HDC Board Authorizes $721 Million, including $564 million in Bonds, to Finance the New Construction and Preservation of 5,205 Affordable Homes
Two New Programs Offer Greater Flexibility to the City’s Efforts to Preserve Affordable Housing
New York, NY –- (RealEstateRama) — Following approval by its Board of Directors at a meeting on June 5, the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC) announced plans to issue up to $563.5 million in tax-exempt multi-family housing revenue bonds and provide more than $157.3 million in additional financing to fund the new construction and preservation of 17 affordable housing developments across the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan. The latest bond issuance combines an allocation of new private activity bond volume cap and an allocation of recycled volume cap, maximizing the impact of this limited and valuable resource for the development of affordable housing.
This funding will provide enough housing for an estimated 13,000 New Yorkers through the creation and preservation of more than 5,200 affordable homes, furthering the Mayor’s goals under Housing New York: A Five-Borough, Ten-Year Plan to create and preserve more than 200,000 units.
“I applaud the entire HDC team, members of the Board, and Chairwoman Torres-Springer for their dedication to advancing the Mayor’s visionary affordable housing plan.” said HDC President Eric Enderlin. “Amidst growing threats in Washington to the programs that underlie much of our work, the City continues to work closely with our partners across all levels of government to push out robust financing solutions so that we can build a more affordable city for the people of New York. Thanks to the collaboration of so many of our public, private and non-profit partners, the funding and programs approved today mean more than 13,000 New Yorkers will no longer have to worry about searching for a safe and affordable place to live.”
“More than ever before, we need to be working in multiple gears to protect and expand the resources available for affordable housing, while pushing forward on the goals of the Mayor’s housing plan. The financing authorized by the HDC Board leverages critical federal programs to secure another 5,000 affordable homes for New Yorkers, and new programs approved provide greater flexibility to preserve the affordability of the existing housing stock,” said HDC Chairwoman Maria Torres-Springer. “I would like to thank my fellow board members, the hard-working HDC team, and all our project partners for helping to find innovative solutions to our city’s housing crisis.”
The latest round of funding will make possible nine new construction projects with a total of 1,732 units created, including six projects financed under HDC’s Extremely Low & Low-Income Affordability (ELLA) program and three under HDC’s Mix & Match program. Projects include two new hundred percent affordable housing developments on underused land at NYCHA’s Ingersoll Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn and Mill Brook Houses in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx. Ingersoll Senior Housing, developed by BFC Partners, will create 146 new apartments for seniors and a senior center operated by non-profit Services and Advocacy for LGBT Elders (SAGE) with a full range of social, health, cultural and educational services; Mill Brook Terrace, developed by non-profit organization the West Side Federation for Senior and Supportive Housing (WSFSSH), will include 159 homes for seniors as well as a senior center, commercial kitchen, roof-top garden and neighborhood community space and is being. Both developments will receive project based Section 8.
The Board authorized funding for the preservation of 3,473 units of existing affordable housing across eight projects, including the rehabilitation of Bix Six Towers, a 980-unit cooperatively owned middle-income Mitchell-Lama development with approximately 65,000 square feet of commercial space in the Woodside neighborhood of Queens. Other projects include Lott Legacy Apartments, which consists of 359 mixed-income units, including 71 homeless units, across 20 buildings in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan and BEC Continuum, with 548 low-income units, including 166 homeless units, across 42 buildings in the Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Sunset park neighborhoods of Brooklyn.
The HDC Board also approved two new programs to provide greater flexibility to the City’s preservation efforts. The Federal Financing Bank (FFB) Preservation Program Pilot builds upon the success of the existing FFB program, a partnership with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Treasury to provide low-interest financing to projects that are being funded by state and local agencies through a risk-sharing structure with HUD. The new Pilot unlocks the use of up to $200 million to expedite the financing needs of preservation developments within HDC’s existing portfolio facing significant capital needs and increasing pressure to exit affordability.
Authority was also granted for the use of up to $100 million to facilitate the preservation of projects under the Mitchell-Lama Restructuring Program (MLRP). Since December 2004, HDC has successfully preserved over 70 Mitchell-Lama properties totaling approximately 39,000 units that were at risk of converting to market rate housing. The updated program reflects HDC’s ongoing collaboration with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) to develop creative and competitive financing products, while leveraging other public resources, to address the unique challenges facing the Mitchell-Lama portfolio.
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About the New York City Housing Development Corporation (HDC):
HDC is the nation’s largest municipal Housing Finance Agency and is charged with helping to finance the creation or preservation of affordable housing under Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Housing New York plan. Since 2003, HDC has financed more than 120,000 housing units using over $13.7 billion in bonds, and provided in excess of $1.6 billion in subsidy from corporate reserves. HDC ranks among the nation’s top issuers of mortgage revenue bonds for affordable multi-family housing on Thomson Reuter’s annual list of multi-family bond issuers. In each of the last four consecutive years, HDC’s annual bond issuance has surpassed $1 billion. For additional information, visit: http://www.nychdc.com
