Real estate development
Since OppCo was launched in 2018, member affordable housing production has increased by 199%. OppCo brings in house expertise and knowledge sharing to member organizations as they expand their production capacities.
OppCo provides hands on support for structuring deals, managing projects, and representing owners, supplementing our members’ teams with critical skills that saves them money and helps them build and preserve affordable homes.
The OppCo-supported production pipeline includes 1,031 rental apartments and homes for sale, plus commercial and community space. The homes we build are affordable to extremely low-income, low-income, and moderate income households, providing stability for vulnerable populations including seniors, veterans, formerly homeless individuals and families, and people with disabilities.
The increase in the housing development pipelines of OppCo’s members makes it cost-effective to bring expert real estate capacity in-house.
Our Senior VP of Real Estate supports activity across our member organizations and assists them to diversify pipelines, and to structure and expand the range and scale of real estate deals. An OppCo Project Manager allows for critical and strategic deployment to members when needed and for assistance on special OppCo wide initiatives. Across OppCo, we are building expertise in acquisition and rehab, homeownership, and commercial development.
CASE STUDY
Bartlett Station, Roxbury
OppCo is assisting Nuestra Comunidad to develop Bartlett Station in Roxbury, an ambitious five-phased redevelopment. Upon completion, Bartlett Station will offer 323 new rental and ownership homes and new businesses, developed by Nuestra and its partners.
Nuestra is partnering with Windale Developers and others to transform eight acres of the former MBTA Bartlett Bus Yard in Nubian Square. Currently, Nuestra has 60 new apartments in construction that will add to a 60-unit, mixed-income rental apartment building and a 16-unit condominium building that were completed on the site in August 2019. A vibrant community gathering space at the center of it all, called the “Oasis at Bartlett,” will serve as an outdoor greenspace and venue for food trucks, cafes, public art, and more when it opens in 2022. Nuestra is already putting the space to use: in 2020 throughout the summer, the community gathered safely at the Oasis, for drive-in movies like “The Wiz” and “Do the Right Thing,” socially distanced jazz concerts, and art displays. Nuestra invested $50,000 in hiring local artists and musicians to perform, helping to keep cultural businesses afloat during the pandemic.
CASE STUDY
St. Therese, Everett
The St. Therese development hits a number of firsts for The Neighborhood Developers. With 83 homes, it is the largest project in TND’s history, and it is the first to pair senior housing with on-site health care services. St. Therese is also TND’s first opportunity to develop affordable homes in Everett in collaboration with the City.
The project has two major pieces of new construction - the Senior Building with a healthcare center, and six Townhouses. The Senior Building offers 77 affordable rental homes for seniors aged 62 and older, with a new health center on the ground floor serves building residents and members of the broader community. East Boston Neighborhood Health Center operates a PACE program, which provides comprehensive healthcare and support for seniors, including preventive care, specialist visits, prescription drug coverage, and health and wellness programs. PACE is the ideal solution for those who want an alternative to nursing home care for the right combination of medical, social, recreation, rehabilitation, home care, and other services. Of the 77 homes at St. Therese, more than one third are dedicated for very low income households earning up to 30% of the Area Median Income (AMI). The six townhouses at St. Therese offer three-bedroom homes sold at below-market prices – three homes restricted for households earning up to 80% AMI, and three for households earning up to 120% AMI. These homes have helped to fill a gap in the housing market in Everett, where there is a very limited supply of three-bedroom homes for sale, and where home prices continue to rise.
OppCo is part of a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Learning Lab that brings together health care institutions, insurers, and community developers to generate more health-care resources for affordable housing. This Learning Lab has led to our partnership with Boston Medical Center that is combining permanent affordable housing and health care dollars and services at three Nuestra properties (Bartlett A, Dudley Crossing and the Dartmouth Hotel) for 40 individuals exiting chronic homelessness.