CDE Partners

Smith NMTC collaborates with Community Development Entities (CDEs) in multiple ways:

Our team is skilled in preparing and writing CDE Certification and NMTC Allocation Applications, structuring and facilitating transactions, guaranteeing the recapture risk for nonprofit CDEs, and managing all compliance, accounting and regulatory risk and reports for CDEs.

Smith NMTC provides invaluable expertise in sourcing and structuring transactions, and in liaising with the QALICBs and related parties to ensure successful closings, compliance and exits. Our project experience includes twinning state and historic tax credits with NMTCs.

We are proud of our success developing and managing NMTC programs for the following CDE Partners:

Established in 1992, the Housing Partnership Network (HPN) is a certified CDFI and CDE supporting member organizations across the United States. HPN engaged Smith NMTC’s services in 2014 to pursue their first NMTC allocation. Led by a strategic vision of making homeownership accessible to low-income people, people of color, and others who have been denied access to homeownership, HPN decided to develop a NMTC program for its affordable homeownership developer members. Through our close collaboration with HPN’s leadership, HPN received its first NMTC allocation in the 2015–2016 application round, and has now received an additional 4 allocations, the most recent $60MM award announced in fall 2024, for a total of $225M which was fully deployed in 2025 through two closings.

Community Housing Capital, Inc. (CHC) is a nonprofit CDFI and CDE with more than 23 years of experience deploying capital to finance the creation and preservation of affordable housing in low-income communities across the United States. CHC has received three NMTC allocations totaling $95MM. Smith NMTC Associates first partnered with CHC in 2020 to write and submit its first NMTC Allocation Application, which was successful and resulted in the award of $30MM in NMTC allocation. This award was deployed to 5 QALICBs to develop 111 homes in the following states: Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, Texas, and Virginia. Because CHC wanted to use their NMTC allocation to expand available product offerings to affordable for-sale housing developers and to focus on the racial equity gap in homeownership rates throughout the country, the composition of the developers’ buyers and their board and executive teams are part of the selection criteria.

Smith NMTC Associates’ partnership with Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) was formed in 2007 when Howard Smith, accompanied by Zac Boyers and Marc Hirshman of US Bank CDC, approached HFHI with an offer. They envisioned a partnership where HFHI would select HFHI affiliates to be funded—and Smith NMTC Associates would form the entity, draft an NMTC application, manage all CDE activity, and guarantee the recapture risk for HFHI and its QALICBs.

In 2008, Smith NMTC Associates pioneered our groundbreaking NMTC for-sale housing model and our multi-QALICB model in our first Habitat for Humanity International transaction, deploying $25 million to 5 Gulf Opportunity (GO) Zone affiliates. That transaction utilizing our NMTC for-sale housing model resulted in 251 homes developed and sold to families with incomes at or below 80% AMI. Over the course of our partnership, HFHI received three additional allocations, funding a total of 32 projects and resulting in 1,622 homes sold to low-income buyers.