Real Estate Development

Chinatown CDC's experience in housing development and construction management is used strategically to prevent displacement, to house those for whom market-based housing is unavailable, to improve housing quality, and to help strengthen other local non-profit organizations and communities.

Our Housing Strategy
1. In core Chinatown, where opportunities for new construction, acquisition, and housing rehabilitation are scarce, our primary focus is on working with the City, funders, and private owners of residential buildings to assure that privately owned residential buildings are in decent condition that meets the need of low income residents
2. In greater Chinatown, including North Beach and Russian Hill, where speculative pressure is great, we are pursuing an acquisition and rehabilitation strategy to prevent the displacement of long-term low income renters.
3. In all San Francisco communities including Chinatown, we continue to pursue new construction, acquisition, and rehabilitation of affordable housing opportunities as they arise and funding streams permit. In communities outside of our greater Chinatown core, we often connect with other community partners to pursue these opportunities
4. In all San Francisco communities, we also continue to offer technical assistance to organizations that want to develop and rehabilitate affordable housing but need some project or construction management assistance to do so.

Through this work, we hope to provide affordable housing, prevent the displacement and exclusion of low income people, improve our communities, and strengthen other community-based and constituent-based organizations to help them better serve their communities.

Housing Development Experience
Chinatown CDC has developed nearly 3,200 units of affordable housing, with another 725+ units currently under construction or in development. We have also provided technical assistance for nearly 1,000 affordable units owned by nonprofit and for-profit owners. Our work for ourselves or for other clients includes assessing properties as possible affordable housing opportunities, acquiring properties for development, securing financing, preparing rehabilitation scopes of work, developing building programs, overseeing the design process, and construction management. See our portfolio for more details about our projects.

Financing Experience
Our Housing Development work has involved securing financing from a wide variety of affordable housing financing sources including low income housing tax credits, historic tax credits, HUD’s Section 202 and 811 programs, tax exempt bonds, state multifamily housing programs, the Federal Home Loan Bank’s Affordable Housing Program, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing (including its Seismic Safety Loan Program), and private lenders.

Partnerships
We’re proud that our Housing Development work has also allowed us to partner and work together on projects with groups such as Swords to Plowshares, Tabernacle Community Development Corporation, Northern California Presbyterian Homes and Services, AF Evans Company, UrbanCore LLC, and The Related Companies of California. Partnerships, and the opportunities they provide to help assure and improve community participation in projects, are an important part of our work.

Technical Assistance
We’re even prouder of our role in providing technical assistance to the San Francisco Community Land Trust, the Asian Women’s Resource Center, the St. Vincent de Paul Society of San Francisco, Progress Foundation, Indochinese Housing Development Corporation, and On Lok Senior Services, among others. We highly value our chance to help these groups achieve their housing and facilities goals, and perhaps help them build their capacity for future work in the community. We are always looking for new opportunities to use our project and construction management expertise to help community groups achieve their goals.