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Location: City of New York, New York
Program: Bifurcated Structures for 80/20 or Mixed-Income Financing
Institution: NYC Housing Development Corporation
Website: http://www.nychdc.com/pages/Termsheets.html
Experiencing some of the highest rents in the nation and facing affordable housing needs that far outstrip available public subsidy, New York City has created a financing approach that substantially stretches the amount of available funding to support more development than would otherwise occur. The city’s novel approach also allows for mixed-income development and simplifies the local compliance process for developers. The approach involves a bifurcated structure in which only the low income units in a mixed income project are financed with tax-exempt private activity bonds and Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, greatly reducing the volume cap expended for the affordable units and enabling further redistribution to finance more units at other projects. In addition, the process reduces compliance burdens that often accompany mixed-income structures.