SWERN confusion clearing up slowly

The Novogradac Katrina page is noting a circumstance that was confusing as of Friday evening but has begun to clear up over the weekend. [UPDATE MONDAY: Novogradac has updated its notes to reflect the SWERN site's clarifying changes, which are discussed in the remainder of this post.] As that page notes, Notice 2005-69 (text below) requires that taxpayers with tax credit properties must list their vacant units at www.swern.gov in order to receive emergency waivers for housing hurricane victims. As of late Friday, a visit to the SWERN site gave the confusing impression that housing could or should be listed both on SWERN's main National Emergency Resource Registry form and at hurricanehousing.net, a privately organized housing referral site that is working closely with disaster relief authorities.

Over the weekend, references to hurricanehousing.net appear to have been removed from the SWERN site, thus more clearly directing landlords to the National Emergency Resource Registry form. However, it's still unclear precisely what actions are required, for example, of a tax credit building's landlord who finds a disaster-displaced tenant through a private referral. The IRS notice does pretty clearly make www.swern.gov the gateway for landlords to qualify for waivers, but some more explanation would be helpful about who does what next.

We are hoping to get more clarity on this matter when public offices reopen tomorrow. In the meantime, if any readers have information or links to share, do please use the comments box.

By the way, in addition to the Novogradac list of state housing finance authorities' disaster relief efforts, there's a further disaster relief page at Oregon Housing and Community Services, which is inviting its tax credit housing partners to list vacant units.