Philadelphia LGBT housing project receives 19 million dollars in public financing; dmhFund; Pennrose Properties

Catching up on April's news, we see the CBS Philadelphia affiliate and Marketwatch.com with the story of a publicly financed housing project for the benefit of elderly LGBT seniors.

The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) voted on Thursday, April 12 to provide a reservation of Low Income Housing Tax Credits --an official "green light" that now will generate up to $11 million dollars for the LGBT-friendly affordable senior housing facility co-developed by the dmhFund and Pennrose Properties. This new public-private housing initiative, conceived in the heart of Philadelphia's downtown lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender neighborhoods, is considered among the first such elder housing facilities of its kind in the U.S.

This critical stream of funding will allow the $19 million project to move forward and break ground as early as September 30th. The co-developers had already raised $6 million from the Commonwealth's capital development program and $2 million from the City's Office of Housing and Community Development.

"For years, developing a unique facility in the heart of Philadelphia's gayborhood where our most vulnerable LGBT elders could live out their golden years was our pie-in-the-sky idea," dmhFund President Mark Segal said. "But today, we can say for certain, that pie-in-the-sky idea will become a reality."

The Marketwatch article goes on to say that the project will not exclude those who are not LGBT. (If it were exclusive to LGBT, I do not know how such a policy would be enforced.) It is legal to create housing exclusively for seniors under certain circumstances.