Congressman Jon Runyan Presents $200,000 Affordable Housing Grant in Mount Holly
Mount Holly, NJ – March 12, 2013 – (RealEstateRama) — On Monday, March 11, at an event in Mount Holly, New Jersey, Congressman Jon Runyan presented The Salt & Light Company, Inc. with a $200,000 grant for the organization’s Amity Transitional Housing project. The grant, provided by the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York’s Affordable Housing Program (“AHP”), will help renovate 10 units of affordable housing for single homeless women and homeless women with children. 1st Colonial National Bank, a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, submitted the application for the funding.
“As families in New Jersey continue to struggle to recover from the housing crisis, federal affordable housing programs play a key role in helping families,” said Congressman Jon Runyan (NJ-3). “I applaud the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York for their decision to invest in much-needed affordable and supportive housing in Mount Holly. I am confident that this grant will help get low-income women and their children back on their feet, and give them a place to call home.”
“Developing affordable housing is a difficult challenge since it usually requires working with a seller who can or is willing to wait months for the closing on the sale and a couple of years for all the funding sources to be secured to fully finance the purchase and renovation of a property,” said Kent R. Pipes, president of The Salt & Light Company, Inc., a member of The Affordable Homes Group. “The Federal Home Loan Bank of New York understands this struggle and is willing to work with non-profit groups like ours to help make needed projects possible. We are thankful to the staff of both 1st Colonial Bank and the FHLB for the commitment of this $200,000 grant since we know that homeless women and children for 20-plus years will benefit from this investment in their futures.”
“Building quality affordable housing is the work of many hands,” said Richard S. Mroz, Director of the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York. “The AHP program works because it supports the strong partnerships that exist between elected officials like Congressman Runyan, community-focused local lenders like 1st Colonial National Bank, and non-profit housing organizations like The Salt & Light Company, Inc., all working together to build affordable housing for all who need it.”
The $200,000 grant will help fund the rehabilitation of two adjoining buildings which provide housing for single homeless women and homeless women with children. The renovation will reconfigure the buildings so that each resident will have a self-contained independent dwelling unit with living space, a kitchen and bath. Comprehensive on-site supportive services available for residents will include individual and group counseling; crisis intervention; and education in areas of budgeting, money management, housing and life skills training. Additional financing will be provided by the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs’ Shelter Support Program, a capital grant from 1st Colonial National Bank, developer equity and permanent financing from Roma Bank.
The Federal Home Loan Bank System’s Affordable Housing Program, created in by Congress in 1989, provides member community lenders with direct subsidies which are passed on to qualified households through a sponsoring local non-profit organization. AHP financing is combined with other funding sources to create housing for moderate-, low- and very-low-income families. Program awardees receive this funding through semi-annual competitive rounds. Each competing project must be sponsored by a financial organization that is a member of the Federal Home Loan Bank in partnership with a community-based sponsoring organization.
The Federal Home Loan Banks have distributed more than $4.6 billion in AHP funds since 1990. At the Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, the AHP has supported 1,355 projects with nearly $450 million in grants, helping to create or preserve nearly 58,000 units of affordable housing and generating an estimated $8.1 billion in total development costs in communities across New Jersey, New York, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and beyond
