried over from DHCR's pre-2008 direct-processing role; HFA's own current published procedures don't restate a specific turnaround time, so confirm current timing directly with the regional Development Director rather than assuming the QAP's legacy figure still governs. For New York City sites specifically, the same 4% credits can instead be paired with tax-exempt bonds issued by HDC rather than HFA — HDC runs its own underwriting and fee process outside 9 NYCRR entirely, so a NYC sponsor has to know at the outset which of the two bond issuers the deal is actually going through, since the two tracks don't share an application, a fee schedule, or a timeline.
Where this goes wrong
- Reusing a prior round's Aspera dropbox link — HCR requires a brand-new dropbox request for every project, every round.
- Submitting on a prior year's application forms — the RFP disqualifies applications on outdated or incorrect forms without further review.
- Dating the private-lender or equity-investor/syndicator letter of interest more than 45 days before submission — a stale-dated LOI fails threshold review.
- Filing multiple financing scenarios 'to keep options open' — the Single Financing Plan rule makes this an automatic ineligibility, not a flagged weakness.
- Assuming the application fee deferral is available on general hardship grounds — it's limited to nonprofit/M/WBE/WBE/SDVOB applicants serving as sole GP or managing member who haven't received an HCR capital award since 2021.
- Treating the bond-financed 4% track as running on the same annual deadline as the 9% RFP — it's a rolling, concept-paper-first process with its own fee schedule.
- Skipping the mandatory pre-application Technical Assistance session — threshold review requires it to have occurred within 12 months of submission.
- For a NYC site, assuming HFA's bond process and HDC's bond process are interchangeable — they're separate issuers with separate underwriting, fees, and applications.
- HUD
- LIHTC
- State QAPs
- IRS § 42
- Housing Finance Agencies