JPMorgan Chase Invests $5 Million to Bolster Meda Efforts to Build and Preserve Affordable Housing in San Francisco

October 3, 2019 (San Francisco, CA) – JPMorgan Chase today announced a $5 million investment in the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) to support the group’s work to build and preserve affordable housing and commercial space for small businesses in San Francisco over the next three years. With the $5 million commitment from JPMorgan Chase, MEDA will be able to leverage a total of $144 million in direct capital deployment, permanent financing and tax credit and bond financing for new affordable housing production.

Using this support, MEDA and other non-profits, including the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, will build and preserve affordable housing in San Francisco, as well as commercial space for small businesses and community-serving nonprofits. Small Site buildings, with four to 25 units, will be purchased by MEDA and other nonprofits, ensuring that they are not flipped to market rate through a traditional sale, which could result in the displacement neighborhood residents. The approach will specifically target Bayview-Hunters Point, near Chase Center, and the Mission for low-income families and commercial tenants.

“Affordability in the Bay Area is a crisis affecting small businesses and families alike, and we all have a role to play in finding solutions to this challenge,” said Allen Fernandez Smith, head of the West Region for Global Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase. “By investing in MEDA’s work, we hope to scale their approach throughout the region in a way that enables other non-profits to keep local residents and small businesses in San Francisco’s most vibrant neighborhoods.”

This commitment not only furthers MEDA's goal of producing and preserving 320 units of affordable housing through Small Sites; it also helps replicate and scale the model of affordable housing preservation to other neighborhoods, to be used by other organizations culturally and geographically equipped to serve the affordable housing needs of their neighborhoods.

"This investment from JPMorgan Chase is the catalyst we needed to replicate our Small Sites Program in other distressed neighborhoods in San Francisco," said MEDA CEO Luis Granados. “With this commitment, we will be able to raise a $28 million debt-and-equity fund tailor-made to support affordable housing developers working on the front lines of neighborhood anti-displacement in our city."

"We are extremely grateful to JPMorgan Chase for this generous support of SFHDC's partnership with MEDA in undertaking the critically important Small Sites program,” said David Sobel, CEO of San Francisco Housing Development Corporation. “Having additional resources through this grant will ensure that we can more quickly acquire, renovate and preserve the affordability of existing housing for San Francisco's low- and moderate-income residents, while maintaining the existing fabric of our neighborhoods."

Since 2015, JPMorgan Chase has invested $1.1m in MEDA to create & develop its ¡Viva! training, technical assistance, and capacity building program. Beginning with integrated financial capability and asset building programs, ¡Viva! has expanded to include the Small Sites program. MEDA has leveraged the investment from JPMorgan Chase to formalize its role as a funder of Small Site affordable housing, focused on equitable resource sharing across historically underfunded communities and geographies across California.

JPMorgan Chase in the Bay Area

Based on the firm’s work in other cities, like Detroit, Chicago, Washington DC and Paris, JPMorgan Chase has already applied some of those solutions through the $25 million philanthropic commitment made in 2016 to address affordability in the Bay Area, support workforce training initiatives and support small businesses.

This includes the $3.1 million Entrepreneurs of Color Fund. Launched in 2018, the Fund has made 31 loans totaling more than $1.5 million for minority-owned small businesses. Two Entrepreneurs of Color Fund recipients, CC Made and Sugar and Spun, were selected by Bon Appétit Management Company to sell their food as part of Chase Center’s Taste Makers program. The firm’s broader work to support Bay Area small businesses included support for capital investments and technical assistance for over 1,775 businesses and resulted in nearly 2,000 jobs created or retained.

To help ensure members of the community had a chance to share in the economic opportunity created by the construction of Chase Center, the firm funded job training for nearly 2,000 Bay Area residents, including three rounds of construction pre-apprenticeships and specialized trades training for contractors to hire local workers in the construction of Chase Center and other development sites throughout San Francisco.

Leveraging Business Expertise

Through the firm’s lines of business, JPMorgan Chase has been hard at work for many years to provide opportunities to the Bay Area’s small businesses and addressing challenges that prevent residents from participating in economic growth. With more than 2,900 employees and 145 branches, JPMorgan Chase serves more than 2.6 million clients and customers. Employees earn a minimum wage of $18 an hour and in 2018 alone, JPMorgan Chase facilitated or directly financed over $2 billion in housing, transportation, and healthcare projects for San Francisco and Oakland, including over $800 million in loans for the development of more than 6,000 affordable housing units.

About JPMorgan Chase & Co.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) is a leading global financial services firm with assets of $2.7 trillion and operations worldwide. The Firm is a leader in investment banking, financial services for consumers and small businesses, commercial banking, financial transaction processing, and asset management. A component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase & Co. serves millions of customers in the United States and many of the world's most prominent corporate, institutional and government clients under its J.P. Morgan and Chase brands. Information about JPMorgan Chase & Co. is available at www.jpmorganchase.com.

About MEDAD
Founded in 1973, MEDA is a nonprofit that provides services to nearly 7,300 low-income people annually. Programs include financial capability coaching; business technical assistance; housing and homeownership counseling; affordable housing development; business and real estate lending through its subsidiary CDFI; workforce development training and career placement; and free tax preparation.