BOSTON—BlueHub Loan Fund, an affiliate of BlueHub Capital, announced that it will receive $5.5 million in Capital Magnet Funds (CMF) from the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund).
The award will support BlueHub’s work to finance affordable housing and other vital facilities in service of its mission to build healthy communities where low-income people live and work.
BlueHub will deploy the funds primarily to preserve and create affordable housing in low-income communities across the country. A portion of BlueHub’s award will support related facilities—such as daycare centers and health clinics—that provide essential services to affordable housing residents.
This award will address a major challenge: the lack of flexible debt capital that is especially critical for the successful completion of projects that create affordable housing, permanent supportive housing, and facilities that provide low-income residents with support services. This challenge is acute in metro areas with high construction costs and oversubscribed subsidies and where flexible debt for mission-aligned developers is scarce or prohibitively expensive.
“2020 exposed, yet again, the hazards of our country’s affordable housing shortage. BlueHub’s patient and flexible capital, made possible in part by the CMF award, plays a key role in reinvesting in low-income neighborhoods,” said Elyse Cherry, CEO of BlueHub Capital. “BlueHub has a strong pipeline of affordable and permanent supportive housing projects eligible for financing that will advance housing equity and security in the communities most in need.”
BlueHub Loan Fund is one of 48 CDFIs and nonprofit housing organizations to receive a CMF award, following the CDFI Fund’s competitive review of over 137 applications. Congress created the CMF through the Housing and Economic Recovery Act (HERA) in 2008 to spur investment in affordable housing and economic development in low-income communities. This is the fifth consecutive year that BlueHub has received a CMF award, a recognition of its success in financing affordable housing and economic development projects.
Since 1985, BlueHub Capital has been building healthy communities where low-income people live and work. BlueHub Capital has provided more than $2.2 billion in financing to projects and businesses that create affordable housing, good jobs, and new opportunities for underserved people and communities.
