If MHIC were to have a theme for this past year, it would be best captured as a year of "transformative organizational growth." This past December, our Board Chair, Guilliaem "Rusty" Aertsen, retired after years of dedicated service. We welcomed new board leadership as Elizabeth Gruber, a long-time board member and Vice Chair, became our new Board Chair. Additionally, our long-serving board member, Dan Cruz, stepped into the role of Vice Chair. We welcomed several new board members with deep private and public sector expertise and a geographic focus in New England. New staff members who joined the team over the past year brought fresh ideas, new perspectives, and significant experience in community development and finance. Finally, we concluded our strategic planning process, which will guide us through the next three years.
Our strategic planning process was a comprehensive, multi-month initiative. We ensured to capture critical feedback and insights from the board, staff, and members of the community development field overall. From this process, we defined three key priorities that will guide us through 2026:
Community and Wealth Building: MHIC will expand our housing and community development financing and investment services to an increasing number of markets, with a particular focus on helping to close the racial wealth gap and address inequities stemming from structural racism.
Innovative, Scalable, and Sustainable Products: MHIC will continue to provide a full range of products and services that address the evolving needs of our customers.
Concentrating Impact in Targeted Communities throughout Expanding Market Area: By focusing multiple housing and business loans and investments within targeted communities, we believe we can have the greatest positive impact. This includes supporting not just the production and preservation of homes, but also the development of new commercial and community spaces that offer access to healthy food options, employment opportunities, and much more.
While strategic planning was a significant project undertaken in 2023, we were also thrilled to close on thirty-five projects throughout New England that utilized our various financing products. These projects produced or preserved 995 homes across a range of incomes and created over 154,000 square feet of commercial and community space. Critically, these projects will further support our racial equity and inclusion imperative, ensuring that minority workers and MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) participation and hiring goals for the properties we finance are met. Since our founding in 1990, MHIC has directed over $960 million to MBEs, including over $121 million last year. From our strategic plan to the projects closed in 2023, we continue to achieve great programmatic and mission success.
MHIC also welcomed significant engagement from our mission-oriented investors in 2023. We could not have accomplished our goals last year were it not for the participation of some loyal longtime investors in our multi-funds and proprietary funds, as well as welcoming new investors and partners from a variety of sectors committed to community development, such as healthcare, philanthropy, quasi-public, and public sector agencies. Their support made it possible to produce or preserve 995 homes and over 154,000 square feet of commercial and community space across 35 projects. Overall, $138,607,555 in new investments was raised for our federal, state, and New Market tax credit programs in 2023. These investments contributed to our achieving over $2.15 billion in total financing for affordable housing and community development since our founding.
In closing, much of 2023’s work, especially regarding our strategic planning process, can already be recognized in the first quarter of 2024. MHIC was honored to partner with MassHousing to manage the Equitable Developers Program, which is the nation’s largest publicly funded program of its kind, offering Working Capital Lines of Credit and Standby Letters of Credit—products designed to break down traditional barriers of entry into the real estate development industry. We completed a comprehensive review of our organization’s structure that will be implemented over the course of this year. We also closed the largest single-asset investment in our 34-year history: Curtis Apartments Phase One, with a $41 million LIHTC and $13.6 million State LIHTC investment in the project. Already, 2024 is shaping up to be a wonderful year for our organization as we continue to increase our impact from our planning efforts in 2023.
Elizabeth Gruber
Board Chair
Moddie Turay
President & CEO
