Wells Fargo Provides $82M Construction Financing for Oakland Affordable Housing
Wells Fargo continues to invest into affordable housing, and now a Bay Area community in Alameda County will receive these benefits.
Wells Fargo is providing Eden Housing and the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation with $82 million in construction debt to build the Residences at Liberation Park, a 119-unit affordable housing asset in Oakland, Calif., Commercial Observer can first report.
The lender is also providing $57 million in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit equity, and that investment will be joined by an additional $78 million from public and private investors to finance $135 million of additional development costs. Other investors in the project include both Alameda County and the City of Oakland and the California Department of Housing and Community Development, the Oakland Housing Authority, the California Municipal Finance Authority and several nonprofit partners.
Pete Cannava, managing director and head of multifamily capital at Wells Fargo, pointed to Wells Fargo’s extensive connection to the San Francisco and Oakland communities as one of the reasons his bank felt so comfortable making the investment.
“First and foremost, we have a lot of branches and deposits in this area, as well as a pretty large workforce, together with our clientele,” said Cannava. “A lot of strong nonprofit affordable housing developers in California are domiciled here and committed to this area.”
Cannava emphasized that the deal could not have come through without the Low-Income Housing Tax Credits provided by the city and state.
“The lower-cost financing with tax-exempt bonds is really what was able to drive this deal to get to the closing table,” he said. Construction begins today and will take around three years to complete, he added.
The announcement comes on the heels of more than $6 billion of construction debt and tax credit equity Wells Fargo has invested into California affordable housing since 2021.
Moreover, before the loan closed, Wells Fargo invested nearly $2 million in neighborhood revitalization plans surrounding Residences at Liberation Park, and community leaders expect to develop a larger 31,000 square-foot market and retail hub with office space to anchor the greater neighborhood.
“What’s unique is we were involved in the development on the ground floor,” said Cannava. “It’s about a long-term vision to revitalize this neighborhood that Wells Fargo supported.”
Located at 2751 73rd Avenue in East Oakland — near Eastmont Mall and the Eastmont Transit Center — the Residences at Liberation Park will stand six stories tall and feature 119 studio to three-bedroom apartment units, all of which will be priced to fit the budgets of people earning between 20 percent and 80 percent of the area’s median income. Twenty-five percent of units will be reserved for the formerly homeless or residents with special needs.
“The Residences at Liberation Park demonstrate what can happen when affordable housing is connected to a broader vision for neighborhood investment and opportunity,” said Linda Mandolini, CEO of Eden Housing.
The deal marks yet another investment by Wells Fargo into the Northern California affordable housing space. Wells Fargo provided $30.7 million in construction financing to build El Dorado Haven Apartments, a 65-unit affordable housing complex in El Dorado County. The bank also loaned $32.9 million in construction financing to build 300 Alamitos, an 82-unit affordable housing complex in Long Beach.
“Our support of California and the Bay Area goes back a long time,” said Cannava, who noted that since 2021 his bank has provided $2.7 billion in tax credit equity in California and $4 billion in construction debt to deliver 11,000 units of affordable housing across the state.
Earlier this year, Commercial Observer reported on Wells Fargo’s affordable housing investment practices in New York City, noting that over the last five years the megabank has provided New York nearly $10 billion to create a total of 50,300 units of new or rehabilitated affordable housing across the five boroughs.
Brian Pascus can be reached at bpascus@commercialobserver.com.
Source: commercialobserver.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.