Program election (9% vs. 4% vs. hybrid) — Massachusetts

One office allocates everything; two other agencies finance the 4% side

EOHLC states its own role plainly: "In Massachusetts, the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC) is the allocating agency for tax credits." That single sentence covers all three Massachusetts LIHTC-adjacent programs — the federal 9% credit, the federal 4% credit, and the state credit — but it understates how differently each one actually reaches a project. EOHLC itself is the successor agency to the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD): Governor Healey's Article 87 reorganization plan (filed March 1, 2023) created the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities effective May 1, 2023, and DHCD's housing responsibilities moved to the new office. The QAP text itself hasn't been fully scrubbed of the old name — it still refers in places to "DHCD" when describing pre-2023 history and to cities "designated by DHCD" as Difficult to Develop Areas — so a document search for only the current name will miss real, currently binding QAP language.

Housing developer applicants use a single consolidated application — EOHLC's page calls it the "One Stop Application," while the QAP body itself mostly calls the same system "OneStop+" — for both LIHTC and EOHLC's other rental subsidy programs. EOHLC has begun migrating new projects to a rebuilt "Housing OneStop" portal, while existing projects continue on the older Intelligrants system; which platform a given application actually runs on is worth confirming directly with EOHLC's Division of Housing Development before assuming either one applies.

The real election: production vs. preservation, not 9% vs. 4%

The QAP retains exactly two set-asides for 2025-2026, and they — not a sponsor's free choice of federal credit type — are what actually decide whether a project can even compete for 9%. "The set-aside categories apply to both the 9% and the 4% credit. As noted earlier, HLC expects developers of preservation projects to seek the 4% credit rather than the 9% credit," the QAP states, and then goes further for preservation specifically: EOHLC "is requiring sponsors of preservation projects to structure their applications as tax-exempt bond transactions using 4% credits... All sponsors of preservation projects should anticipate that only the 4% credit will be made available for their applications." A preservation deal, in other words, is not eligible to compete for 9% credit at all under this QAP — the set-aside a project falls into is the real "program election," not a marketing choice between two equally available federal products.

New construction and adaptive re-use applications are automatically evaluated in the production category; rehabilitation only qualifies for production treatment if the units have sat vacant two or more years, were condemned or fire-damaged, or the building was previously non-residential. Everything else that's an acquisition/rehab of an existing occupied affordable property runs through preservation — and preservation applicants must additionally qualify under at least one category of "The Massachusetts Preservation Matrix" (e.g., at risk of market conversion via Section 8 opt-out or mortgage prepayment).

The $60 million state credit rides the federal application — it doesn't run its own

Massachusetts's own state Low-Income Housing Tax Credit is real, separate from the federal credit, and has grown considerably: "Since 2001, the state housing tax credit has been a highly effective source for Massachusetts affordable housing projects... DHCD initially received annual allocation authority of $10 million. Later legislative actions subsequently increased DHCD's allocation authority from $10 million to $20 million, then temporarily to $40 million. In October 2023, Governor Maura Healey signed into law a tax relief bill that permanently raised HLC's state credit annual authority to $60 million." That bill is Chapter 50 of the Acts of 2023 ("An Act to improve the Commonwealth's competitiveness, affordability, and equity"), signed October 4, 2023. Under the current QAP, EOHLC "expects to fully allocate the $60 million in authority each calendar year."

It is not a stand-alone competition: "During 2025-2026, the selection process for state credit projects fundamentally will be the same as the selection process for federal 9% credit projects. The sponsors of multifamily rental projects may request an allocation of state credit in combination with federal credit. It is important to note that state credit typically will be allocated in lieu of a portion of federal credit which the project might otherwise receive." The state credit also runs on its own claim schedule — an eligible investor claims each dollar of state credit over a five-year period, versus ten years for the federal credit — and EOHLC expects sponsors to raise "at least 80¢ per state credit dollar" from the sale. For 2025-2026 specifically, EOHLC "reserves the right to limit each sponsor to no more than one state credit award per competition."

