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

One agency, two tracks, and WCDA is its own bond issuer

WCDA was created in 1975 as "a body corporate operating as a state instrumentality operated solely for the public benefit" under the Wyoming Community Development Authority Act, and that same enabling statute (W.S. 9-7-101 through 9-7-125) gives WCDA its own authority to issue revenue bonds -- WCDA is not a pass-through applicant to some separate state bond bank or the State Loan and Investment Board. The 2027 AHAP's own 4% Bond Awards section confirms this operationally: developers are told to coordinate with "WCDA, WCDA's bond counsel, Developer bond counsel, and any underwriters and/or financials advisors" to draft a Bond Inducement Resolution, and WCDA itself conducts the public TEFRA hearing required before it can communicate its intent to issue the bonds. Any project expenditure made more than sixty (60) days before that Inducement Resolution cannot be reimbursed from bond proceeds, and no more than two percent (2%) of bond proceeds may be spent on the costs of issuing the bonds themselves -- issuance costs above that 2% must be funded from other sources.

The two tracks run on genuinely different calendars and under genuinely different rules. The 9% Credit competes in a single annual round against a fixed application deadline and WCDA's scoring criteria. The 4% Non-Competitive Bond track is open from January 1 through August 30 each year (with its own 30-day-advance Letter of Intent requirement) and is explicitly exempted from scoring: "4% only applications are not subject to the competitive process." The one complication is HOME and NHTF layering -- a 4% Bond deal that also wants WCDA's HOME or NHTF gap funds cannot request that funding on the rolling 4% calendar at all; those specific requests "will only be accepted during the 9% competitive round," and WCDA does not even consider them until after the current year's 9% awards have already been decided and presented to the Board.

Application fees follow a separate, size- and program-based schedule: $1,000 for a 9% project of 24 units or fewer, $2,000 for a larger 9% project, a flat $3,000 for any 4% Non-Competitive Bond application, an extra $2,500 for any project electing Income Averaging (see Phase 5), and a flat $500 for Tribal Applicants, Non-Profit Organizations, and CHDOs regardless of program track. WCDA also caps how much of either track any one sponsor or project can absorb: no more than two applications per developer/owner per funding round, and, at WCDA's sole discretion, no more than sixty percent (60%) of available credits, HOME, and/or NHTF funds to any one project.

No formal 9%/4% "hybrid" election, and no Wyoming state tax credit riding alongside either one

This research did not find a dedicated blended-election mechanism in the AHAP -- nothing describing a single project split between 9% and 4%/bond financing, and no forward-commitment provision tying a current 4% award to a future 9% round the way some other states structure it. "Hybrid" financing in Wyoming, on this record, means layering a 9% or 4% federal credit with WCDA's own HOME and/or NHTF subsidy inside the same deal (subject to the timing restriction above), not a blended federal-credit election. A developer contemplating a genuinely twinned 9%/4% site plan -- separate buildings or phases financed under separate credit types -- should confirm directly with WCDA how the two-applications-per-round cap and the per-unit cost tables in Attachment A (see Phase 6) would apply to that structure, since the AHAP's text does not address it.

Wyoming levies no state individual or corporate income tax, which forecloses the most common mechanism other states use to build a companion state housing tax credit (a credit against state income tax liability, sold or syndicated alongside the federal 9% or 4% credit). This research found no evidence of any alternative Wyoming state-level tax-credit mechanism for affordable housing -- current legislative activity in this space (a 2023 bill authorizing a county-option tax for affordable housing, and 2025 interim-committee discussion of expanding tax-increment financing to affordable housing projects) is financing and revenue-capture policy, not a tax credit paired with the federal LIHTC. Do not assume a Wyoming-equivalent to a state LIHTC exists; none was found.

The 25% bond test: WCDA's own document already caught up to OBBBA

The 2027 AHAP's 4% Bond Awards section states the requirement in exactly these terms: "To ensure the twenty-five percent (25%) test is met, at least twenty-five percent (25%) of the project's aggregate basis (i.e., land costs, plus any depreciable assets) must be financed by tax exempt bond proceeds (plus any interest earned on the bonds) for the entire eligible basis of the project." That is a real, verifiable change from the prior cycle: the 2026 AHAP (finalized July 2025) states the identical requirement at the old federal floor -- "at least fifty percent (50%) of the project's aggregate basis...must be financed by tax exempt bond proceeds." WCDA moved from 50% to 25% between the 2026 and 2027 plans, and nothing in the 2027 AHAP's text suggests an additional, WCDA-specific floor above the new federal 25% minimum -- the Authority appears to have simply adopted the federal number as its own.

The underlying federal change is H.R. 1 (119th Congress), signed into law July 4, 2025 as Public Law No. 119-21 -- popularly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, though that short title was struck from the bill's own text during Senate passage, so the law carries no official short title. It amended IRC Section 42(h)(4)(B) to reduce the long-standing "50% test" to a "25% test": a building can qualify for 4% credits on its full eligible basis if 25% or more of the aggregate basis of the building and land is bond-financed, provided at least 5% of that aggregate basis is financed by bonds from an issue with an issue date after December 31, 2025. The reduced test applies to buildings placed in service after December 31, 2025. A developer modeling a Wyoming 4% deal should confirm which AHAP vintage (2026 vs. 2027, or later) actually governs their specific application round, since citing the wrong year's plan means underwriting to the wrong bond-financing floor.

Two basis-boost regimes, and only one reaches a 4% Bond deal

Wyoming has its own state-administered basis boost, separate from the federal Qualified Census Tract (QCT) / Difficult Development Area (DDA) boost, and the AHAP is explicit that 4% Bond projects cannot use it: "4% Bond projects are not eligible for the WCDA Difficult to Develop Area (DDA) basis boost under IRS Sec. 42(d)(5)(B)(v). However, projects are eligible for the basis boost if located in a federally designated Qualified Census Tract or DDA as published in 'Attachment A.'" WCDA's own DDA designation (available only to 9% Credit projects, per this exclusion) allows up to a 30% increase in eligible basis, but requires a written waiver request and narrative, and at least 75% of the project's units restricted at or below 50% AMI; it is not available for acquisition costs, and WCDA separately weighs Tribal land, USDA Rural Development qualification, historic preservation, and location in a census tract without an existing active LIHTC development as supporting factors. As of the 2027 AHAP, Attachment A lists no HUD-designated Difficult Development Areas in Wyoming at all -- the only boost-eligible geography identified is a short list of federal QCTs (one Casper tract and several non-metropolitan tracts in Albany, Fremont, and Sweetwater counties).

Qualified Contract is waived the moment either reservation is accepted

WCDA does not allow a Qualified Contract exit under either program track. Accepting a reservation of tax credits -- 9% or a tax-exempt-bond-financed 4% award alike -- requires executing a Tax Credit Reservation Agreement that waives the owner's right to ask WCDA to find a buyer under IRC 42(h)(6)(E), (F), and (I); the AHAP states this applies equally to "tax credit projects financed with tax exempt bonds under IRC 142(d)." This is a program-election-stage commitment, not something negotiated later in compliance.