Capital Impact Partners Awarded $65 Million in New Markets Tax Credits To Attract Private Capital and Advance Social Impact Efforts

ARLINGTON, Virginia, Feb. 13 -- Capital Impact Partners issued the following news release:

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) has awarded Capital Impact Partners a $65 million New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) allocation. This award helps advance Capital Impact's mission to increase access to critical social services in distressed communities, spur economic development, and create jobs by incentivizing private sector investors to partner in its community financing efforts.

"The New Markets Tax Credit Program is critical to our ability to engage with private sector partners and put together the type of flexible capital necessary to support projects that deliver important social services into communities that need them most," said Ellis Carr, president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners. "We are honored that the CDFI Fund continues to recognize Capital Impact as a leader in using financing to help create solutions that address important social and racial justice issues across the country."

Capital Impact Partners is now a nine-time NMTC recipient - with those awards totaling more than $627 million. Capital Impact also manages more than $300 million in NMTCs for other community development organizations. To date, the organization has used NMTC allocations to support the financing of more than 60 transactions nationally that have increased access to health care, education, healthy foods, affordable housing and the ability for seniors to age in their communities with dignity.

"The New Markets Tax Credit program is critically important to strengthening the social infrastructure that fosters equity, economic development and good health in underserved communities," said Scott Sporte, chief lending officer at Capital Impact Partners. "The results that Capital Impact, along with other mission-driven organizations, achieves with these allocations demonstrate a real return on this investment to the federal government and to local communities."

An overview of the program produced by Capital Impact illustrates that for every $1 invested by the federal government, the NMTC Program generates more than $8 in private investments in severely distressed census tracts. That financing has fueled millions of square feet of construction and thousands of jobs. Through the end of fiscal year 2016, the most recent data available, NMTC Program award recipients deployed more than $44.4 billion in investments for low-income communities and businesses, with impacts such as the creation or retention of nearly 750,000 jobs, and the construction or rehabilitation of more than 190 million square feet of commercial real estate.

"Today's awards will finance projects ranging from large manufacturing plants that create jobs to critically needed infrastructure," noted Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin in a press release issued by the U.S. Treasury Department's CDFI Fund.

In 2017, Capital Impact deployed a variety NMTC allocations to help launch projects nationwide. Examples of those projects included:

Health Care:

Capital Impact provided Community Health Center, Inc. (CHCI) with $12.8 million - including New Markets Tax Credits - as part of a larger leverage/construction loan. The loan supported renovation of CHCI's existing 24,000 sq. ft. pediatric health center in Hartford, CT; interior renovation of the existing center to reflect CHCI's "pod" model of care delivery, in which multiple medical professionals provide a variety of care in one patient visit; and complete renovation of a 19,000 sq. ft. facility to supplement CHCI's existing clinic site in Stamford, CT, which provides primary care, behavioral health, and dental services. The loan also supported construction of a new 30,000 sq. ft. building to house CHCI's tele-health facilities, featuring space for eConsults as well as administrative functions and a data center near its headquarters in Middletown, CT. Other investors included Primary Care Development Corporation, Boston Community Capital and Capital One.

CHCI benefits 25,000 patients in the area encompassing Hartford, Stamford and Middletown through these facilities; 94 percent of patients have incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Additionally, the project created 25 construction jobs and 66 permanent jobs.

Healthy Food:

In an exciting partnership near Capital Impact's headquarters, the organization is working with Martha's Table to support the organization's plans to relocate and expand. The new Martha's Table headquarters will be part of a new three-acre, community-services campus development project in Washington, D.C.'s Ward 8 called "The Commons at Stanton Square." This multi-phase project will address key disparities in this low-income community by bringing together a variety of key social services including health care services and affordable housing while spurring community development.

Services provided at the new headquarters will include a branch of its popular preschool program, food distribution, nutrition and parenting workshops. Martha's Table opened up 35 years ago, and now reaches more than 18,000 people through its food, education and thrift store programs with significant support from 18,000 volunteers every year. In 2015, Martha's Table served more than 1 million meals, distributed free clothing and housewares to more than 10,000 neighbors in need, and provided education to more than 200 children and older youth.

The campus will also become home to Community of Hope and other complementary nonprofit organizations. The housing component will feature 125 affordable-rent 1-3 bedroom apartments and 42 market-rate 3-bedroom town homes.

Capital Impact contributed $5.9 million in New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) toward the $29 million transaction. Other investors included Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and City First, with Morgan Stanley serving as the tax credit investor.

Education:

Ednovate, Inc. is a non-profit in Los Angeles with a mission to educate students to attend college, focusing particularly on first-generation college-bound students. Ednovate uses a personalized student-led learning model focusing on college prep, encouraging independence among its students that will prepare them for college and beyond.

To continue providing its students with high-quality education, Capital Impact partnered with the Low Income Investment Fund to provide a $9 million loan as part of a $16 million project to finance a permanent home for Ednovate's USC Hybrid High School.

USC Hybrid High School was the first Ednovate school to have a graduating class of seniors in 2016; Ednovate's innovative project-based learning model has led to 100 percent of Ednovate's first two graduating classes of seniors being accepted to a 2- or 4-year college. Eighty-three percent of students at the school are eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch, and many will be the first in their family to attend college. Students at the school are predominantly Latino. The new location of the school also creates a more convenient commute for students in its target area, reducing the burden on students. The project will create 100 construction jobs, retain 33 permanent jobs and create 2 additional permanent jobs.

Dignified Aging:

Dignified and engaging senior housing is a necessary option for all older adults, and Capital Impact continues to champion innovative models for communal senior living. As part of the Green House model of senior care, Capital Impact worked with returning borrower SAS Poplar Grove Green Houses (operating as Poplar Grove, LLC) on a $17.8 million transaction - including New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) - which financed the construction of the Green House Cottages of Poplar Grove in Little Rock, Arkansas. This Green House campus includes ten skilled nursing Green House homes, one short-term rehabilitation facility, and one administrative building. The Green House Project - started as a Capital Impact initiative and spun off into an organization - provides nursing care in a small, homelike setting with individualized care, allowing older adults to age within their community. The Green House in Poplar Grove will serve 120 total residents, at least 40 percent of whom will be Medicaid-eligible, extending quality, affordable senior care and housing.

Managed by the CDFI Fund, NMTC allocations make their way into the community through the following process:

* A community development entity (CDE) submits an application to the CDFI Fund requesting the authority to allocate a specific dollar amount of tax credits.

* If its application is approved, the CDE is awarded the authority to allocate tax credits to an investor.

* The investor chosen by the CDE receives a tax credit totaling 39 percent of the cost of the investment. The investor can claim that tax credit over a period of seven years.

* In exchange for those tax credits, the investor makes a qualified equity investment (QEI) in the CDE.

* The CDE must use the QEIs it receives from the investor to finance businesses or real estate projects in low-income communities where the poverty rate is 20 percent or higher, or the median income is 80 percent or lower than the Area Median Income. The CDE also has the option of investing in other CDEs making loans in low-income areas.