Demonstration Project
Based on our observations of the multi-family property real estate market in our community, we anticipate needing to raise $5-10M in order to acquire, preserve, and potentially lightly rehab a 10-30 unit apartment building in Mountain View.
This project will demonstrate the feasibility for our working class Latina immigrant led community land trust.
Since March 2023, we have seen several multi-family properties for sale that could have been converted to community ownership of housing:
655 Mariposa (9 units listed for $3,960,000)
184 Centre St (11 units listed for $4,650,000)
775 Oak St (16 units listed for $6,000,000)
2010 California St (27 units listed for $8,600,000)
1980 California St (23 units listed for $14,200,000)
With a target of $10M, we hope to raise the following long-term capital stack for the building:
$2M in Philanthropic Capital (Donations and Grants)
We are building off our existing foundation relationships (e.g. Sobrato Family Foundation, Silicon Valley Foundation, Latino Community Foundation, Google) and partnering with Evergreen Collective to identify additional foundations and individuals committed to community organizing, affordable housing, and racial and economic justice to join us and provide seed funding for our first building acquisition of our community land trust.
$2M from City of Mountain View
The City of Mountain View has a BMR (Below Market Rate) fund that has been used to subsidize production of new affordable housing at $100-200K/unit. In spring 2024, city council gave direction to city staff to allocate $4M in city funds for acquisition and preservation, including community ownership of housing. Mountain View CLT has been identified as one of the community groups that could be a compelling applicant for these funds.
$4M from Santa Clara County Through the BAHFA Bond
(Bay Area Housing Finance Agency)
If the November 2024 BAHFA bond passes, affordable housing projects in Mountain View will be in line for up to hundreds of millions of dollars. (Este punto no será contemplado para la Web de MV CLT)
$2M from State of California and/or US Congressional District Appropriations
With the support of Leslie Rodriguez at California Strategies, we have started to educate and inform elected officials at the county, state, and federal level about how existing affordable housing doesn’t work for our communities, and the need for more demonstration projects for working class governed community ownership of housing in communities of color. We hope to build off of momentum from previous years by our district elected officials to get $2M for farmworker housing in Half Moon Bay, $1M for the new building of our largest social services agencies in the city, and more.
Ultimately, we envision a potential capital stack where we can purchase multi-family properties for ~ $500K per unit, and leverage city contributions of ~ $100K per unit to bring in another ~ $400K per unit of additional public or philanthropic funding that enables working class families to pay no more than 30-35% of their income on housing and for those properties to remain affordable as part of the community land trust.
While laying the groundwork to line up the $10M in permanent capital need for the project, we have also been working on lining up potential bridge financing and/or a real estate acquisition partner that will enable us to have the capital to quickly acquire a property that goes up for sale and provide a 3-5 year runway to pull down the philanthropic and public funding.
