By Nienke Onneweer | Phoenix Business Journal
Raza Development Fund announced a fellowship on Wednesday to support the growth of Latino and Black real estate developers and strengthen affordable housing development.
The J. Tommy Espinoza Growing Diverse Housing Developers Fellowship will support 12 fellows, including one from Phoenix, who are already building, preserving or will build multifamily rental housing and for-sale development projects across the country. The aim is to “increase opportunities for Black and Latino-led housing developers,” Raza Development Fund (RDF) said in its announcement.
The grant is backed by $10 million from Wells Fargo as part of Growing Diverse Housing Developers grant initiative, a $40-million grant initiative divided between four community development financial institutions, or CDFIs.
The four-year program includes access to low-cost, flexible capital as well as quarterly training sessions and mentorship from RDF, a support corporation of UnidosUS. The fellows, who started on May 20, will complete an affordable housing project supported by the grant.
“Major developers around the country that have done great work in the space are very well plugged in to the various financial institutions that allowed them to scale,” said RDF President and CEO Tommy Espinoza, after whom the fellowship is named. “We’re trying to work with these Latino and African-American developers to help them scale up.”
RDF provides access to capital and financing solutions to organizations with a goal of breaking the cycle of poverty in low-income communities. It has provided organizations serving Latino and poor families with over $1 billion in funding.
Espinoza started his career building single-family affordable housing for Chicanos Por La Causa in 1972, and not much has changed since then, he said, considering the problem has not been solved.
And while affordable housing needs in Arizona are high, disproportionately affecting Latino and poor communities, the number of Latino developers who can better meet that need are low.
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