"Delaware only has three counties -- does DSHA even run separate geographic pools the way bigger states do, and which of its scoring maps actually decide whether this site is worth a phone call?"
One QAP, updated mid-cycle -- and the update quietly dropped a geographic threshold test
DSHA's 2025-2026 Qualified Allocation Plan was originally adopted January 3, 2025 (under Governor John Carney and then-Director Cynthia Karnai) and, by its own cover page, was subsequently updated January 7, 2026 (now under Governor Matt Meyer and Director Matthew Heckles). The live copy DSHA currently publishes at destatehousing.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/2025-2026-LIHTC-QAP.pdf is the updated version -- confirmed by direct download and byte-for-byte comparison in this research -- and it is the document that governs the 2026 round, not the original January 2025 text some third-party aggregators or older cached links may still serve.
A direct text comparison between the original January 2025 QAP and the updated January 2026 QAP surfaced a change worth treating as a standalone finding: Threshold Requirement 9 in the original document, "State Strategies for Policies and Spending," required that tax credit proposals be located in Investment Levels 1, 2, or 3 under Delaware's Strategies for State Policies and Spending map. That entire threshold item is absent from the updated QAP -- neither "Investment Level" nor "State Strategies" appears anywhere in the current text. Consistent with that removal, the Environmental Threshold item's list of disqualifying site conditions also dropped "Prime farmland (Zone 4 - State Strategies for Policy and Spending)" as a standalone knockout; the updated list now runs five conditions instead of six (wetlands, non-remediated Superfund sites, threatened/endangered species habitat, unsuitable soil, and 100-/500-year flood zones). Neither change is announced or explained anywhere in the QAP's own text -- this research located it only by comparing the two documents directly, including DSHA's own tracked-changes redline of the update.
A screener working the current (2026) cycle should not disqualify a site for falling in Investment Level 4 or an Out-of-Play area, or for sitting on prime farmland -- those are no longer QAP threshold failures. That said, the underlying Strategies for State Policies and Spending map still reflects genuine, current state land-use and infrastructure-investment priorities (see the table below), and a site deep in Level 4/Out-of-Play territory may still face real practical headwinds -- lack of water/sewer infrastructure, County comprehensive-plan conflicts, or a harder path to the state investment DSHA's other scoring categories reward -- even though it can no longer be screened out by QAP threshold text alone.
No county-based pools -- Delaware's three competitive pools split by development type, not geography
Every competitive 9% application competes within one of three pools, and DSHA allocates in a fixed sequence: the highest-ranked Nonprofit Pool application is funded first (up to the amount requested, needed for feasibility, or the $1,000,000-per-development cap, whichever is lowest), and the remaining credits are then split equally between the New Housing Creation and Preservation/Rehabilitation pools, with the top-ranked project in each pool funded first. This research did not find a fixed statutory percentage target for the Nonprofit Pool itself (unlike New Housing Creation and Preservation, which split the residual credits equally) -- IRC Section 42(h)(5) requires only a 10% federal nonprofit set-aside floor nationally, and the Delaware QAP does not appear to restate a Delaware-specific percentage on top of that floor.
Nowhere in this structure does DSHA divide credits by county, region, or metro/rural status -- there is no Delaware equivalent of a three-pool geographic split like some larger states run. That said, county is not irrelevant to screening; it resurfaces in several narrower, specific scoring mechanics that consistently split New Castle County from a combined Kent-and-Sussex bloc rather than treating all three counties identically.
| Scoring or pool mechanic | New Castle County | Kent and Sussex County (combined) |
|---|---|---|
| Access to Transit (0-8 pts) | Fixed transit stop within 0.25 mile for 4 pts | Fixed transit stop within 0.5 mile for 4 pts |
| Additional Fully Accessible Units (0-5 pts) | 10% of units = 3 pts; 15% of units = 5 pts | 10% of units = 3 pts (no separate 15% tier found) |
| Leveraging of non-DSHA funds (0-10 pts) | 10 pts at 81-100% non-DSHA sources | 10 pts at 71-100% non-DSHA sources |
| Preservation scoring factor | No county-specific point | 2 of 10 points simply for being located in Kent and/or Sussex County |
| Tiebreaker (first level) | Favors whichever county did not receive a competitive award in the last funding round | Same rule, reciprocal |
This is a QAP-wide pattern, not a single scoring section -- a screener working a New Castle County site and a screener working a Kent or Sussex County site are working from different point tables in at least four separate scoring categories, even though neither county carries a dedicated allocation pool or target percentage.
