Enterprise Community Partners

Green Communities Initiative Columbia, MD

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For all of us, the environment in which we live and work has a profound impact on our physical and mental health. But a growing body of research indicates that for low-income people, the impact can be especially negative because they are more likely to live in substandard housing that can cause various diseases attributed to the environment, including asthma, lead poisoning, and cancer.
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That is just one reason why Enterprise Community Partners, through its supporting organization the Enterprise Community Loan Fund, is seeking to transform the way we think about, design, and build affordable homes.

One of the largest nonprofit loan funds in the country, the Enterprise Community Loan Fund is a leading source of short-term financing to build affordable housing in the United States. Through the fund, Enterprise Community Partners focuses on providing critical up-front funding for the predevelopment and acquisition phases of development and, over the past 25 years, has supported projects of more than 800 community development partners nationwide.

Enterprise Community Partners has become a pioneer in financing green affordable housing. Through its Green Communities initiative, the first national green building program developed for affordable housing, Enterprise offers grants, loans, tax-credit equity, training, and technical assistance to give developers and builders the resources they need to bring green projects to life.

Through 2007, Enterprise Community Partners had made more than $37 million in predevelopment and acquisition loans to support more than 50 green, affordable rental and for-sale developments around the country. The organization also operates regional loan funds in Louisiana and Atlanta that include incentives for green development and is piloting a new construction-financing product for green single-family homes.

For Michael Sloss, Vice President for Product Innovation at Enterprise Community Partners, the benefits for everyone are clear. “Our Green Communities initiative is helping to produce healthier, more affordable, and energy-efficient housing for low- and moderate-income people,” he says. “At the same time, it is contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.”