Financing Solar for Affordable Housing: Legal Tools and Deal Structures

Kristin E. Niver, Counsel | Robinson & Cole LLP

Kristin E. Niver is Counsel at Robinson & Cole LLP, where her practice centers on real estate finance for affordable housing, impact finance, and community development transactions. Before practicing law, she worked as an urban planner specializing in affordable housing and policy, a background that continues to inform her transactional work. Her practice spans Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and New Markets Tax Credit syndications, community development lending, and clean energy financings for multifamily housing, including investment tax credit structures and bridge financing for direct pay tax credit transfers.

• Education & Credentials

Ms. Niver earned her Juris Doctor from the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, where she was the Howard & Irene Levine Distinguished Fellow in Affordable Housing at the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate and participated in the David J. Epstein Program in Public Interest Law & Policy with a focus on affordable housing. She also holds a master’s degree in urban planning (M.U.P./M.S.W.) from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and an A.B. with honors from the University of Chicago. She is admitted to practice in the State of New York and the District of Columbia.

• Recognition & Leadership

Ms. Niver has been selected by her peers for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America in the area of Real Estate Law since 2023. She was featured in the New York Real Estate Journal’s 2025 “Ones to Watch – Rising Stars” spotlight, received the Bisnow DMV Women Leading Real Estate Rising Star Award in 2024, and was named a “Heroine in Real Estate and Construction” finalist as part of March of Dimes’ 2025 Heroines of Washington.

• Professional Involvement

Ms. Niver serves on the board of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing and chairs both the Affordable Housing Committee (2019–present) and the Commercial Real Estate Transactions Group (2025–present, following two years as Vice Chair) of the ABA Section of Real Property, Trust & Estate Law. Her additional roles include Steering Committee Member of the Women’s Leadership Initiative of ULI Washington, Co-Chair of the DCBIA Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee, Digest Editor of the Journal of Affordable Housing and Community Development Law, Building Electrification Task Force Leader for Advanced Energy Group DMV, and advisory and committee service with Jubilee Housing and the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington.

• Experience

Ms. Niver brings more than a decade of legal experience representing banks, insurance companies, and debt funds in construction and permanent loans, debt restructurings, and secondary market transactions. She has represented market-leading banks and premier low-income housing tax credit syndicators in the syndication of Low-Income Housing and New Markets Tax Credits, advised subrecipients of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants on green loan programs financing clean energy improvements to multifamily housing nationwide, and assisted nonprofits, CDFI lenders, and green banks in structuring investment tax credit transactions, including bridge financing structures for direct pay tax credit transfers. She also represents for-profit and nonprofit developers in acquisitions, dispositions, and joint ventures.

SESSION 1 – Section 48E After OBBBA: Credit Eligibility, Monetization Paths, and Lending Structures | 1:00pm – 2:00pm

The economics of solar on affordable housing are driven first by federal tax incentives — the investment tax credit and its bonus adders, plus depreciation — and only then by debt. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) compressed the runway dramatically: solar projects that did not begin construction by July 4, 2026 must be placed in service by December 31, 2027 to claim the Section 48E credit, and prohibited foreign entity rules now constrain equipment sourcing. The presenter will explain how credit amount, eligibility certainty, and the chosen monetization path (tax equity, credit transfer, or elective/direct pay) dictate the financing structure, and how lenders bridge against those benefits through construction, placed-in-service, and cash realization. This session will also address the ownership models that determine who can use the credits — including how elective pay opened the door for nonprofits and public housing authorities — the principal lending products (ITC bridge facilities, construction financing, equipment safeharbor loans, and term debt), the collateral package and underwriting considerations unique to these transactions, and the intercreditor issues these structures present.

BREAK | 2:00pm – 2:10pm

SESSION 2 – Layering Solar onto Encumbered Properties: Consents, Intercreditor Issues, and Compliance Overlays | 2:10pm – 3:10pm

This session turns to the work of integrating a solar financing onto an already-encumbered property. Our authoritative presenter will compare how the consent, regulatory, and intercreditor landscape differs across property types: LIHTC investors and agency debt; HUD use agreements, HAP contracts, and surplus cash rules; public housing declarations of trust and RAD program requirements; and the lighter but cashflow-constrained NOAH context. Presentation time will also include discussion of compliance overlays — prevailing wage and apprenticeship, foreign entity sourcing restrictions, Build America Buy America Act (BABA), Davis-Bacon Act (DBA), and federal program flow-downs — that directly affect both credit size and loan terms. Listen as our presenter offers practical drafting and underwriting guidance, organized around a recurring deal example (a multi-property portfolio ITC bridge facility for a nonprofit owner), including beginning-of-construction and sourcing diligence, site control, and leasehold protections, as well as intercreditor and consent issues, completion assurance, recapture risk allocation, and tenant-benefit requirements.