Bank of America Commits $150M for Middle-Income Affordable Housing
By Andrew Coen January 23, 2023 4:31 pm
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Bank of America (BAC) is banking on a new investment in affordable housing for middle-income earners.
The company announced Monday that Bank of America Community Development Banking, in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners, will deploy up to $150 million in equity to preserve more than 3,000 affordable units nationwide for middle-income households. The initiative aims to preserve affordable housing for Americans earning between 80 percent and 120 percent of an area’s median income.
“As rent costs outpace income growth, the continued lack of affordable housing inventory is forcing families to make difficult decisions on how and where they live,” Maria Barry, Bank of America Community Development Banking national executive, said in a statement. “This fund will focus on the ‘missing middle,’ which refers to middle-income individuals who make too much money to qualify for subsidized housing but make too little to afford market-rate housing in their community.”
Affordability for middle-income earners has become more challenging over the last two years with rents jumping 12 percent between March 2021 and March 2022 while home prices rose 20.6 percent over the same period, according to Harvard University’s 2022 State of the Nation’s Housing report.
Enterprise, one of the nation’s largest affordable housing organizations, has teamed up with Bank of America for more than 30 years on efforts to create and preserve affordable homes.
The new $150 million investment expands the partnership by enabling affordable housing developers to acquire existing properties that are at risk of being converted into market-rate units.
“Preserving affordable housing for middle-income households is more critical today than ever as our country faces the worst housing shortage in generations,” Lori Chatman, interim co-CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, said in a statement. “Through our work with Bank of America, we are able to fill a gap to creatively finance projects that will preserve the supply of affordable homes and build resilience and upward mobility for thousands of families.”
Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.
