(Bloomberg) — New York’s $86 billion civil employee pension fund is investing in a not-for-profit partnership that took over loans for properties linked to rent-controlled, rent-stabilized apartment buildings from failed Signature Bank.
Most Read by Bloomberg
The New York City Employees Retirement System, or NYCERS, will invest up to $60 million in a partnership, led by the Community Preservation Corp., that will preserve nearly 35,000 rent-stabilized units affected by the sudden collapse of Signature Bank last March, city Comptroller Brad Lander said Tuesday. The fund will hold a 25% stake in the partnership, which also includes Linked Fund Management and Neighborhood Restore HDFC.
“Protecting and expanding our affordable housing supply through sound investment decisions is a top priority of my office,” Lander, who is the city’s pension fund investment adviser, said in a press release. The comptroller estimated that the internal rate of return on investment was almost 11% net of fees.
Most of the apartments under deal are in Manhattan and the Bronx, 13,000 and 10,000, respectively, with the balance in Brooklyn and Queens, according to Lander’s office.
Signature Bank was one of a handful of regional banks that collapsed in 2023. Its failure sparked anxiety among tenants and elected officials in New York City about how it would affect the bank’s loan portfolio of stabilized buildings. for rent.
“We need to make sure that those who are union workers and working class people have an opportunity to stay in the city that they helped build,” Mayor Eric Adams said at a news conference announcing the investment. “This is one area we can all agree on. New Yorkers need to be housed, and they need to be housed in an affordable way.”
New York bank regulators placed Signature Bank into receivership last March after they lost confidence in management and depositors fled. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. created venture to offload $33 billion in commercial property loans held by Signature. In December, the FDIC sold a 5% equity interest in two ventures supporting rent-stabilized and rent-controlled loans to the CPC-led partnership. The $5.8 billion portfolio contains approximately 35,000 units, 80% of which are rent-regulated and represent approximately 3% of the city’s rent-regulated housing stock. CPC will service loans held by enterprises.
Rafael Cestero, CPC’s chief executive officer, said the nonprofit will work with building owners to restructure or refinance their debt when it comes due and assess needed renovations. He estimated it could take 10 years to process loans based on 35,000 units.
Read more: Affiliate-backed non-profit offering earns equity in underwriting debt
The pension fund’s investment is an incentive for a program overseen by Lander’s office that aims to generate risk-adjusted market-rate returns through investments in affordable housing and economic development. The city’s five separate pension funds for civil servants, police officers, teachers, firefighters and non-teaching school employees have not met the goal of investing 2% of assets in the so-called Economically Targeted Investment Program.
Less than 1% of the $272 billion in pension assets are currently invested in affordable housing and workforce funding.
Lander’s office has previously said that the share of pensions in ETI investments has not increased because most are longer-duration, fixed-income assets that lost value when mortgage rates began to rise in 2022. Over four decades , the city’s civil employee pensions have invested nearly $700 million in rental apartments. All five pensions have invested $4.5 billion in the ETI program.
Read more: NYC’s $264 billion pensions fail to invest more in affordable housing
NYCERS’ investment comes amid the city’s worst housing crisis in more than 50 years.
A city survey in February found that the rental vacancy rate fell to 1.4%, the lowest since 1968, from 4.5% in 2021. Rentable apartments for New Yorkers with higher incomes low were even fewer. The share of units available for rent for less than $1,100 was just 0.4%.
— With assistance from Natalie Wong.
(Updates with more detail in paragraphs 3 and 8, adds quote from Chairman Eric Adams in paragraph 6.)
Most Read by Bloomberg Businessweek
©2024 Bloomberg LP
#NYC #Pension #invest #million #preserve #affordable #housing
Image Source : finance.yahoo.com