FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 25, 2017

Contact: Kate Peterson

kpeterson@mercyhousing.org

Denver, CO–Mercy Loan Fund (MLF), a subsidiary of Mercy Housing and a leading Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), announced today that it has received a CDFI/CORE Financial Assistance (FA) program award of $776,500 from the United States Treasury’s CDFI Fund.

Mercy Loan Fund will use the award to provide short-term, below-market financing to help preserve, rehabilitate, and create affordable housing. It is one of 303 CDFIs to receive a part of the $208.7 million the CDFI Fund awarded.

“As the affordable housing crisis continues, and in many places worsens, it is more important than ever that we give affordable housing developers the financial tools they need to do what they do best: preserve and create affordable housing,” said Jason Battista, President of Mercy Loan Fund.

Battista highlights one of the country’s most pressing problems. Today, only one out of every four households who needs housing assistance gets it; more than one in four renters pays more than half of their income on housing costs; and nationwide waiting lists for affordable housing are years long, if they’re open at all.

Of the people fortunate enough to receive federal housing assistance in 2015, 81 percent of households are elderly, have a disability, or are working in jobs that don’t keep up with the cost of housing.

Mercy Housing, Mercy Loan Fund’s parent company, sees the desperate need for affordable housing every day. When they opened Vera Haile Senior Housing in San Francisco in 2014, they received nearly 5,000 applications for 90 homes in just two weeks. Earlier this year, they opened a new community in Seattle and received more than 2,000 applications for 108 homes.

Since 2004, Mercy Loan Fund has received $8.5 million in FA program awards.

About Mercy Loan Fund

For more than three decades, Mercy Loan Fund (MLF), a leading Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), has focused exclusively on funding affordable housing and essential community infrastructure projects that support affordable housing. By collaborating with socially-responsible developers, MLF has helped finance the development of single and multifamily homes for rental and homeownership. These developments help underserved communities, including people with low-incomes, seniors, farm workers, people who have experienced homelessness, and people with disabilities. MLF is a subsidiary of the affordable housing nonprofit, Mercy Housing, Inc. (MHI), headquartered in Denver, Colo. For more information, please visit mercyloanfund.org.

About the CDFI Fund

Since its creation in 1994, the CDFI Fund has awarded more than $2.5 billion to CDFIs, community development organizations, and financial institutions through the Community Development Financial Institutions Program, the Native American CDFI Assistance Program, and the Bank Enterprise Award Program.  In addition, the CDFI Fund has allocated $50.5 billion in tax credit allocation authority to Community Development Entities through the New Markets Tax Credit Program, closed guaranteed bonds in the amount of $1.1 billion through the CDFI Bond Guarantee Program, and awarded more than $171 million through the Capital Magnet Fund. To learn more about the CDFI Fund and its programs, please visit the CDFI Fund’s website at cdfifund.gov.