<\/p>\nAdd Preferred Source<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n
Construction crews poured back onto the site to ramp work back up on a project that serves as a bit of a test case for the affordable housing construction industry: oWOW\u2019s building is projected to cost roughly $300,000 per unit\u00a0\u2014 about a third of comparable affordable housing projects in the region.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The project proceeds with no gap financing in the capital stack, meaning no direct subsidy from the city of Oakland or Alameda County. Instead, it relies on a streamlined mix of tax credit equity, debt and institutional partnership: Community HousingWorks, one of California\u2019s largest nonprofit affordable housing developers, is a joint venture partner; Freddie Mac provided tax credit equity; National Equity Fund syndicated the credits; and Lument arranged the debt.<\/p>\n
![\"Developer]()
<\/p>\n
Developer oWow is constructing an 11-story building with 284 income-restricted apartments on Harrison Street in Oakland.<\/p>\n
Giselle Garza Lerma\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
The absence of local subsidies is the premise of oWOW\u2019s development strategy.<\/p>\n
For decades, affordable housing in California has depended on layers of public financing to close what developers call the \u201cfinancing gap\u201d \u2014 the difference between what projects cost and what restricted rents can support. That gap can run into the tens of millions of dollars per building and is usually bridged with public dollars, and competition for those funds routinely delays affordable housing projects for years or prevents them from being built at all.<\/p>\n
The recent expansion of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) has made affordable housing development more financeable, resulting in some market-rate developers like oWOW crossing over into the space. The developer secured a competitive allocation of the credits after committing to serve households earning between 30% and 70% of Area Median Income (AMI) at 1523 Harrison, which unlocked the financing needed to start building.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
![\"Danny]()
<\/p>\n
Danny Haber, CEO of OWow, and Caleb Cooper, Super, on site of the new OWow affordable housing project on Harrison Street in Oakland.<\/p>\n
Giselle Garza Lerma\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
oWOW\u00a0has framed the project\u2019s success as having\u00a0implications extending beyond its site. By forgoing local subsidies, scarce public funds can be redirected to other developments, effectively increasing the total number of affordable units that can be financed across a city or region, Haber said. That argument comes at a moment of strain in California\u2019s housing pipeline, where thousands of approved units \u2014 both affordable and market-rate \u2014 remain unbuilt, held back by high construction costs, elevated interest rates and persistent financing gaps.<\/p>\n
With the Harrison Street project\u2019s construction no longer a question of financing, the clock is now ticking on how quickly it can be built before market conditions shift again. The team has said it can construct its tower on an accelerated timeline of 14 months. Its completed Webster Street tower next door, which rises to 19 stories, took 24 months to prepare for occupancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Developer]()
<\/p>\n
Developer oWow\u2019s previous affordable housing project is on Webster Street in Oakland.<\/p>\n
Giselle Garza Lerma\/S.F. Chronicle<\/p>\n
While the Webster Street building features a concrete core and shear wall, the Harrison Street project will rely on a three-story, prefabricated steel brace system, which the team says not only lowered costs, but will also allow it to construct three floors per day.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The goal is to deliver the building for under $240 per square foot \u2014 and to have a crane in the sky next month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Chronicle Staff Reporter Aldo Toledo contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Developer oWow has broken ground on a new affordable housing project on Harrison Street in Oakland. Giselle Garza…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287971,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[184,3010,332,1011,143,145,144,388],"class_list":["post-287970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-bay-area","tag-commercial-real-estate","tag-east-bay","tag-housing","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-real-estate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287970"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287970\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}