OBBBA moved the federal math; EOHLC's own math is tighter

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (Pub. L. 119-21, enacted July 4, 2025) changed both federal levers at once. Section 70422(a)(1) amended 26 U.S.C. §42(h)(3)(I) to make permanent, for calendar years after December 31, 2025, a 12% boost to the per-capita/small-state-minimum ceiling that funds the 9% credit (replacing a smaller, temporary 12.5% boost that had applied only in 2018-2021 and then lapsed). EOHLC's own January 2026 amendment quantifies the Massachusetts impact directly rather than restating a national estimate: "The 9% annual increase will provide HLC with additional authority of approximately $3 million during 2026 and 2027." For scale, the IRS's October 2024 per-capita release for calendar year 2025 was $3.00, which EOHLC expected would produce roughly $20.7 million in Massachusetts 9% authority for 2025 — EOHLC told sponsors to "assume that HLC will allocate close to $21 million in 9% credit during 2025 and possibly during 2026."

Section 70422(b)(1) of the same Act amended 26 U.S.C. §42(h)(4)(B) to add a second path around the ordinary requirement that 9% credit be allocated competitively: a building can still get an as-of-right 4% credit if only 25% of its aggregate basis is tax-exempt-bond-financed (down from the traditional 50%), provided at least 5% of that basis is financed by bonds issued after December 31, 2025. Where several states' regulators reacted by publishing a new cap tied directly to that federal change, EOHLC's own January 2026 amendment goes further than simply adopting the new 25% floor: for 2026 and 2027, "the volume cap allocation for any one project shall not exceed 30% of the aggregate basis unless approved in writing by HLC." That 30% ceiling is EOHLC's own administrative choice, not a restatement of federal law, and it sits below even the old 50% test for most deals — EOHLC frames it explicitly as a tool "to allow for an orderly and efficient acceleration" of a bond pipeline it describes as "full through 2026" at both quasi-public agencies.

Confirm the current-year figure directly with EOHLC before underwriting: the amendment describes this 30% cap and the acceleration framework as specific to 2026-2027 and tied to an unusually full pipeline, not stated as a permanent QAP feature.

No named "hybrid" pathway — and Boston runs its own money, not its own tax credit

Nothing in the QAP or its January 2026 amendment defines a "hybrid" 9%/4% structure the way some other states' allocation plans do. The closest the Massachusetts system comes is a production-set-aside sponsor's ordinary choice between the competitive 9% path and a 4%/bond path for the same kind of new-construction project — a sequential either/or election, not a blended-credit structure within one building. This research found no QAP language describing a single project drawing both 9% and 4% credit simultaneously; treat any assumption of a formal hybrid mechanism as unconfirmed rather than importing another state's terminology.

Boston is a distinct case worth flagging precisely because it's easy to over-read. The city's Mayor's Office of Housing (MOH) runs its own annual, locally funded competition — for example, an FY2025 Request for Proposals distributing roughly $40 million through MOH itself, the Community Preservation Act (CPA) Fund, and the Neighborhood Housing Trust (NHT), with a full-proposal deadline of September 19, 2025. That is real money and a real local process, and it shows up in the QAP as local support and local funding commitment (the QAP's own local-support scoring criterion expects municipalities "with funds of their own" to commit resources). But MOH does not allocate LIHTC itself, at either the 9% or 4% level — a Boston-sited project still has to go through EOHLC for the federal 9% and state credit, or through MassHousing/MassDevelopment for the federal 4% and its bond financing, exactly like a project anywhere else in the Commonwealth. Boston's housing agencies also participate as one voice among several on EOHLC's Interagency Working Group (alongside MassHousing, the Massachusetts Housing Partnership, MassDevelopment, CEDAC, and the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation) and appear in the QAP's fair-housing and tenant-selection provisions (e.g., the City of Boston's Metrolist), not as a parallel tax-credit allocator.