Creativity Key to Affordable Housing Funds

Rendering of CenterWest in Baltimore

NEW YORK CITY—Affordable housing is multifamily’s problem child, largely pushed aside by the bigger paydays of the luxury market, bureaucratic oversight and dwindling funds for construction. Relief from this chaotic condition lies largely in the hands of lawmakers, leaving it to the creativity of practitioners, the developers and the financial sources to fill the gaping holes in the system.

“The country is experiencing an unprecedented rise in renting,” says Al Beaumariage, KeyBank’s SVP and program manager for affordable housing. Since the current upswing began in about 2010, “the number of renter households has increased on average by 800,000 annually. So today, nearly 39 million people in the US, or one in eight, are calling apartments home.” Still, he adds, a mere 300,000 apartments are coming out of the ground annually, only 40,000 of which are affordable.