Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP)

Advocating for Affordable and Supportive Housing in Your State Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP)

To get more people stably housed, states have an opportunity to use their Qualified Allocation Plans (QAPs) to create more supportive housing for people who need it. State leaders and Housing Finance Agencies can create more housing by using Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) and prioritizing supportive housing in their QAP.

States can leverage LIHTC to create more supportive housing opportunities for people who need a safe place to live and services to regain stability.

A comprehensive approach to addressing homelessness requires an investment in supportive housing. Housing Finance Agencies (HFAs) and state leaders can leverage LIHTCs alongside other federal resources, like Housing Choice Vouchers and Medicaid, to fund supportive housing development. They can also appropriate state resources to close funding gaps and meet the need for supportive housing in their communities.

Frequently Asked Questions

LIHTC is the main federal program for financing affordable housing in the U.S.
- Each state gets an allocation of tax credits based on the population of the state.
- The program provides tax credits to housing developers.
- Developers sell the credits to investors, which helps raise money to build or preserve affordable and supportive housing.
- In exchange, the housing must remain affordable for at least 30 years.

A QAP is a state’s rulebook for how it hands out LIHTC funding.

Every state receives a limited amount of tax credits each year from the federal government.
The state housing agency decides which projects get those credits.
The QAP lays out: priorities, scoring criteria, and application requirements.

QAPs prioritize supportive housing with:

The ability to prioritize tax credits for supportive housing.
Incentives for things like prioritizing target populations (veterans, older adults, people experiencing homelessness).
Incentives for providing supportive services.

The federal government allocates LIHTC credits to each state. The state creates or updates its QAP every year to reflect state priorities. This translates policy priorities into real housing investments.

QAPs decide what affordable and supportive housing gets built, where it gets built, and for whom—making them one of the most important tools for shaping housing policy at the state level.

Each state has a comment and review period that allows stakeholders like you to provide input into a draft QAP before it becomes final.