Capital One provided $90.5 million in financing for a 97-unit affordable senior housing project that just broke ground this week in Oakland, according to a press release from the Virginia-based bank.
The financing breaks down to a $41.2 million low-income housing tax credit equity investment and a $49.3 million construction loan, according to the release. Enterprise Community Partners served as the tax credit syndicator.
Tamar Sarkisian, capital officer for community finance at Capital One, said the public-private partnership would allow the company to “continue to make strides toward closing the affordable housing gap.”
The East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC), identified in the release that it is the largest nonprofit provider of affordable housing in Oakland, is the developer and the provider of onsite services at 800 Madison Street.
Apartments in the project, named, are adjacent to the Lake Merritt BART station and half a mile from downtown Oakland. They are reserved for residents aged 55 and older. Tenants will be restricted to those earning 30 percent, 50 percent or 60 percent of area median income, and about half of the units will provide permanent supportive housing for formerly unhoused seniors.
The ground floor will include a commercial kitchen meant for underrepresented entrepreneurs looking to break into food service.
The project was more than 16 years in the making, according to an EBALDC Instagram post, and is the first affordable housing project in the neighborhood since EBALDC’s Prosperity Place, a collaboration with the Oakland Housing Authority, in 2015.
Janelle Chan, who became EBALDC’s CEO in May, said in the release that the Chinatown TOD Senior Housing project “is a testament to what’s possible when an empowered community produces a vision for its future.”
Construction will come in a three-phase process, approved in 2022, which will eventually include more than 550 homes, including about 230 set aside as affordable, plus 500,000 square feet of offices and ground-floor shops and restaurants.
After the affordable housing component, the next phase will be a 23-story market-rate apartment tower and lastly an office tower and more affordable units. Those later phases are the result of a partnership between EBALDC and Strada Investment and are reportedly on hold awaiting market improvement.
Last week the Chronicle reported that Strada would walk away from plans to be part of the team set to tear down about 200 apartments run by the San Francisco Housing Authority in the Western Addition neighborhood in San Francisco and replace them with 755 new homes.