October 27, 2005 | Read Time: 1 minute
Seven national organizations have promised $40-million for a project with the New York City government to create low-cost housing for thousands of residents.
Among the grant makers involved:the Ford Foundation, in New York; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, in Chicago; and the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York. The money will go to the newly created New York Acquisition Fund. The fund is designed to serve as a form of collateral that nonprofit housing developers can use to secure private loans needed to acquire property that will be used for affordable-housing projects.
Officials overseeing the fund say it could be used by nonprofit developers to obtain as much as $200-million in loans from banks and financial institutions, which in turn could help create or preserve more than 30,000 low-cost housing units citywide over the next 10 years.
Some 250,000 New Yorkers are on waiting lists for public housing or housing assistance. Meanwhile, the supply of city-owned property that can be used for low-cost housing is dwindling, and the cost of acquiring privately owned property has grown substantially amid the real-estate boom.
“We can’t solve the affordable-housing crisis in New York City without a strong partnership of public, private, and philanthropic resources that pools risk and levels the playing field for developers of affordable housing by allowing them to compete for scarce land,” says Frank Degiovanni, director of economic development at the Ford Foundation.
