HAP, Inc.

HAP, the regional housing partnership for Hampden and Hampshire counties, is the leading non-profit developer of affordable housing in Western Massachusetts.  HAP also plays a central role in coordinating homelessness prevention efforts in the area.

Since 2001, the Life Initiative has provided a series of flexible lines of credit to assist HAP in accomplishing its development objectives.  TLI first underwrote a pre-development line of credit to help HAP advance its multi-family rental development work.  Renewed several times, that line has helped HAP develop 259 units of rental housing.  TLI also helped capitalize HAP’s Partnership Loan Fund to assist smaller non-profit developers, which has resulted in the creation of 560 additional units of affordable housing.  And when HAP launched a homeownership program to stabilize the Old Hill neighborhood in Springfield, TLI made a $1,000,000 revolving construction line of credit available which produced twenty new homes for first time homebuyers.

Last year HAP approached TLI with a problem.  Twenty years before HAP had developed six group homes to house twenty four tenants being relocated by the Commonwealth, due to the closure of the Belchertown State Hospital.  HAP had leased the houses to the Commonwealth, but the tenants’ housing needs had changed, and the Commonwealth no longer needed the houses.  HAP needed a flexible, short term loan to finance the existing debt on the six homes, to give HAP time to find either another non-profit service provider who could adapt the houses to their clients’ needs, or to sell them to a moderate-income buyer.  TLI made the loan.  HAP has sold four of the houses to date, two each to non-profits and homebuyers.

Most recently TLI has committed its largest loan ever, to HAP.  TLI will provide a $6.4 million construction loan to enable HAP to build 40 units of multi-family rental housing on a town-owned site in north Amherst.  Olympia Oaks will be built in clusters of townhouses near UMass Amherst, with the bulk of the open site remaining dedicated to open space and recreational uses.

• Working capital line of credit
• Revolving construction line of credit
• Short term refinance loan
• Construction loan