BCC Receives $5 Million Grant to Support Green Affordable Housing

This summer, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's Renewable Energy Trust Program announced that Boston Community Capital has been awarded a $5 million grant in connection with the organization's Green Affordable Housing Initiative. Boston Community Capital, in partnership with Massachusetts Housing Partnership, New Ecology, Inc. and Urban Habitat Initiatives, will use the grant funds to create a replicable model for the financing of affordable housing that incorporates renewable energy, energy efficiency and green design.

BCC Receives $60 Million New Markets Tax Credit Award

In June 2006, the CDFI Fund of the U.S. Department of Treasury announced that BCC has been awarded a $60 million New Markets Tax Credit. BCC will use the award to provide financing to distressed communities across the country. Read more.

BCC and Partners Announce Grants and Loans to Support 800 Units of Green Housing

Boston Community Capital and its partners in the Green Building Production Network announced that four community organizations will receive $2 million in commitments to help them build or renovate over 800 units of mixed-income housing with state-of-the-art environmental and energy design features. The projects are located in Chinatown, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Cambridge.

The funding comes from a consortium of community development financing, technical assistance and policy advocacy organizations, working together as the Green Building Production Net work (GBPN). The GBPN partners are Boston Community Capital, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, New Ecology, Inc., and the Tellus Institute. Earlier this year they launched the funding program with the issuance to Boston area CDCs of a Request for Proposals for high-impact projects that would move affordable housing into a leadership role in the emerging area of green, or sustainable development..

“This is the first major private sector green building initiative to be launched since my Green Building Task Force released its report and recommendations in November,” said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who participated in the announcement of the new funding today at one of the project sites in the heart of Dudley Square. “ Boston’s community development corporations have been leaders in the effort to create more affordable housing in our neighborhoods and now they will be leaders in building green, healthy housing for Boston’s residents. The Boston projects announced here today of course exemplify what our Leading the Way Housing program is striving for in affordable housing. Just as importantly, this Green Building initiative reflects our conviction that non-profits, private developers, financing institutions, and the public sector must be partners in advancing green development and realizing a vision that Boston will be a world class green city.”

Green building and design encompasses a wide array of issues including the conservation of natural resources, the elimination of unhealthy and dangerous materials from buildings and building sites, the long term reduction of building operating costs and the siting and design of buildings that contribute to improved regional land use patterns (or “smart growth”). In addition to supporting the use of environmentally friendly materials and equipment in CDC-developed buildings, the program expects to introduce and explore real estate development practices that could change the ways CDCs typically assemble their development teams, assess project feasibility, design their projects, package financing, and manage the real estate they own.

The four projects selected for the coordinated investments of GBPN are:

• Jackson Square Partnership – a joint venture of the Neighborhood Development Corp. of Jamaica Plain, Urban Edge Housing Corp, and private developers to develop over 450 units of mixed income housing, retail, community center and offices on 12 acres of land adjacent to the Jackson Square subway station in Roxbury.
• Parcel 24 – a joint venture of the Asian CDC and New Boston Properties to develop 315 units of new housing on land taken from Chinatown fifty years ago by the Central Artery project and returned recently by the Big Dig.
• Fort Hill Place, a new 36 unit condominium development of the Madison Park Development Corp. in the heart of Dudley Square and at the foot of Roxbury’s burgeoning Fort Hill community.
• The Greening of Cambridge Initiative of Homeowners Rehab, Inc. (HRI) will eventually upgrade HRI’s 900 unit portfolio to healthy, green housing. HRI will use GBPN’s investment to revamp the way capital needs planning and capital improvements are done by rental housing owners by incorporating sustainability considerations into capital upgrading of 40 – 60 units of its existing housing.

Read the press release.

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BCC and Partners Announce $7 Million in Grants and Loans to Support Green Affordable Housing Development

Community groups building affordable housing will have a new incentive to use energy-efficient, environmentally-friendly practices and techniques, thanks to $7 million in grants and loans provided by five financing, technical assistance and advocacy organizations. On March 3rd, Boston Community Capital and its partners announced the Green Building Production Network (GBPN), a major private sector initiative designed to enable community development corporations to build "greener" and healthier homes for low-income residents. Financing and technical assistance for the Green Building Production Network is being offered by Boston Community Capital, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, New Ecology, Inc., and the Tellus Institute.

“Boston’s community development corporations have been leaders in the effort to create more affordable housing in our neighborhoods," said Charlotte Golar Richie, Director of Boston's Department of Neighborhood Development, "Now they will be leaders in building green, healthy housing for Boston’s residents."

Members of the Green Building Production Network (pictured from left): Ed Connelly of New Ecology, Joe Kriesberg of MACDC, Madeline Fraser Cook of New Ecology, Becky Regan and Dick Jones of Boston Community Capital, James Goldstein of Tellus Institute, Mat Thall of Boston LISC, and Don Bianchi of MACDC at the kickoff event at the Boston Nature Center in Mattapan.

The GBPN expects to finance five large scale/high visibility community development projects that will integrate state-of-the art design practices into what many regard as the country’s most advanced and sophisticated community-based non-profit development industry. Projects that will receive the funding and technical assistance will be selected through a competitive process, open to CDCs working in the Greater Boston area. The projects will be selected based on the level of “greening” they are likely to achieve, their cost effectiveness, ability to use the program resources well and likelihood of being in construction in two years. The program partners, with the help of several outside experts, expect to announce the selected projects by the end of May.

The program expects to fully engage CDCs and public agencies in the goal of achieving a high level of greening by insuring that CDCs don’t lose money on green projects and that public agencies that fund community development won’t be asked to put additional money into them.

"Through many years of lending to CDCs and following their development work we have come to believe that the industry is ready to embrace some fundamental changes in how community development projects are completed,” said Dick Jones, president of Boston Community Capital’s loan fund. “There are opportunities for CDCs to collaborate more often and more effectively. The way design teams are assembled and managed, how environmental risks are managed, how work is divided between outside consultants and staff of CDCs and how financing is assembled are all issues that can be investigated and launched from the platform of green community development. We also believe that the public and private community development financing institutions must be full partners in this transformation exercise.”

"We have had some green elements and energy saving products in our projects for several years,” said Jeanne DuBois, Executive Director of Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation. “It has been a gradual process. At this point, our real estate development staff are sold on the value of green development and we want to take green design to a higher level and make it a central theme of the most ambitious projects we are now undertaking . In the end, we see green design is not just good for the environment; it is good for business. ”

Read the press release.