We are pleased to announce a new Program-Related Investment of $950,000 to the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund to help capitalize and launch its loan fund.
The Housing Accelerator Fund’s mission is to help produce additional affordable housing in San Francisco by attracting private investment dollars, leveraging city affordable housing subsidies, and moving quickly and opportunistically to develop housing.
When the state’s redevelopment agencies were dissolved in 2012, San Francisco lost an important source of capital for new affordable housing. In response, the city has made significant funding commitments to meet San Francisco’s housing need, most of it to be distributed via the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development.
The city’s housing market presents several obstacles to affordable housing development. First, there is not enough capital available to build the number of affordable units needed for families, seniors and low-wage workers living in the city. Secondly, in San Francisco’s highly competitive housing market developers move quickly to acquire land, which is nearly impossible for affordable housing developers who rely on city subsidies that require long administrative and compliance processes to assemble financing.
The Housing Accelerator Fund was developed as a public-private fund concept by the Mayor’s Housing Working Group in order to leverage this city funding in a new way that address these key impediments to developing affordable housing in San Francisco. The Fund will be independent of the city, thereby able to act flexibly and quickly to opportunities, either lending to developers or purchasing properties.
This Program-Related Investment is an excellent opportunity for TSFF to invest in affordable housing in San Francisco, and will help create a financing mechanism to jumpstart 500 to 1,000 units of affordable housing for low- to middle-income families by its fifth year.
As Jim Koshland, a donor and member of TSFF’s founding family said “Affordable housing is such an important issue that we are okay to take some risks to achieve important goals.”
The goal of the Fund is to finance housing projects that are aligned with the city’s housing priorities. By financing projects that are supported by the city, the Fund reduces its risk considerably. The Fund’s connection and interaction with the city’s housing leadership is baked into the Fund via Board and Credit committee membership.
The Board of the Fund aims to raise $70 million in private debt through the Fund in the first five years, leveraging the city’s $10 million investment. In the initial fundraising phase, this PRI will leverage $29 million in other investments.
In partnership with our donors, we are proud to support the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund with this investment.
Learn more about our Program-Related Investment Fund and our current portfolio of loans at sff.org/pri.
