HOUSING PROGRAMS

RESOURCES

Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund

Their Mission

The Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund’s mission is to create and sustain vibrant neighborhoods and communities. Through its lending and investment, the Fund is the flexible source of alternative financing for affordable housing and community development in the greater New Haven area.

The Greater New Haven Loan Fund

Provides low interest financing for projects which:

• Enlarge the stock of affordable housing
• Revitalize or stabilize neighborhoods
• Foster community development
• Encourage resident control and ownership

Offers a financially sound opportunity for individuals and organizations to make socially responsive investments in housing and community development projects. Provides technical assistance, financial counseling and information to non-profit developers, community and religious groups, government agencies and others in the region, who work to create and sustain vigorous neighborhoods.
www.gnhclf.org 

Neighbor Works New Horizons

Their Mission

To develop and operate permanently affordable quality housing that builds strong, healthy and vibrant communities through active resident and community participation and leadership.

Our Principal Efforts

We work to achieve our mission through three principal efforts: We acquire abandoned or vacant properties and then renovate or build quality affordable rental homes, homeownership or commercial spaces; When renovations or construction are completed we provide property management to help maintain the permanent affordability; And we partner with our residents to empower them to improve the quality of their lives by meaning full participation in the decision-making processes about their homes. NWNH offers its residents leadership training and community organizing support.

Their Vision

In 2002 we developed a Strategic Plan that challenged the agency to grow significantly over the next several years. In the first ten years of its existence NWNH had acquired and developed 131 units of permanently affordable housing. The Strategic Plan called upon NWNH to grow to 500 units by the end of 2009.
http://www.nwnh.net/index.php

Yale University Homebuyer Program

The Yale University Homebuyer Program was created in 1994 by President Richard C. Levin to encourage employees to invest and live in New Haven. It is reviewed every two years and has had great success in the fourteen years since it began, helping 842 Yale University employees purchase their homes. Yale University’s program is the largest and most generous such employer-assisted homeownership program offered by any institution of higher education in the nation.

Phase 8 of the Yale Homebuyer Program increases the annual payment to each participant from $2,000 per year to $2,500 for up to ten years total, together with a first-year incentive payment of $5,000 for a total grant of up to $30,000 per employee homebuyer.

As of December 31, 2007, 835 Yale University employees had bought homes through the program. The Yale University Homebuyer Program area includes all of the city’s Empowerment Zone neighborhoods – Dixwell, Dwight, Fair Haven the Hill, Newhallville, West Rock – as well as Beaver Hills, Wooster Square,and a portion of East Rock. Its success is a strong affirmation by the University and its employees in the vitality and renaissance of New Haven.

The Yale University Homebuyer Program is one part of the University’s long-term community investment program with New Haven, which also includes extensive programs with the public schools citywide; development of retail, arts, and culture in downtown; the creation of new businesses with more jobs and taxes for the community. For more information on Yale University’s community investment program and partnerships with New Haven, please click here.

360 State

New Haven’s newest housing project is scheduled to open in August 2010, this $180-million, 32-story, mixed-use tower on a long-underutilized site in New Haven’s central business district. The 700,000-sq-ft project, known as 360 State Street, will feature 500 apartments, 16,000 sq ft of street-level retail space, a grocery store, parking garage and an early childhood education center. It will occupy a full block fronting State, Chapel and Orange streets. The tower is next to the Connecticut Financial Center, and it will be the second-tallest building in New Haven and the city’s largest residential building. It represents the first major new residential construction in the downtown area in at least 20 years.

The development has been selected as a pilot project for the LEED Program for Neighborhood Development, and developers are seeking LEED silver rating for neighborhood development, which includes both energy standards and general neighborhood impact standards. The building will be the first LEED silver residential project in Connecticut. Among the green features in the building are photovoltaic arrays, recycled and local materials and a 400-kilowatt fuel cell. The green measures are projected to cut energy use by about 35%. The project is being financed primarily by the Multi-Employer Property Trust, a real estate equity fund that represents union pension plan investors. About 10% of the project will be funded by public financing, which will go toward 50 affordable units, a public garage and the energy-efficiency measures.

Rents for the 450 market-rate apartments will range from $1,300 a month for a studio to $5,000 a month for one of the four penthouses. Becker says there are virtually no vacancies in the city’s high-end rental buildings.

Other developments in the area are also expected to bring more renters into New Haven. They include a 490,000-sq-ft Yale New-Haven cancer center six blocks from 360 State Street and 600,000 sq ft of office and retail projects under development on nearby Park Street.