Entitlement pathway election — South Dakota

Zoning in South Dakota is opt-in, at both the county and the city level

South Dakota Codified Laws Chapter 11-2 governs county planning and zoning, and its own enabling language is permissive. SDCL 11-2-13 ("Adoption of zoning ordinance") reads: "For the purpose of promoting health, safety, or the general welfare of the county the board may adopt a zoning ordinance to regulate and restrict the height, number of stories, and size of buildings and other structures, the percentage of lot that may be occupied, the size of the yards, courts, and other open spaces, the density of population, and the location and use of buildings, structures, and land for trade, industry, residence, flood plain, or other purposes." SDCL 11-2-2 similarly makes forming a county planning commission optional in the first instance -- "The board of county commissioners of each county in the state may appoint a commission of five or more members" -- with a "shall appoint" obligation that only attaches once a county has already decided to enact or implement zoning under the chapter. Municipal zoning runs on the same permissive model: SDCL 11-4-1 ("Regulatory powers of municipality") states that "the governing body of any municipality may regulate and restrict" land use, height, density, and similar matters -- not that it must. No provision in either chapter fills the resulting gap with a state default; a county or city that declines to adopt an ordinance simply has none.

This is not a theoretical gap. Fall River County's own government states directly: "There is no planning and zoning" outside the incorporated cities of Edgemont and Hot Springs, and outside those cities "a permit is only required if your building lies within the flood plain." The county even distributes a document called the "Code of the West" specifically to explain to new rural residents what to expect in the absence of zoning. Oglala Lakota County -- coterminous with the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation -- states with equal directness on its own site: "Oglala Lakota County does not currently have any planning or zoning regulations in place for any of the fee land," and "does not currently require a building permit for new construction that is outside of the corporate limits of the municipalities." A screen or entitlement analysis that assumes every South Dakota site sits under some zoning code, however permissive, will be wrong for real, confirmed jurisdictions.

The QAP's own three-way answer, and how it's scored

Zoning is a standalone scored category under Readiness to Proceed (Section V.B.5, up to 20 points): "Applications containing documentation that the project site is properly zoned or that zoning is not required within the jurisdiction for its proposed use will receive 20 points." Application item 12 (Section VI.A) recognizes a third state as well -- that the site "is in the zoning process" -- and asks for written evidence reflecting whichever of the three actually applies, tied to the current status of the project's plat. Platting is scored separately (Section V.B.6, up to 20 points, for a final plat recorded with a plat book and number reference); item 13 accepts either the recorded plat or documentation that platting is in process. "Zoning is not required" is not an application shortcut or a workaround in South Dakota -- it is one of two ways to earn the full 20 points in this category, on the QAP's own terms, and the correct answer for a site in a jurisdiction like Fall River County (outside Edgemont/Hot Springs) or Oglala Lakota County.

Tribal land: a different sovereign, a different code, and a state-level parallel pathway

Even inside a county that has adopted a zoning ordinance elsewhere within its borders, that ordinance generally does not reach trust or otherwise tribally held land within a reservation -- land that instead falls under "Indian country" jurisdiction, governed by the tribe's own government and code and by federal law, not by the county's planning department. Oglala Lakota County's own site makes this jurisdictional line explicit in practice: its planning-and-zoning page addresses only "fee land," and directs any question about building on "Tribal Lands" to "the local BIA office" instead. A South Dakota entitlement analysis for a reservation-area site has to identify, before anything else, whether the parcel is fee land (potentially under county or municipal zoning, if the jurisdiction has adopted any) or trust/tribal land (governed by the tribe's own land-use code, with the county's zoning authority not applicable at all) -- and the two can sit on opposite sides of a single reservation, or even a single county, in a checkerboard pattern.

SDHDA's Rural/Tribal Set-Aside (covered in Phase 1 of this guide) is a separate, state-allocation-level pathway running in parallel to this local entitlement question -- it determines which pool of tax credits a winning tribal-land application draws from, not whether the site needs a tribal, county, or municipal entitlement to begin with. The two questions have to be worked independently: a project can qualify for the Rural/Tribal Set-Aside on population or land-status grounds while still needing to resolve, separately, whose land-use code actually governs its specific parcel.

A revitalization-plan pathway that explicitly excludes zoning, and a notice letter addressed to a mayor who may not exist

The QAP's Concerted Community Revitalization Plan pathway (Section V.A.4, up to 20 points, tied to sitting in a Qualified Census Tract) is worth naming here precisely because the QAP's own Definitions section (Section VIII) draws a hard line between it and zoning: a Concerted Community Revitalization Plan must be "officially adopted by the local governing body," target a specific area and time period, and call for new construction or rehabilitation of affordable housing -- and the definition explicitly states that "municipal zoning, or land use plans do not qualify." A rezoning, a comprehensive plan, or an ordinary land-use plan is not a substitute for this pathway, even though all of them are local-government land-use documents; they are, by the QAP's own drafting, mutually exclusive categories.

Every application must also include, per Section VI.A item 4, "Copy of letter sent to the chief executive officer of the local governing body, in the format prescribed in Exhibit 3" -- and Exhibit 3's own template letter is addressed "Dear Mayor." The QAP does not define who counts as the "chief executive officer of the local governing body" for a site in an unincorporated, county-only jurisdiction, or for a site on tribal land where the relevant governing body is a tribal council rather than a city council. A literal use of the template in either setting addresses a letter to an office that may not exist; the entitlement-pathway election at this phase should include identifying the actual chief executive of whichever governing body -- county commission chair, tribal chairman or president, or mayor -- has authority over the site, rather than defaulting to the template's own wording.