Bootstrap financing
The Caleb Foundation, a developer, preservationist and manager of affordable rental housing, is tapping a combination of funding mechanisms to finance its development projects.
Some, like Maine's recently enacted state historic tax credit program, are new facilities. Others, like U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development's (RD) Multi-family Housing Revitalization Demonstration Program (MPR), have been around for decades.
The MPR was formed to preserve and revitalize existing rural rental housing and farm labor housing projects, created under the Housing Act of 1949. Today it exists to ensure that sufficient funding resources are available to preserve and revitalize rental projects financed by RD to provide affordable housing for low-income residents.
With many low-income housing tax credit players likely to remain sidelined until their businesses become profitable again, the Massachusetts-based non-profit was lucky to have nailed down LIHTC investors at the end of last year for two projects that were ready to close in June 2008, said Debra Nutter, executive director of The Caleb Foundation.
They include the historic renovation and adaptive reuse of an old textile mill in North Berwick, Me., as 40 age-restricted affordable apartments and the acquisition and rehabilitation of a 116-unit affordable rental community in rural Dayville, Conn.
Although finding equity over the next couple of years may prove a bit
