Deal Profile: Benning Heights
The preservation and maintenance of existing affordable housing is as imperative as the construction of new affordable housing. The first project financed by the Agency in 2017 was the preservation of Benning Heights Apartments (4806 Alabama Ave SE, Washington, D.C.) On January 11, DCHFA issued $16 million in bond financing for the acquisition and rehabilitation of this development. The $32.1 million project will restore 148 apartments in the 11 building garden apartment complex located in Ward 7’s Benning Ridge neighborhood, less than a mile from the Benning Road Metro station.
The NHP Foundation is the developer of Benning Heights Apartments in partnership with the building’s tenants association, in accordance of the District’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA). The project is also being funded with a $5 million subordinate Housing Production Trust Fund loan from the DC Department of Housing and Community Development, $2.8 million in a subordinate FHA note from HUD and $10.3 million of equity raised through the syndication of four percent LIHTCs.
The financing of Benning Heights Apartments is a great example of partners in the affordable housing community coming together to not only preserve affordable housing in Ward 7 but also modernizing the homes here for current and future residents. Benning Heights Apartments was built in the late 1940s and received a minor rehabilitation in 2005. The current rehabilitation will include repairing water infiltration as well as upgrading units and building systems. Handicapped accessibility will be improved in units and throughout the apartment community. One hundred percent of the one, two and three bedroom units will be set aside for residents earning 60 percent or less of the area median income (AMI). The property is also subsidized by a HUD Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) contract, which covers all of the units at Benning Heights and subsidizes the rent of families earning 50 percent or less of the AMI.