Affordable Housing
LISC believes that safe, affordable housing is one of the basic requisites of life—a key to individual health and wellbeing, and the foundation for sustainable, economically vibrant and diverse neighborhoods. Affordable housing creates the stability needed for individuals and families to thrive. It also has benefits that extend beyond the walls of a home to the community at large. Affordable housing boosts spending and employment in the local economy, and brings revenue to the community.
That is why we are deeply concerned about the lack of affordable housing in our community. The WA State Department of Commerce reports that the state needs to add 1.1 million homes over the next 20 years, and more than half of them need to be affordable for residents at the lowest income levels. The affordable housing crisis in WA requires solutions at the scale of the need.
Since our inception, affordable housing preservation and development has been at the core of our work. LISC Puget Sound has supported the development of 33,585 affordable housing units.
LISC provides grants and loans for nearly every aspect of development from planning and acquisition to construction and renovation. And we advocate for equitable housing solutions that meet the scale of our housing crisis.
Housing Equity Accelerator
LISC Puget Sound, in collaboration with the Amazon Housing Equity Fund, is addressing the affordable housing crisis by investing in the next generation of affordable housing developers. The Housing Equity Accelerator (HEA) program aims to boost the supply of affordable housing by nurturing the growth of emerging housing developers in Puget Sound. The program is structured to enhance capacity for creating more affordable units and to create opportunities for generating wealth and equity.
HEA's comprehensive approach to capacity-building for Fellows focuses on three main components: Content, Connections, and Capital. The program offers a tailored 12-month curriculum and ongoing technical support to equip participants with the skills needed to scale their businesses for affordable housing development. Additionally, HEA facilitates networking opportunities within a diverse professional community and provides access to grants and loans to overcome financial barriers in real estate development.
Sound Transit Revolving Loan Fund
Our shared investment in Puget Sound’s regional transit system represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reimagine the affordable housing and commercial opportunities at key transit nodes. If the promise of transit-oriented development is to benefit all residents of our region, we must develop an intentional approach and set of tools to make development equitable. To that end, LISC helped Sound Transit create a $20M revolving loan fund that offers patient capital for site acquisition and pre-development for affordable housing projects. These funds are earmarked to benefit King, Snohomish and Pierce counties.
