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City leaders held a ribbon-cutting for the 65-unit Nova Lofts affordable housing development on the Northeast Side on Monday.
Located in District 10, Nova Lofts is the fourth affordable housing project funded by the city’s 2022 Affordable Housing Bond to have a ribbon-cutting. The bond contributed $2.7 million to the project’s $23.6 million cost.
A competitive 9% housing tax credit the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) awarded the project in 2022 made up the other $20 million — $2 million per year over the next 10 years.
The four-story complex of one, two, and three-bedroom units filled up within three weeks, the fastest so far for any of the bond-funded projects, and a signal of the level of demand for affordable housing across San Antonio.
District 10 Councilmember Marc Whyte said Nova Lofts was a project done right.
“Stakeholder engagement from the very beginning, working with the neighborhood associations all throughout the process to get their input as to what they would want to see here on this lot,” he said. “And it's because of that that I believe that this project ended up being successful.”
Whyte angered several of his colleagues last year when he led an effort that prevented a different 80-unit affordable housing project that had $20 million in competitive 9% TDHCA housing tax credits from moving forward in his district because of how it could affect the quality of life for surrounding neighborhoods.
San Antonio ultimately lost that tax credit.
Thirty-two of the Nova Lofts units are reserved for families at 60% of the area median income (AMI), 25 units are for families at 50% AMI, and eight units are for families at 30% AMI.
Nova Lofts resident Rosemary Montgomery said she was one of the first residents to move into Nova Lofts with her son, who turns two on Friday.
“I had one dream being in the shelter ten months: to have us move out of the shelter before he turned two,” she said, speaking of her son. “And Nova Lofts brought that to life for us.”
Nova Lofts was also the recipient of a competitive 9% tax credit award from the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs in 2022. The competitive 9% tax credit is the primary mechanism to finance affordable housing in the U.S., and Nova Lofts was one of only a few projects the state selected in 2022 to receive the support.
The project was developed by the NRP Group, an affordable housing developer that has been a participant in many of San Antonio’s recent affordable housing projects.
As a result of the 9% tax credit used to support Nova Lofts, its covenant guarantees that it will be affordable for 40 years.
