Enterprise Community Investment Inc., a Columbia-based firm that invests in the development of affordable homes and communities in low-income areas, was awarded $100 million in New Markets Tax Credits by the U.S. Treasury Department Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.
This is the fifth time the company has received credits from the fund, which was established in 2000 to give developers tax incentives for investing in urban and rural low-income neighborhoods to help spur economic development.
This latest round of credits brings the company’s total NMTC allocations to $515 million — more than any other single organization in the nation, according to Enterprise.
“It complements what we do here in our mission to build up low-income communities and to bring low-income individuals up and out of poverty,” said Joe Wesolowski, the company’s senior vice president.
Enterprise, which was founded in 1982, leverages tax credits it receives for low-income housing, new markets and historic rehabilitation, as well as short- and long-term debt and development services, to fund its investments, which total nearly $1 billion a year.
Three years ago, Enterprise funneled $15 million in early-stage capital into the development of a 20-acre research and medical center near Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore.
The project is the cornerstone of a plan to revitalize the poverty-stricken area by attracting economic development linked to the region’s growing biomedical research industry.
The company also invested $11.5 million into the redevelopment of a foundering strip mall in Northeast Baltimore.
“We thought, hey, this could have a great impact,” Wesolowski said. “It was once a thriving area that went into decline. But since the retail center was redeveloped, things around there have really spruced up.”
The General Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress, found in January that the Treasury Department’s tax incentive program was successful in spurring development in low-income communities that would not have occurred otherwise.
The department awarded $3.9 billion in tax credits to 61 organizations this year. It has awarded $16 billion to 294 organizations since 2000.
