Site sourcing and screening — Indiana

What the two-week screen looks like in Indiana

IHCDA — the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority — runs Indiana's 9% and 4% LIHTC program under its own Qualified Allocation Plan, currently the 2026-2027 QAP (Board-approved, covering both the 2026 and 2027 annual 9% competitive rounds). The screening pattern is the same shape as any other state's: an analyst has a site and spends the next one to two weeks working through a checklist before it's worth an LOI.

Two decisions come out of this phase, same as anywhere else. The first is whether to pursue the site. The second is what price goes into the option or purchase agreement — and in Indiana that number does something concrete almost immediately: if any IHCDA resource is used for acquisition, eligible basis for acquisition credits is capped at the lesser of the price actually paid or the property's 'as is' appraised value, per an Indiana-licensed appraiser's USPAP report dated within six months of the deadline. An LOI written above appraised value doesn't get scored down later — it loses eligible basis directly.

Site control: four forms, and the lease option ties to a variable Extended Use Period

IHCDA accepts exactly four forms of site control evidence, and it names them plainly rather than defining an abstract 'enforceable rights' test the way some states do.

Two mechanics are easy to miss. First, site control documentation must be in the name of the Development Owner or Applicant — not an affiliate — and unlike almost every other required exhibit, it is explicitly exempted from the QAP's general six-month document-age rule, as long as the expiration date falls after the anticipated reservation date. Second, the long-term-lease option's minimum term is not a fixed number the way it is in some states' QAPs. Indiana's default Extended Use Period is 30 years (an initial 15-year Compliance Period plus 15 additional years), but an applicant can elect a 35-year term for 2 affordability-scoring points or a 40-year term for 4 points — and that election, made at application, is exactly the number a lease-option's minimum term has to clear. A lease negotiated to a 30-year floor can strand an application that later decides to chase the extra points.

Zoning is a certification you request, not a code you read — and it isn't universal

The QAP's zoning threshold item is a certification requirement: a letter from 'the appropriate authorized government official (e.g., zoning commission)' stating that current zoning allows the proposed construction, reuse, or rehabilitation and operation without a variance — required even for a straight rehab. Where the Applicant can document a failed attempt to obtain that letter, an attorney's opinion substitutes. Failing to secure either one is a threshold failure, not a scoring deduction.

What the QAP doesn't ask, because Indiana law doesn't require it, is whether the jurisdiction has zoning power to certify from at all. Indiana Code Section 36-7-4-201 frames planning and zoning as something a unit of local government elects into — 'a unit wanting to exercise planning and zoning powers in Indiana...must do so in the manner provided by this chapter' — rather than a power every city, town, or county is required to hold. In practice that means the zoning-certification threshold item can land on a jurisdiction that never adopted a zoning ordinance at all, and the QAP has no built-in fallback letter type for that scenario the way some other states' rulebooks do. It is a real, unresolved gap worth closing with local counsel before an LOI, not after.

Zoning geography also decides which funding pool the site competes in. Each 9% application competes in exactly one Development Location set-aside, and the test is more than a population lookup.

Hazard and environmental screening: an official-map-only rule, and gates that hit gap funds before LIHTC

A full Phase I Environmental Site Assessment, completed by a disinterested third party and dated within 18 months of the deadline, is required before application — it must address hazardous substances, wetlands, and floodplains, with a wetlands delineation map only where wetlands actually exist. If it turns up Recognized Environmental Conditions, the Applicant must submit a mitigation narrative, timeline, and budget, and a Phase II ESA has to be completed before closing.

