NEW YORK CITY-The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) has invested $134 million of its union pension capital in Penn South Cooperative, at 321 Eighth Ave. in Manhattan. The money will go toward preserving affordability and capital improvements among the complex’s 2,820 housing units.

An intended byproduct of the capital improvements will be the 610 union construction jobs that the planned improvements--heating and air conditioning as well as asbestos remediation--will create during a time when construction industry unemployment is extremely high.

Ted Chandler, COO at HIT, tells GlobeSt.com that the creation of construction jobs is an ongoing initiative for the trust. “We’ve invested close to $200 million of HIT capital in about $350 million’s worth of affordable housing in NYC,” Chandler says. “We started along this path because this is a time of historically high unemployment in the construction trade in particular. This is the Great Depression in the construction industry and we have an obligation to respond.”