Aug. 18, 2026: So You Want to Be a LIHTC Developer: Making the Math Work for RAD in 2026

Bringing you the latest in tax credit news, insight, and analysis.

This is Tax Credit Tuesday with your host, Michael Novogratic.

Hello, I'm Michael Novogratic, and this is Tax Credit Tuesday.

This is the August 18, 2026 episode.

As our audience can see, my guest this week is my partner, Rich Larson.

Obviously, that's my audience on YouTube.

I don't think too many on some of the other podcast channels can see you.

So Rich is in Novogratic's Thomas River, New Jersey office.

And today's podcast is the latest edition of Tax Credit Tuesdays.

So you want to be a light tech developer series.

As our regular listeners know, this series provides a deep dive into the life cycle of developing an affordable housing property using loans and cash credits and other incentives.

Our audience can watch a playlist of all of the episodes in the series organized to mimic the life cycle of a development on our YouTube channel.

I will include a link to the playlist in today's show notes.

Now, today's podcast, Rich and I are going to discuss the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Rental Assistance Demonstration Program.

Now, the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program, which is called RAD for short, involves the creation of public-private partnerships that enable public housing authorities to access additional private sources of capital to renovate and preserve their rental housing stock.

Now, last month, as part of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, Congress raised the cap on RAD to 550,000 public housing units.

They also increased the prior cap of 100,000 units.

In addition, they eliminated the expiration date of the RAD program.

Originally, it was scheduled to expire in September 30, 2029.

Now, it's an indefinite part of the statute.

In essence, it's permanent.

Now, Rich was my guest, some of you will remember, back in January.

And we discussed why this is an opportune moment for public housing authorities to consider RAD.

Now, in light of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, we decided to record a Tax Credit Tuesday episode that focuses on RAD from the perspective of the low-income housing tax credit real estate developer.

Said differently, we wanted to focus on how low-income housing tax credit developers can access the RAD program to build, renovate, and preserve affordable housing, of course, in partnership with housing authorities.

It's a great time for this conversation as a follow-up to our January conversation.

As Rich is going to explain in greater detail, it's also important to be discussing this now because there has been a lot of staff turnover at public housing agencies over the last few years.

So this will be a good podcast for both real estate developers, lenders, syndicators to be listening or watching, as well as public housing agency staff.

Now there might be some that are newcomers who are familiar with RAD.

Even though the program has existed, it's hard for you to even believe it's been around more than 15 years.

So we will do a bit of an introduction into what RAD is and then go into some of the challenges and opportunities that we're gonna face.

There's a lot that we have to discuss today.

So if you're ready, let's get started.