(Photo Courtesy: Habitat for Humanity of Lincoln)
A local non-profit will bolster affordable housing projects across the city with close to $1 million in grants to numerous organizations.
The Lincoln Community Foundation recently awarded from its Affordable Housing Fund $850,000 in grants to seven organizations working to create and preserve affordable housing. These organizations include:
- Community Development Resources
- Family Service Lincoln
- Habitat for Humanity Lincoln/Lancaster County
- Lincoln Housing Authority
- Nebraska Housing Resource
- NeighborWorks Lincoln
- South of Downtown Community Development Organization.
“A family should only have to pay 30% of their income in housing,” LCF President/CEO, Alec Gorynski told KLIN News, “It’s going to cost a developer so much to build a single family or a multifamily home… and there exists a gap between those two numbers. That’s why low and moderate and even middle income families can’t participate in the housing market.”
The City of Lincoln’s Affordable Housing Coordinated Action Plan calls for the addition of 5,000 rental units and 4,000 ownership options of affordable housing by 2030. Recognizing the complexity and significance of the program, affordable housing was identified as a focus in the Prosper Lincoln community agenda.
In alignment with this priority, LCF created and seeded an Affordable Housing Fund with the purpose of supporting the development of affordable housing to include the purchase, renovation, and construction of single-family and multi-family, rental and owner occupied, housing that is affordable for low-, moderate-, and middle-income families in Lincoln. Housing is defined as affordable when the annual housing cost does not exceed 30% of a family’s annual income.
Eleven local banks also contributed to the Affordable Housing Fund including Cornhusker Bank, Exchange Bank, FNBO, Five Points Bank, Frontier Bank, First Interstate Bank, i3 Bank. Pinnacle Bank, Security First Bank, Union Bank & Trust, US Bank and West Gate Bank.
Locally, for-profit, and nonprofit housing developers are working to create and preserve quality affordable housing for the community. In order to keep rental and mortgage payments at a level affordable for low-, moderate-, and middle-income families, various forms of subsidy are required, including government funds, philanthropic grants, and low-interest loans.
For more information on the organizations awarded these grants, visit lcf.org.