One bonus-point category could not be fully resolved in this research and is flagged rather than guessed at: DSHA's Bonus Points section lists an Eligible-Point Pool named "New Creation in Sussex County," but no scoring section by that exact name was found elsewhere in the QAP. The closest match is a five-point add-on under Promoting Balanced Housing Opportunities for "New Creation developments in Eastern Sussex" -- but Eastern Sussex and Sussex County are not the same geography, and this research could not confirm with certainty that the Bonus Points table's "New Creation in Sussex County" label refers to that Eastern Sussex add-on rather than some other, unlocated scoring item. A screener relying on this bonus category should confirm its actual scope directly with DSHA before counting on it.
Investment Levels: no longer a QAP threshold, but still real state land-use policy worth checking informally
The original January 2025 QAP's Threshold Requirement 9 required that tax credit proposals be located in Investment Levels 1, 2, or 3 under Delaware's Strategies for State Policies and Spending (the current version dated 2020), with the surrounding area and proposed design compatible with existing development -- excluding Investment Level 4 and "Out-of-Play" areas outright. As described above, this requirement does not appear in the QAP DSHA updated in January 2026 and currently publishes. The table below is included as background on what the state's own land-use map still says, not as a current QAP eligibility rule.
| Level | What it generally describes | State policy stance |
|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | Municipalities, towns, and higher-density urban/urbanizing places with mixed uses and varied transportation options | Primary focus for growth; state investment supports higher densities and complete communities |
| Level 2 | Less-developed areas within municipalities, rapidly growing county areas with water/sewer service, and small towns/rural villages growing consistently with historic character | Secondary growth focus; state encourages a broader mix of housing types beyond single-family |
| Level 3 | Land in long-term county/municipal growth plans not needed for near-term growth, or land adjacent to/intermingled with Level 1-2 areas, often constrained by environmental or infrastructure issues | State infrastructure spending directed to Levels 1-2 first; Level 3 development is not prioritized in the near term |
| Level 4 / Out-of-Play | Agricultural, natural/cultural resource, and permanently protected or conserved land | State policy supports agriculture and resource protection, not new growth; excluded LIHTC sites under the original January 2025 QAP text, but no longer excluded under the current, updated QAP |
The Strategies document itself cautions that these are not "ascending levels of importance" but different categories of state policy and spending priority. Whether DSHA intends to reintroduce a version of this threshold in a future QAP cycle, or considers Investment Level informally during its own site-visit judgment call on "suitability," was not addressed anywhere in the current QAP text and was not otherwise confirmed in this research.
Location scoring: Site and Neighborhood Standards, Balanced Housing Opportunities, and Community Revitalization
Site and Neighborhood Standards (up to 20 points) is Delaware's closest equivalent to a fixed amenity table, split into Access to Transit (up to 8 points) and Amenities (up to 12 points, net of negative points). The amenity table itself runs 18 positive categories -- grocery stores, medical facilities, trails, pharmacies, childcare/senior centers, schools, libraries, parks, central business districts, community/civic centers, transit stops, banks, retail, hardware stores, post offices, fitness centers, and community facilities (worship, gardens, arts, police/fire) -- each scored at two distance bands (0.5 and 1 mile, measured along an existing right-of-way, not as the crow flies), plus five negative categories (airports, active landfills/junkyards, jails/prisons, railroads, heavy industry) scored within 0.25 and 0.5 mile radii. For projects located in unincorporated county land or a USDA-designated rural area (whether incorporated or not), every one of those distance bands is multiplied by 1.5x -- a real, quantified rural adjustment DSHA builds directly into the point table rather than handling through a separate rural pool.
Promoting Balanced Housing Opportunities (up to 20 points, plus a 5-point Eastern Sussex bonus for New Creation) is a separate track built entirely around DSHA's own "Areas of Opportunity" designation -- defined in the QAP as Delaware Market Areas A, B, and C (from the 2020 Reinvestment Fund Market Value Analysis) and/or areas where students attend schools with a HUD-defined proficiency index above 85. Family developments earn 7 points at 50-99.9% of units in an Area of Opportunity and 15 points at 100%. This is a genuinely different geography from the federal Qualified Census Tract and Opportunity Zone concepts discussed below, and a screener should not conflate the three.
Community Revitalization, Opportunity Zones, and Downtown Development Districts (up to 5 points) is a third, narrower track: 5 points for a site in a Qualified Census Tract that also contributes to an eligible Concerted Community Revitalization Plan (CCRP) -- QCT location alone, without a qualifying CCRP contribution, earns nothing in this category -- or 5 points for a site fully within a certified Downtown Development District or designated Opportunity Zone that also contributes to a CCRP, or 2 points for DDD/OZ location without a CCRP contribution. The QAP defines QCT directly, citing Section 42(d)(5)(C) of the Internal Revenue Code (50%+ of households below 60% AMGI, or a poverty rate of 25% or more), but does not independently define Difficult Development Area (DDA) anywhere in the QAP text itself -- DSHA's own separate QAP Map Reference Guide describes DDA only by reference to HUD's own dataset (areas with high land, construction, and utility costs relative to area median income, based on Fair Market Rents, income limits, and Census/ACS data), pointing screeners to HUD User's own QCT/DDA portal rather than a DSHA-maintained list.
