Grounded Solutions Network and National Housing Trust Launch CLT Pilot Program to Scale Affordable Housing?
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-funded initiative will provide loans and technical assistance to four community land trusts seeking to expand their housing portfolios and organizational capacity?
Washington, D.C. – RealEstateRama – Four Community Land Trusts have been selected to receive a combined total of more than $2 million in loans to help increase organizational capacity and scale their community land trust (CLT) housing portfolios efficiently.
“Affordable and equitable housing is essential to a community’s health and well-being, and community land trusts help provide residents with long-term access. But despite their effectiveness, CLTs are often underfunded,” said Zoila Jennings, Lead Impact Investment Officer, RWJF. “With support from the Grounded Solutions Network and National Housing Trust, RWJF’s investment will add critical capacity-building and growth opportunities for each of the four CLTs, ultimately helping to put control of community housing back into the hands of the people who live in it.”
National Housing Trust will manage the loans through their nine-year terms and Grounded Solutions Network will provide each organization with one year of customized technical assistance with as-needed support thereafter. This assistance includes developing financial models, acquisition rubrics, and due diligence checklists to help guide work and decision-making; providing feedback on stewardship policies and procedures; and making modifications to the organizations’ ground lease fee structures to improve revenue generation.
“Shared equity housing models, such as CLTs, are gaining more and more recognition as viable paths to obtaining housing stability and building generational wealth. But one thing the nation’s ongoing housing crisis has shown is that there are not enough affordable units. Through the pilot program announced today, we’re taking an important step to address that shortfall by helping shared equity housing programs scale their portfolios so that more people can access homeownership with lasting affordability,” said Alex Cabral, Grounded Solutions Network’s Senior Principal of Innovative Finance.
“The patient capital provided through this initiative offers the CLTs the flexible resources needed to scale strategically and strengthen their long-term sustainability. By the end of the nine-year term, these organization will expand and strengthen their capacity, preserve more affordable housing, and enable more households to own stable, permanently affordable, homes” said Josh Earn, Managing Director of Lending and Innovation at National Housing Trust.
The four organizations selected for this initiative are:
- People’s Housing+ in Louisiana;
- West Side CLT in North Carolina.
Grounded Solutions conducted focus groups for CLTs and found “that having access to a flexible funding source to bridge to public subsidy would allow them to use their earned revenue and fundraising to build staff and infrastructure capacity rather than having to choose between the two,” Cabral added.
The groups chosen for the initiative had to meet the following criteria:
- Have an established shared equity program;
- Have been in operation for more than two years;
- Have at least two full-time staff members; and
- Have between 10 and 200 housing units in their portfolio.
“We are grateful to have been selected to participate in this opportunity, and we look forward to deepening our impact on the city of Atlanta and those who call it home. The access to financing will save development schedules four to five months of underwriting in addition to the saved financing costs in origination and legal fees. As a result, we’ll be able to fast-track and scale the development of identified production opportunities so we can deliver homes sooner,” said Grace Roth, Manager of Portfolio Development at the Atlanta Land Trust. “Through the guidance of Grounded Solutions Network’s technical assistance, we will create and hone the best practices and procedures for evaluating projects, minimizing risk, and maximizing impact.”
“We’re honored to be selected for this pilot and excited about what it means for the future of our work in New Orleans,” said Oji Alexander, CEO of People’s Housing+. “The combination of financing and technical assistance will allow us to move more quickly on projects that would otherwise be delayed due to capital gaps. That means more homes, delivered faster, for the families we serve. Beyond housing production, Grounded Solutions Network’s technical assistance will deepen our organization’s knowledge of the community land trust model, building internal capacity and helping us to strengthen our homebuyer and stewardship policies in a manner that incorporates best practices.”
For more information on how Grounded Solutions Network is working to scale shared equity models, visit https://groundedsolutions.org/how-we-do-it/innovative-finance/.
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Founded in 2016 through a merger of the National Community Land Trust Network and Cornerstone Partnership, Grounded Solutions Network is the nation’s premier nonprofit leader for lasting affordability, focused on cultivating equitable and inclusive communities across the United States by advancing affordable housing solutions that last for generations.
Contact: Izzy Woodruff |
