HCF has a history and commitment to affordable housing
Over the past eight years, HCF has been on a path to support the affordable housing ecosystem. It started in 2015 with a mortgage to Indwell, a local affordable housing provider, that helped finance the development of 47 units of supportive housing on a former used car lot on Main Street East. Since then, as part of our impact investment strategy to mobilize our capital for social and environmental benefit, the Foundation has invested almost $19 million focused on this critical issue, with a 10-year, $50 million affordable housing strategy in the works.
There is no single solution to the current housing crisis, so HCF supports projects and funds across the housing continuum, contributing to solutions that address many pain points in our current system. This runs from supportive housing for tenants who may require additional services such as mental health and addiction care, psycho-social support or basic needs, to helping people move to home ownership, which helps them build equity and frees up affordable rental units. As shown in the table opposite, this has resulted in creating or preserving 550 units of affordable housing in Hamilton and another 302 across Canada.
Our work since 2015 has included:
Helping local affordable housing providers to act quickly and acquire land in this heated real estate market. This enables properties to be held in the non-profit sector and protects opportunities to realize critical affordable housing projects.
Granting to Hamilton is Home — an alliance of affordable housing providers, funding research through the University of Waterloo, and providing funding to the City of Hamilton to assist their efforts to develop the Hamilton Strategic Investment Roadmap for affordable housing in our community.
Funding strategies designed to rebuild a healthy “non-market” housing sector (housing not affected by market influences such as speculation). These include supporting a national affordable housing development organization to add much-needed development capacity to the system and providing patient capital (long-term capital where we are willing to defer returns) to acquire existing private market rental stock, stabilize these units and transfer ownership to non-profit or co-operative ownership.
Investing in affordable housing funds across Canada and paving the way for other community foundations to launch their own impact investing journeys.
As of our March 31, 2023 year end, HCF has $12.7 million in investments across the affordable housing continuum. We have $3.9 million in further commitments pending funding and $6.2 million in investments that have been repaid to HCF in the last eight years and recycled back to the community.
* Units include one-to-four bedrooms depending on the project
** Number of units for the funds reflect HCF’s proportional interest
in the fund’s total units at March 31, 2023, and funds continue to
be actively investing
We continue to develop our comprehensive affordable housing strategy with a goal of more than doubling our work to date to a target of $50 million. There is much to be done in this urgent community and national issue and we continue to focus on bringing people, ideas, and resources to bear in our role as a community foundation.