The Super RFP: A Heroic Effort to Build Affordable Housing

Nothing is more complicated, however, than funding the project.

In 2026, the cost to build a 50-unit building is around $20-$25 million. This is not the kind of money an organization like Alliance can routinely raise from individual and corporate donors, nor should it be. Everyone deserves affordable housing, so it follows that governments should be the primary source of the funds to create it. Thankfully, they are (although they should still do more, which is a conversation for a different day).

The Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (Minnesota Housing) is an agency created by the Legislature in 1971 and currently led by Commissioner Jennifer Ho. One of the big jobs at Minnesota Housing is to disburse the two primary funding sources for affordable housing in the State:

Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) that come from the Federal Government
Housing Infrastructure Bonds (HIBs) passed by the State Government.

The process for this disbursement is called the Multifamily Consolidated Request for Proposals (RFP) but is known in the industry simply as the Super RFP.

The Super RFP is due each year to Minnesota Housing around the end of June or beginning of July. The review process then takes several months, with organizations generally learning expected results in November and the Minnesota Housing Board of Directors voting on those results in December.

It takes this long to review the Super RFPs because the amount of information included in them is so tremendous it basically takes a housing superhero to put it together. Each Super RFP application takes the applicant around 120 hours of work, which doesn’t even include earlier work by the likes of engineers, architects, and surveyors to prepare the underlying documents. If you’re interested, the total needed application materials can be found here.

Once submitted, each Super RFP application is scored on a massive range of items. This includes the type of housing proposed (e.g. large family, senior, permanent supportive), whether the project has Federal rental assistance, whether the project is located near transit or a walkable area, whether the project involves BIPOC or women owned business entities, whether the project has other committed funding, and on and on. You can see a pre application self-scoring worksheet here. 

Despite the Super RFP generally disbursing a couple hundred million dollars each year, there is never nearly enough to fund all the worthy projects that get submitted. Accordingly, despite the effort to submit and review a Super RFP, it is incredibly rare for a project to get funded the first year it’s submitted. Generally, a project takes 2 or 3 years before it is funded and even then, it is not fully funded. Following a successful Super RFP submission, organizations like Alliance work to fill funding gaps with money from the City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and other non-governmental funders. This long capital funding process is the primary driver behind it taking around 5 years on average for an affordable housing development to go from an idea to a real building. 

At Alliance we undertake the Super RFP process every year. This year we submitted applications to obtain the funds to rehab our existing Gateway Lofts building as well as to purchase and rehab St. Paul’s Home. We hope to be successful this year, but even if we aren’t we will keep trying. That’s what we did on Kyle Garden Square, which was built primarily with HIBs awarded via the Super RFP, and now it’s home to 59 people who needed it.