At a meeting in September 1991, the CSH Board of Directors approved our first loan: $35,000 to the West Side Federation for Senior Housing in New York City for technical assistance. In the 20 years since, our lending and grantmaking has grown and changed to support the supportive housing field.
Our average loan is considerably larger in size and our geographic reach spans the country. In 2011 CSH officially entered into the New Market Tax Credit arena with a $25 million award. And we recently received a prestigious Social Innovation Fund award of $2.3 million over two years.
This July, we officially surpassed our $300 million lending and grantmaking milestone with the approval of a loan that exemplifies the changes we have seen in the supportive housing industry over the past two decades. Over 10 times the size of our first loan 20 year ago, this $455,000 loan to Abbey Road, Inc., a nonprofit housing developer, will be used to fund pre-development costs for Moonlight Villas. The new 27-unit, mixed-population supportive housing project will provide 14 homes targeted to transition-aged youths with serious mental illnesses. The remaining units will be designated for low income families.
We’re incredibly excited to have met this lofty goal. But we’re even more proud that our lending and grantmaking efforts have housed approximately 42,800 men, women and children who now have a permanent place to call home.