Bank of America Community Development Banking is investing up to $150 million in equity to preserve more than 3,000 affordable homes nationwide for middle-income households in partnership with Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise), one of the nation’s largest affordable housing organizations.
Bank of America and Enterprise will help working Americans across the country earning between 80% and 120% of area median income remain in housing they can afford. According to the Pew Research Center, about half of Americans (49%) said this was a major problem where they live, up 10 percentage points from early 2018.
“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,” said Maria Barry, Bank of America Community Development Banking national executive. “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.”
According to Harvard University’s 2022 State of the Nation’s Housing report, home prices rose 20.6% from March 2021 to March 2022 and rents jumped 12%, showing that unaffordability worsened even further in the past two years.
Both Enterprise and Bank of America will leverage their national networks and resources to help accelerate the preservation of affordable housing.
“Preserving affordable housing for middle-income households is more critical today than ever as our country faces the worst housing shortage in generations,” said Lori Chatman, interim co-CEO of Enterprise Community Partners. “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.”
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