Avenida Villas, which will be AMCAL’s second Orange County development, will feature 29 apartments in unincorporated Anaheim. Desiged for residents and families with special needs, it will include a community room with computer lab, media room, kitchen and dining area, game area and reading space.

Both MacArthur and Avenida Villas will have units reserved for homeless families or those that are at-risk of homelessness and have a family member who suffers from a severe mental illness. In addition, MacArthur will have units reserved for project-based Section 8 vouchers. LifeSTEPS will provide complimentary social services for residents including computer training, job training, ESL classes, health nutrition programs and parenting classes.

Percival Vaz, CEO of AMCAL, notes that since 2003 the company has received over $393 million in low-income tax credits in areas such as Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area and San Diego. He points out that success in receiving these awards “stems from our ability to receive adequate soft funding, which made our applications competitive and demonstrated a readiness to proceed with the project.”

Vaz also points out that AMCAL has been able to secure equity investors and permanent lenders to advance its projects. “With the economy and the reduction in equity pricing, other developers without strong backgrounds and investor relationships have had to give up their (tax credit) allocations,” he says.