Mayor Bill de Blasio. Image credit: CityLand
The fund currently has $210 million in lendable proceeds. On January 21, 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio, along with the Taskforce on Racial Inclusion & Equity, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, the Housing Development Corporation, Enterprise Community Partners, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and a coalition of public, private and philanthropic partners announced that the New York City Acquisition Fund (NYCAF) will exclusively serve Minority and Women-Owned Businesses (M/WBEs) and nonprofits to support affordable and supportive housing development.
The New York City Acquisition Fund is a public-private bridge loan fund available to developers committed to building and preserving affordable housing. The fund was launched in 2006 and since launch the lending volume of the fund has exceeded $530 million and resulted in 14,200 new or preserved affordable homes citywide.
The fund, currently with a lending volume of $210 million, will finance projects led by M/WBE or nonprofit developers with a minimum 51 percent ownership stake in the project. The announcement helps preserve the fund for the borrowers most in need of financing to build affordable housing and promotes the City’s commitment to an equitable post pandemic recovery. This change follows another announcement last November that requires a M/WBE or nonprofit to hold a minimum 25 percent ownership stake in any affordable housing project awarded on public land.
Mayor de Blasio stated, “Affordable housing shouldn’t just offer a place for New Yorkers in underserved communities to live – its construction should offer opportunity to those New Yorkers, too. I’m proud to stand with partners across government to support developers who give back the most to the New Yorkers they serve.”
HPD Commissioner Louise Carroll stated, “We are thrilled that the Fund will be building on the City’s efforts to increase investments in M/WBE and nonprofit developers that share our deep commitment to the communities we serve. The NYC Acquisition Fund is a tremendous partner, and their work will be invaluable to the recovery and ensuring that we reach the communities most in need. I applaud Enterprise and LISC for their remarkable work. This is a testament to what can be accomplished when philanthropy, private partners, nonprofits, and government all come together for a common goal.”
By: Veronica Rose (Veronica is the CityLaw fellow and a New York Law School graduate, Class of 2018.)
This article may be summarized as follows:
NYC will go into debt to become a lender of last resort to offer bridge loans for untenable development projects in order to lose tax revenue so that carcereal housing can be built on gentrified land for which developers are already getting a 421-a or other subsidy and the city will neither own nor recieve tax income for decades.