Facing the Affordable Housing Challenge

d-party developersMacFarlane Costa Housing Partners, Gardena, Calif.Regions: 33 states and Puerto RicoDollars in development: $40 to $50 million currently under constructionMichael A. Costa, president MacFarlane Costa Housing Partners is a developer, builder, financier, owner and operator of affordable housing. Asked to identify his favorite among his company’s affordable housing ventures, Costa replies that he’d be hard pressed to name just one.”Our philosophy as an affordable housing developer is to develop housing that doesn’t look like affordable housing. If you drive by, you would never be able to tag that as affordable housing. We enter contests like the National Association of Home Builders’ Pillars of the Industry Awards, and have been fortunate to have been named a finalist six or seven times—and to have won three times.”He adds, “And we were the first affordable housing developer to win NAHB’s Pillars of the Industry’s Builder of the Year Award.” Obtaining financing is “without question” the top challenge to affordable housing development in today’s economic environment, Costa says. And that challenge is not simply seen within the traditional context of obtaining financing from a bank, but also in landing all the funding sources that are needed to cover the costs of a project. “Often, we will have as many as four or five layers of financing,” he says. But Costa believes that during any downturn there are opportunities for those who are good at what they do. One of the things Housing Partners is particularly adept at is maintaining very close relationships with state and local municipalities. It does so because those governmental entities often have the financing sources needed.”Cities have funds, states have funds, counties have funds,” Costa says, adding that a company like his must work closely with all of the localities to stay up-to-date on changing programs that assist in development of affordable housing.He adds, “We are meeting with several cities and the state of California to help design the most efficient use of those funds.”