Lakes Region residents seeking to buy or renovate residences in mobile home parks may have gotten some good news when the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund was named the recipient of $5.5 million in the 2009 Wachovia NEXT awards for Opportunity Finance.
The award, a $500,000 grant and a $5 million low-interest loan, is "the largest single infusion of cash in the Community Loan Fund's 26-year history, surpassing a $3 million loan from the Ford Foundation," said Steve Varnum, who is the director of communications and marketing for the Concord-based New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, on Wednesday.
The Concord-based NHCLF and the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises (FAHE) of Berea, Ky., were the two Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) out of some 700 nationwide that were named Tuesday by the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) as this year's Wachovia NEXT winners.
FAHE, which received a $2.75 million award, along with the NHCLF, will be honored later this month at the OFN conference in Charlotte, N.C.
Linda Harvey, who is executive director of the Laconia Area Community Land Trust — which has built more than 130 units of permanently affordable, tax-paying housing in Laconia and most recently in Meredith — cheered the good news for the NHCLF, on whose board of directors she had served for six years.
"The practical benefit is, certainly, they've brought more resources to the state that are available for us to borrow," said Harvey, in addition to the possibility that those funds may eventually also be available to residents at the Frances Court Manufactured Housing Park.
Earlier this month, the LACLT held a ribbon-cutting ceremony at its Pinecrest Apartments-Frances Court complex on Boynton Road in Meredith. The project saw the land trust relocate and upgrade the former Crestview manufactured housing park in preparation for Phase 3, which saw the construction of Pinecrest, which has 32-permanently affordable one- to three-bedroom apartments.
The NHCLF provided the "seed money" that helped launch the land trust, said Harvey, while Varnum noted that his organization is helping provide money to local home buyers. He said the Lakes Region Mobile Home Park Cooperative in Belmont recently became New Hampshire's fifth co-op to be approved for fixed-rate single-family mortgage loans from St. Mary's Bank and Merrimack County Savings Bank.
"There's no finer organization in the state," Harvey said of the NHCLF, which since its founding in 1983 has loaned more than $100 million and leveraged more than $348 million to build housing, create jobs and support services such as child care throughout the Granite State.
According to the Wachovia NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance, the NHCLF was selected "for its expansion of an innovative financing program for manufactured housing mortgage loans, which has the potential to change mortgage financing in the manufactured home sector across the U.S.
"The Community Loan Fund turns investments into fixed-rate loans and education to create opportunity and transform the lives of people across New Hampshire. Since 1984 the Community Loan Fund has enabled 93 manufactured housing communities throughout New Hampshire, or 20 percent of the market in that state, to convert to resident ownership."
Since 2007, the Wachovia NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has been run by and funded through OFN with support from the Wachovia Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The program recognizes excellence within the CDFI field and is designed to move high-potential organizations to a next level of growth, success and staying power.
A national selection committee chose the NHCLF and the FAHE as the 2009 recipients.
"Each award recipient has blazed an unlikely trail on solid ground against expectations," said Mark Pinsky, president and CEO of the Philadelphia-based OFN, the leading national network of high-performance CDFIs.
"These awards recognize the outstanding achievements and extraordinary future potential of two leading CDFIs. The Wachovia NEXT Awards also spotlight how the entire opportunity finance field benefits our nation's economy through responsible lending, investing and financial services."
"We congratulate the Community Loan Fund and FAHE on their exceptional accomplishments in helping to transform underserved communities," said Michael Rizer, executive vice president for Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company.
"We're proud to continue our long-standing support for the opportunity to finance industry with our investment in the Wachovia NEXT Awards for Opportunity Finance, which helps innovative, up-and-coming CDFIs grow and create even more economic opportunity for families and communities through access to credit."
Debra Schwartz, director of program related investments for the MacArthur Foundation, said the services provided by CDFIs "are especially critical today, as the country struggles with the economic crisis and access to capital is constrained.
"We hope these awards will help more policymakers and investors appreciate the vital role that CDFIs play in our financial system and the valuable contributions they are poised to make in the years ahead."
