Site control and due diligence — Guam

GHURA's site control threshold -- and a real, verified change between the 2024 and 2025 QAP

GHURA's 2025 QAP treats Site Control as a pass/fail threshold requirement, not a scored criterion. At application, the applicant must have "control of the site in a form acceptable to GHURA," with evidence submitted at the time of application. At reservation, the standard tightens: site control must be "in a form acceptable to GHURA prior to GHURA entering into an allocation with the applicant," and "[a]ll lease terms must extend a minimum of five (5) years past the minimum affordability period." Acceptable evidence at application includes a fee simple deed, an executed land lease, or other documentation acceptable to GHURA; at reservation, an executed lease or sale option agreement is also acceptable.

The 2024 QAP's equivalent threshold item was titled "Site Control and Zoning" and required more: "Applicant should have a site that is properly zoned and ready for development. Zoning should include the description, land use classification, whether your project will conform to existing zoning for the property and documentation." That explicit zoning-conformance language does not appear anywhere in the 2025 QAP's Site Control item, which is titled simply "Site Control." This is a real, textual, year-over-year change confirmed by comparing the two documents directly -- not a change this research is speculating about. It does not mean Guam's underlying zoning law stopped applying; 21 GCA Chapter 61 and Guam's permitting agencies still govern whether a site can actually be built as proposed (see Phase 3). What changed is narrower: GHURA's own application-stage paperwork checklist no longer asks the applicant to document zoning conformance as part of clearing the Site Control threshold item specifically. A 2025 applicant should not read the QAP's silence on zoning here as license to skip confirming it elsewhere in the deal.

Guam's land tenure is not a single system -- and the QAP does not address any of its complications

A parcel on Guam can sit under any of several distinct ownership and tenure regimes, and "site control" means something different under each. Government of Guam (GovGuam) land is administered through the Department of Land Management's Public Land Administration Division. Private fee-simple land functions as it does on the mainland. Two other categories are Guam-specific and neither is mentioned anywhere in GHURA's QAP:

The Chamorro Land Trust, created by the Chamorro Land Trust Act of 1974 and administered by the Chamorro Land Trust Commission (CLTC), holds and leases approximately 20,000 acres -- about 15% of Guam's total land area -- to eligible Chamorro beneficiaries, typically at $1.00 per year for a 99-year term. A 99-year CLTC lease term is long enough, on its face, to satisfy GHURA's "5 years past the minimum affordability period" test even for a 9% award's 45-year affordability period. But a CLTC lessee's ability to sublease, assign, or otherwise commit the parcel to a third-party LIHTC developer is governed by the Chamorro Land Trust Act and CLTC's own rules, not by anything in GHURA's QAP -- and this research did not find any GHURA guidance addressing how a CLTC leasehold should be documented or what CLTC/DLM approvals a developer needs before GHURA would treat it as "site control in a form acceptable to GHURA." That gap should be closed directly with CLTC and GHURA before counting a CLTC-leased parcel as controllable on the same timeline as a fee-simple or GovGuam site.

The Guam Ancestral Lands Commission, created by the Guam Legislature by statute in 1999, exists to receive "excess" federal land -- principally former or surplus DOD land -- transferred to the government of Guam, with the ultimate goal of returning it to the original landowners or their heirs. The Congressional Research Service's 2023 report on Guam describes this as a live, ongoing, and at times contentious issue: Guam officials have "repeatedly requested DOD to turn over ownership of excess lands," and land-use tensions around active military ranges (including a 2020 live-fire training range agreement that drew public protest) remain unresolved as of that report. A parcel that has only recently passed from DOD to GovGuam, or that sits within an area subject to an original-owner claim under the Ancestral Lands process, can carry title complications that a standard title search calibrated to mainland conventions may not surface. GHURA's QAP does not mention the Ancestral Lands Commission, DOD land returns, or original-owner claims anywhere in its text.

Capital Needs Assessment and Phase I Environmental Assessment -- and what GHURA's own environmental due diligence does not reach

For any project acquiring an existing property, GHURA requires a Capital Needs Assessment (CNA) reviewing all units: a qualified third party's opinion of the property's current physical condition, identifying deferred maintenance, physical deficiencies, and material code violations, and flagging anything that must be addressed immediately for health, safety, or legal compliance. A Phase I Environmental Assessment is required for every application regardless of new construction or acquisition/rehabilitation status; for acquisition/rehabilitation projects specifically, the QAP requires the Phase I to address lead-based paint and asbestos.

Beyond that single Phase I ESA requirement, GHURA's QAP text does not mention flood risk, FEMA flood zones, wetlands, coastal zone management, or the Guam Environmental Protection Agency (GEPA) anywhere -- confirmed by direct review of both the 2025 and 2024 QAP documents. None of Guam's separate environmental permitting apparatus is referenced, cross-linked, or required by GHURA as part of LIHTC due diligence. That does not mean the apparatus doesn't apply to a Guam LIHTC site -- it means GHURA is not the agency checking it, and a due-diligence plan built only from the QAP's own checklist will miss it entirely.

The permitting layer GHURA's QAP never mentions: Guam EPA, DPW, and federal coastal/wetlands review

The Guam Environmental Protection Agency (GEPA) administers a substantial slate of locally mandated permits that sit entirely outside GHURA's LIHTC process but squarely inside any real Guam construction project's own timeline. For land development specifically, GEPA's published permit list includes a Clearing, Grubbing, Grading and Stockpiling Permit; a Soil Importation Permit; a General Permit for earthmoving work and full construction; and an Environmental Impact Assessment Short Form. Depending on site conditions, GEPA also administers well drilling/operating permits, Underground Injection Control permits, water quality certifications, and holding-tank permits for wastewater. Construction permits themselves are submitted through the Department of Public Works' One Stop Center in Upper Tumon, which GEPA's own materials describe as coordinating with these other reviews rather than issuing them directly.

Where a site touches wetlands or the coastal zone, two additional federal-adjacent reviews can apply: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permitting under the Clean Water Act, and a Federal Consistency review carried out locally through the Bureau of Statistics and Plans' Guam Coastal Management Program. GEPA's own public materials describe part of its role as making sure project applicants are aware of these federal-process obligations alongside its own locally issued permits. This research did not find a single, GHURA-published sequencing guide showing how a LIHTC applicant should stack GHURA's own threshold items against GEPA's permits, DPW's construction-permit process, and the entitlement track covered in Phase 3 -- an applicant has to build that sequence themselves, from separate agencies, none of which GHURA's QAP names.

Minimum affordability period and the lease-term math it forces