Floodplain documentation runs on an IHCDA-specific rule that a screening tool can silently violate: a FIRM floodplain map must come from FEMA's own website — 'third-party maps, even those created using FEMA data, will not be accepted.' A site proposing buildings in a 100-year floodplain (Zones A1-30, AE, A, AH, AO, AR, A99) has to submit a FEMA Conditional Letter of Reclassification, a licensed surveyor or civil engineer's mitigation-cost letter, and a financing narrative at application, and a final reclassification letter plus elevation certificate at completion. Separately — and easy to conflate — a site in any variation of Zone A or B is not disqualified from LIHTC itself, but it is flatly ineligible for IHCDA HOME, HTF, PBV, or Section 811 PRA funding. A screen that reduces floodplain status to one boolean either overstates the risk on a 9%-only deal or misses a hard gate on one stacking gap funds.

Environmental contamination screening is comparatively harder-edged than in some other states: for every site, the Applicant must submit a screenshot from IDEM's Restricted Sites map, and if the property is subject to an environmental restrictive covenant that prohibits residential use, the application is disqualified at the deadline — a categorical threshold failure, not a negative-points item to weigh against the rest of the score.

Historic status carries its own documentation trail: Applicants requesting Development Fund must complete a State Historic Review under Indiana Code Section 14-21-1-18, using IDNR's Indiana Buildings, Bridges, and Cemeteries (IHBBC) map to determine National or State Register listing or local-landmark status. If the site is listed, IHCDA must obtain a Certificate of Approval from the State Historic Preservation Office before a Development Fund contract can be signed — a review that takes a minimum of 30 days once SHPO receives it.

Market Characteristics runs 42 of 165 points on real public data — and the site's own history is worth up to 15

Part 6.3, Market Characteristics, is 42 of the QAP's 165 total scoring points, and almost all of it keys off named, genuinely public datasets rather than a proprietary IHCDA model: STATS Indiana (population growth, county unemployment), HUD's Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy data (rent burden, severe housing problems, extremely-low-income share), County Health Rankings (primary-care-physician ratio), the Indiana Department of Workforce Development's Employment Projections 2022-2032, and IHCDA's own Indiana Housing Dashboard (units by decade built, vacant-and-available-unit rate).

The 'Access to Fresh Produce' evidence requirement is oddly specific and worth flagging on its own: the market study must include current interior and exterior photos of any grocery store claimed for the point — stock photos are rejected outright, and only recognized grocery chains are exempt from the interior-photo requirement.

Separately, in Part 6.2 Development Characteristics, the site's own physical history is worth real points. Three of the categories — Redevelopment of Vacant Structure, Preservation of Existing Rental Housing, and Infill New Construction — are mutually exclusive with each other, so an application can claim only one of those three. Foreclosed and Condemned Properties is a separate category that can stack on top of whichever of those three also applies.

In a program where 9% applicants need 85 of 165 points to pass threshold at all, picking the wrong site-type bucket — or one that doesn't actually qualify under the strict definitions above — is a real points swing before underwriting even starts.

Where the screen stops for Indiana today

IHCDA does not grant threshold-requirement waivers for a handful of items, and one of them is directly relevant here: a non-competitive 4% LIHTC/bond application cannot request a waiver of the requirement to submit zoning documentation or an inducement resolution. If the zoning-certification letter can't be obtained and the attorney's-opinion fallback isn't credible, there is no administrative escape hatch for a bond deal.

This research did not surface a consolidated, publicly REST-queryable statewide Indiana parcel layer comparable to what exists in some other states — ownership and assessment records live at the 92 individual County Assessor offices, and confirming county-by-county GIS coverage was out of scope for this pass. The same is true for construction cost: there is no Indiana-specific, free, unit-level affordable-housing cost dataset; the BLS Producer Price Index construction-inputs series gives escalation, not a level, and is the same federal series available in every state.

What screening can and should answer before the phone call: whether the jurisdiction has zoning to certify at all, which of the three location pools the site lands in, whether its physical history opens or forecloses the mutually-exclusive site-type points, whether it sits in a floodplain zone that specifically blocks the gap funds the deal is planning to stack, and whether an above-appraisal LOI price is about to cost eligible basis directly. None of that is available in EZFeasi for Indiana today — no Indiana parcel, zoning, hazard, market, or award data is loaded in any tool yet.