With over 250 units of rental housing under management, RUPCO, Inc. is one of the Hudson Valley’s leading affordable housing providers, and its impact has grown steadily in recent years. Newburgh Progress, RUPCO’s newest project, will add another 62 scattered-site units to its portfolio and will help to revitalize Newburgh’s high-poverty East End neighborhood. Through our Project Start Fund, Leviticus is providing RUPCO $650,000 in predevelopment funds, supporting the second phase of this transformative project.
Newburgh Progress is an expansive project in the city of Newburgh. The 62-unit project will cover 23 unused or underused sites across four blocks, including 10 new three-unit buildings and 10 historic rehabilitations of vacant structures. Each new home will be rented to an individual or family with an income between 30% and 60% area median income, or to special needs tenants that are homeless or needing supportive housing. As part of RUPCO’s commitment to community-building, the project also includes an adaptive reuse of a vacant house of worship, the former First United Methodist Church, and a vacant school building as a local community hub that will offer community offices, job training, child care, and community events.
RUPCO has control of each property under Newburgh Progress, but needs predevelopment funds to finalize closings on properties, conduct environmental site assessments and engineering reports, complete architectural drawings, and finalize remaining zoning changes. Our Project Start Fund was designed to help organizations like RUPCO clear such hurdles, and to do so with low interest costs and efficient loan processing. The loan is our second loan to RUPCO, following a $1.9 million acquisition loan we provided in 2017 to support The Metro, its first economic development project.
Scattered-site, low-density affordable housing redevelopment is particularly challenging for community development organizations, but in small cities like Newburgh, these types of projects are essential to reversing economic decline in distressed neighborhoods. RUPCO is building on its prior successes to take on this challenge, and we are proud to support their work.