A currency gap worth flagging in DSHA's own mapping tool
DSHA's QAP Map Reference Guide -- the document a screener would use to actually check a parcel's Area of Opportunity, QCT, DDA, DDD, or Opportunity Zone status against DSHA's own ArcGIS tool -- is itself labeled "2025-2026" but describes its own subject as "the 2023 Delaware Qualified Allocation Plan Map application." This research could not determine whether that is a stale label carried forward from an earlier document version or a substantive sign that the underlying map layers have not been refreshed since 2023. Either way, a screener should treat the live ArcGIS tool at the link DSHA publishes (not the PDF guide's text) as the actual source of truth for a specific parcel, and should not assume the map's data vintage matches the QAP's own 2025-2026 label without checking the tool's own metadata.
Where this goes wrong
- Screening against the original January 2025 QAP text (or a copy mirrored from it) instead of the January 2026 update DSHA now publishes -- the update silently dropped the Investment Level/State Strategies geographic threshold and the prime-farmland knockout that existed in the original document, with no change memo flagging either removal.
- Assuming Delaware runs county-based geographic set-aside pools because it only has three counties -- it doesn't; the three competitive pools (Nonprofit, Preservation/Rehabilitation, New Housing Creation) are organized by development type, and county only resurfaces inside specific scoring formulas that split New Castle County from a combined Kent-and-Sussex bloc.
- Disqualifying a current-cycle (2026) site for falling in Investment Level 4/Out-of-Play or for sitting on prime farmland -- both were threshold knockouts under the original January 2025 QAP text but are absent from the QAP DSHA updated in January 2026 and currently publishes.
- Counting on the Bonus Points table's "New Creation in Sussex County" eligible-point pool without confirming its actual scope with DSHA -- this research could not locate a scoring section by that exact name and could not confirm it maps cleanly onto the QAP's separate "Eastern Sussex" 5-point add-on.
- Conflating DSHA's own "Areas of Opportunity" designation (Market Areas A-C plus high school-proficiency areas, used for the 20-point Promoting Balanced Housing Opportunities category) with the federal Opportunity Zone (OZ) program, which scores separately and much more narrowly under Community Revitalization, Opportunity Zones, and Downtown Development Districts.
- Treating Qualified Census Tract location alone as sufficient for the 5-point Community Revitalization score -- the QAP awards those points only when the QCT site also contributes to an eligible Concerted Community Revitalization Plan; QCT status without a qualifying CCRP earns zero points in this category.
- Assuming DSHA independently defines and maintains a Difficult Development Area dataset -- the QAP defines QCT directly from IRC Section 42(d)(5)(C), but describes DDA only by pointing to HUD's own national dataset, without a Delaware-specific DDA list or definition of its own.
- Applying the standard (non-multiplied) amenity distance bands to a site in unincorporated county land or a USDA-designated rural area -- the QAP applies a 1.5x multiplier to every Amenities distance band in those areas, which changes what counts as "within 0.5 mile" or "within 1 mile" for scoring purposes.
- Treating DSHA's QAP Map Reference Guide's data vintage as automatically current just because the document is labeled "2025-2026" -- the guide's own text describes "the 2023 Delaware Qualified Allocation Plan Map application," a discrepancy this research could not resolve (it persists unchanged in DSHA's own June 2026 republication) and that should be confirmed against the live ArcGIS tool's own metadata before relying on a specific parcel's mapped status.
- Measuring amenity distances as straight-line/radius distances -- the QAP specifies that positive Amenities distances are measured along an existing right-of-way, not as a radius (only the negative/undesirable-use categories use a radius measurement).
- Submitting a market study older than six months from the application deadline, or one whose assumptions do not precisely match the application -- the QAP allows DSHA to deem an application ineligible outright for insufficient demonstrated market need.
- Relying on the fixed 21-day/60-day site-visit and pre-inspection windows described in the original January 2025 QAP text -- the current QAP instead points to "the published 2026 LIHTC timeline" for these dates, which sets its own fixed calendar deadlines (March 13 and March 27, 2026) that can shift from year to year.
- HUD
- LIHTC
- State QAPs
- IRS § 42
- Housing Finance Agencies