About

This digital tool is intended to assist Austin HFC in evaluating prospective sites for acquisition with a real-time understanding of how favorably, or unfavorably, a site scores within TDHCA’s Competitive Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) funding rounds. A LIHTC application in Texas is scored on dozens of criteria totaling over 100 points, most of which are not determined by a project’s location. However, there are 16 points shaped by spatial criteria that are essential for a LIHTC application to be competitive, and for two 9% LIHTC applications with an equal score, ties are broken using spatial criteria. This tool takes every parcel within the Austin full purpose jurisdiction and, using the parameters of the 2025 Texas QAP, estimates these essential spatial selection criteria points (from 0 to 16), which include the following:

  • Access to Opportunity and Amenities (0 to 7 points)

    • Sources: TDHCA 2024 Site Demographics file, Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones (TIRZs). Amenity Point data: OpenStreetMap, City of Austin Open Data, Texas Education Agency, Texas Health and Human Services.

  • Prior Allocation of LIHTC properties (0 to 5 points)

    • Sources: TDHCA 2024 Site Demographics file.

  • Proximity to Employment (0 to 4 points)

    • Sources: LEHD OnTheMap.

    Additionally, this tool computes each parcel’s estimated tiebreaker distance, which is the sum of the 3 closest distances of the 4 items below:

  • Closest grocery store
  • Closest library
  • Closest park
  • Closest elementary school

    • To improve loading speeds and avoid buffering issues, all parcels currently zoned as Single Family are omitted from the display.

    A number of additional data layers were added for reference, including:

  • Qualifying Census Tracts (QCTs) and Difficult Development Areas (DDAs)
  • Qualifying Census Tracts (QCTs) and Difficult Development Areas (DDAs)
  • Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones (TIRZs)
  • Parcel zoning map
  • Job Access (within 5 and 10 miles), by Census Tract
  • Median Income and Poverty Rate, by Census Tract