Earlier this month, I was pleased to serve as the keynote speaker at the Responsible Investment Forum held in Philadelphia – the third of four regional conferences sponsored by Heartland Capital Strategies in collaboration with the Blue-Green Alliance.  Through these conferences, Heartland is helping draw attention to successful strategies for revitalizing the economy and rebuilding cities through investments in real estate and clean energy. A few days later I was able to return to Philadelphia to celebrate the start-up of just this kind of revitalization project in a low-income neighborhood in North Philadelphia. The Paseo Verde project broke ground on April 10, 2012. This $48 million project is being financed in part by a $5 million allocation of New Markets Tax Credits from Building America CDE, a subsidiary of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust. The mixed-used development will be eco-friendly, transit-oriented, and will help rejuvenate the Ludlow community and generate over 300 union construction jobs. Private developers are seeing the value of other public sources being brought into play, and Building America remains committed to leveraging investments in projects that will revitalize distressed communities, create jobs, and strengthen the economy.

Eric W. Price
CEO, Building America CDE

The HIT and the labor community as a whole experienced a sad and untimely loss when Mark Ayers, HIT Board member and President of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, passed away suddenly over the weekend. President Ayers was a 38-year veteran of the labor movement, and there has been an outpouring of condolences from labor leaders in the wake of his death. “I am deeply saddened by Mark Ayers’ passing,” said AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. “We join his family in commemorating this extraordinary leader and friend.” Hilda Solis, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, said that President Ayers was “a quintessential ‘builder’ of coalitions, consensus and a great movement for workplace fairness.” Steve Coyle, CEO of the HIT, said Ayers “used his leadership position at the Department to protect and advance the well-being of working people during one of the most difficult economic crises in our nation’s history. Mark was a strong proponent of investing union pension capital to generate family-supporting union jobs. In his memory, we at the HIT rededicate ourselves to our mission of responsible investing and job creation. We will miss him greatly.”

Early this month, the medically fragile children receiving care at the Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center were relocated from their crowded rental space in Manhattan to a newly constructed, state-of-the-art facility in Yonkers, just outside New York City. The HIT provided $100 million in financing for the 165,000-square-foot, union-built project, which features a 137-bed in-patient center and an on-site school for resident children.

Click the image above to watch a local news video about the move.

A worker guides a concrete bucket into position over The Moderne, the HIT-financed high rise which recently celebrated a “topping out” ceremony to mark reaching the highest point in the construction of the 30-story  tower. The HIT’s investment of $42.4 million in this $56.7 million Milwaukee project is creating approximately 350 union construction jobs.

Carol Nixon, director of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) New York City office, joined the discussion of affordable housing challenges in Manhattan in a recent article in the Novogradac Journal of Tax Credits. “The issue is that we have an influx of new residents in Manhattan,” said Nixon. “The city’s population is growing and there’s just a great need for affordable housing here. When [we] have a 0 percent vacancy rate…we have to develop creative solutions for providing new housing.”

Click here to read about the ways in which the HIT is helping New York City meet its housing needs.

The affordable housing gap in the United States is growing due to a combination of high unemployment, increasing poverty levels, and rising rents, the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) reports in a new Housing Spotlight research brief. According to new Census data from the 2010 American Community Survey, 9.8 million renter households qualify as “extremely low income,” but there are only 3 million rental homes that are both affordable and available to these households. This shortage of 6.8 million rental units means that only 30 rental homes are affordable and available for every 100 extremely low income renters.

“The HIT remains committed to the creation and preservation of affordable housing, as we have been from the beginning,” said Stephanie H. Wiggins, HIT Executive Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. “During these difficult economic times, it is especially important to ensure that working men and women across the country have access to safe and affordable homes that are close to the places where they work.”

To read more about this research brief and the HIT’s efforts to make high quality housing both affordable and available to local communities please click here.

Of the 45.1 million working households* in the United States, over 10.6 million now spend more than half their income on housing, according to a new report by the Center for Housing Policy (CHP), the research affiliate of the National Housing Conference (NHC). With incomes falling and housing costs on the rise, this number has risen significantly between 2008 and 2010.  “The findings of this report reveal the increasing financial burden weighing on renters and homeowners during this housing crisis,” said Ted Chandler, Chief Operating Officer of the Housing Investment Trust (HIT). “The HIT has a long history of socially responsible investing, and the creation and preservation of affordable housing has always been a high priority for us. The HIT continues to support the work of the NHC in identifying the country’s housing needs and responding with lasting solutions.” Mr. Chandler also serves on the boards of both the NHC and the CHP.

*The CHP defines working households as “those that worked at least 20 hours per week, on average, and had a household income of no more than 120 percent of the median income in their area.”