Through Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), our national partner, Neighborhood Allies offers financing for a large range of community development projects. Today, we’re happy to announce the closing of our most recent local loan, made to Oakland Planning and Development Corporation (OPDC) to support predevelopment work for the Oakland Affordable Living (OAL) Project.
Aligning with Oakland 2025, the neighborhood’s community plan, the Oakland Affordable Living Project supports the plan’s identified housing goal to provide innovative, sustainable housing choices for diverse new residents who are attracted to Oakland’s vitality and amenities. It will also preserve workforce housing in Oakland and begin to address the need for affordable housing for low-income working people looking for good quality housing in Oakland near jobs and transportation. 
OAL will preserve and improve 24 affordable units as Allequippa Place and produce an additional 25 affordable units in a new, state of the art, environmentally innovative apartment building, at a time when the lack of affordable housing in Pittsburgh has reached a point of crisis. Five of the units will serve households earning at or below 20% area median income (AMI), twenty of the units will serve households earning at or below 50% AMI and all units will serve residents at or below 60% AMI. In addition, six units will be handicap accessible and two units will designed with audio/visual elements. Social services including health and wellness services such as chronic disease management among other supplemental support, will be provided to tenants, specifically targeting family households, by Community Human Services (CHS). OPDC also offers social and developmental programs including youth mentoring and job development.
The loan made possible by the partnership between Neighborhood Allies and LISC will allow OPDC to move forward with vital work on the project in the critical months prior to finalizing the tax credit investment and construction financing.
“We needed significant capital to cover project expenses between the time we received our tax credit award and, next spring, when we will close on the project financing. LISC moved quickly to help us keep paying the bills to move this project forward.”
-Elly Fisher, OPDC
Neighborhood Allies, LISC, National Equity Fund (NEF) and OPDC have a long history of partnering on important projects. Since 2004, LISC has invested over $575,000 in OPDC through Section 4 grants related to capacity building and, more recently, through the establishment of a Financial Opportunity Center with JobLinks. Neighborhood Allies has invested over $2 million into OPDC including $100,000 in additional funds in support of the FOC and $15,000 to support OPDC’s second LIHTC application cycle in 2016. Going back to 1988, NEF syndicated the original LIHTC equity when Allequippa Place was first redeveloped as an affordable project and exited the partnership on favorable terms, positioning OPDC to continue the operation of Allequippa Place as affordable housing.
Neighborhood Allies is excited to be able to layer on and offer this type of product to our Complete Capital model approach. It positions us to support local housing and economic development projects through early stage grants and technical assistance, acquisition and predevelopment loans, construction loans, tax credit equity and more. We support organizations and projects consistent with our role as a charitable lender and our value-add allows us to improve the success rate of projects so that we may recover our capital and make funds available to future projects.
For more information on loan products and project types available in Pittsburgh and for services and support, contact Zak Thomas at zthomas@lisc.org.
