Program Mission
Our mission is to help organizations increase the supply of climate-ready affordable community housing for diverse low to moderate income households, including Indigenous and Equity deserving groups.
Not-for-profit, Cooperative, and Indigenous organizations have a vital role in providing secure and sustainable affordable housing for low to moderate income individuals and families. Despite having significant potential to increase housing through the acquisition, development or redevelopment of their aging buildings or underutilized land, these organizations often face barriers, such as a lack of early funding, that can prevent or delay their projects from moving forwards. The Affordable Community Housing Program + Accelerator Fund helps organizations overcome these barriers by providing grants and financing for the early phases of an affordable housing development project to help them become construction ready and accelerate to completion.
Refer to Our Approach page to learn more.
Our Services
We provide grants and flexible low-cost financing to Not-For-Profit, Cooperative and Indigenous organizations to support affordable rental housing development and we offer social impact investors and donors an opportunity to contribute to the preservation and development of community-owned affordable rental housing.
1. We offer a comprehensive suite of supports to accelerate the development of community-owned affordable rental housing for low to moderate-income individuals and families.
- Grants and technical support for vision and concept development, feasibility assessments and business planning.
- Capacity building grants to help organizations undertake pro-active affordable housing development.
- Flexible and low-cost loans from the Accelerator Fund to support pre-construction costs for affordable housing development.
Refer to Our Services page to learn more.
2. We are also proud to offer socially minded impact investors and donors with an opportunity to help increase the supply of climate ready affordable housing by contributing to the Affordable Community Housing Accelerator Fund. The money you invest into the fund is loaned to Not-for-profit, Cooperative and Indigenous organizations for affordable housing development projects.
Refer to the Investors page to learn more.
Our History
Vancity Community Foundation and Vancity Credit Union have a long history of working with the community housing sector to help meet needs for affordable rental housing in our region.
In 2011, Vancity Credit Union and Vancity Community Foundation established the Affordable Community Housing Program and Pre-Development Loan Fund at the Greater Vancouver Community Assistance Foundation (GVCAF) as part of a comprehensive suite of funding and financing tools to support not-for-profit organizations to plan and develop sustainable affordable rental housing projects. This includes grants for the early-stage planning of affordable community housing projects, funding for organizational capacity development, and low-cost loans for the pre-construction phases of a development project.
With a growing demand from community housing organizations for this type of funding support, we expanded the Pre-Development Loan program in 2020 to become the Affordable Community Housing Accelerator Fund and added an investment option that will help address the program’s growing capital needs.
The Fund is held at the Greater Vancouver Community Assistance Foundation (part of the Vancity Community Foundation group) and the overall Program and Fund is managed and operated by Vancity Community Foundation.