Posted on May 6, 2002
SANDWICH --- The Massachusetts Housing Partnership Fund has committed $900,000 in permanent financing to support the construction of Osprey Lane, a 36-unit affordable rental apartment project in Sandwich.
The borrower is TCB Sandwich Limited Partnership, a wholly owned subsidiary of Community Builders Inc., the Boston-based non-profit development company with 35 years of experience in affordable housing. It will be built on land owned by the town of Sandwich and leased through the Sandwich Housing Authority (SHA) to TCB Sandwich. The SHA will manage the property.
Osprey Lane will consist of nine four-unit buildings, each with one three-bedroom unit and a mix of one and two-bedroom units. Four units will be handicapped accessible. All 36 units will be rented to income eligible residents earning between 40 and 60 percent of the area median income. The 2002 area median income for a family of four in Barnstable County is $56,800, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
“There’s an acute shortage of affordable housing on the Cape,” said Steven P. Marshall, SHA’s executive director. “Adding 36 units in a community of 22,000 is significant.” According to Marshall, less than 2 percent of Sandwich’s housing is classified as affordable.
Osprey was financed through a combination of loans, grants and equity capital. A total of $2.6 million is being financed with federal low-income housing tax credits. The Winter Hill Federal Savings Bank is providing construction financing of $900,000. Additional funding sources include a HOME Investment Partnership Program loan from the Cape Cod Commission ($50,000); the Barnstable Country Rental Fund ($50,000); Department of Housing and Community Development HOME loan ($550,000); the state’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund ($440,000); and the Federal Home Loan Bank ($250,000).
MHP is the only public agency in the U.S. that uses mandatory lines of credit from the banking industry to provide long-term loans for affordable housing and neighborhood development. For more information, call 617-338-7878 x227.
(PHOTO INFORMATION: By April, 2003, some of the units at Osprey Lane were completed and occupied).