LISC Jacksonville Launches Emerging Developer Program

From apartments to single- and multi-family homes across Duval County, creating affordable housing has been a main tenet of LISC Jacksonville’s work since its inception in 1999. And now, while the organization continues with its legacy homeownership programs such as Project Boots and others, LISC Jacksonville has become further embedded in the local affordable housing and real estate development ecosystem.

LISC Jacksonville has launched an Emerging Developer Program, providing both lending solutions as well as technical assistance to new and emerging builders and developers in Duval County. In addition to providing lines of credit to local builders who lack access to capital, LISC Jacksonville is providing guidance and counsel to these same builders on how to borrow from more traditional lending sources in the future. The goal is to help small local builders increase capacity to build more affordable homes across urban core neighborhoods – ultimately increasing the number of available homes and homeownership opportunities in underserved communities.

“The work of LISC Jacksonville extends well beyond place,” said Dr. Irvin ‘PeDro’ Cohen, executive director for LISC Jacksonville. “It must encompass a level of intentionality regarding the ‘who’ as well. Who are the people we are helping, and more importantly, who are we lending our money to? This year, with the approval of our Local Advisory Committee, we became very intentional when it came to the ‘to whom’ we are lending our money portion of our work.”

Part of LISC Jacksonville’s purpose behind the Emerging Developer Program is to ensure its lending and access to capital is reflective of the population demographics of Duval County. With those parameters, LISC Jacksonville has set an aggressive target of 20%, or at least $850,000, of its lending goal going into the hands of emerging builders, developers, and entrepreneurs who are doing business in LISC-supported neighborhoods.

Chuck Shealy, real estate and lending program officer for LISC Jacksonville; Orlando Spencer, O-Luxury; and Dr. Irvin 'Pedro' Cohen, LISC Jacksonville Executive Director in front of the home O-Luxury is renovating on Robert Street.

“This level intentionality allows us to solve a couple of larger social issues,” added Cohen. “One being providing access to capital to entrepreneurs of color. The other is building affordable housing in our urban core – where it is desperately needed.”

Orlando Spencer, founder of O-Luxury (#OLuxLife), is a local developer focused on increasing the inventory of affordable homes. LISC Jacksonville has provided a $1 million revolving line of credit to build as many as five homes at one time to be sold to homebuyers who earn up to 80% of AMI (area median income). He is currently working on a property on Robert Street in the 32209 zip code. Over the course of the three-year loan, Spencer has the ability to roll over the loan and continue building additional homes on vacant lots in the 32206 and 32209 zip codes. He anticipates building about 20 affordable homes using LISC Jacksonville as the lender before building upon that success and securing future loans from institutional lenders to scale his business.

Orlando Spencer showing progress on the Robert Street house.

“LISC Jacksonville engages in the same communities that I’ve been living and investing in and developing over the years, glory to God!” said Spencer. “We’re both intentional about improving these neighborhoods, so it has made great sense to partner. LISC is providing valuable resources to help us develop more real estate at an affordable price in the Northwest and Historic Eastside neighborhoods. We’ve been successful at more than 60 projects during the past 10 years, and this opportunity will help us grow and scale to achieve even more.”

“Our work with Orlando and his company brought not only the technical assistance of LISC to bear, but it also brought the much-needed access to capital, which is generally an issue faced by many emerging builders, developers, and entrepreneurs,” added Cohen.

The house on Robert Street prior to renovation.

He continued, “We look forward to working with additional builders who are also seeking to not only scale their business but grow their reach and impact on more people who live and work in our great city. We want to work with local builders who are focused on the same issues that we are. We have the financial capacity and expertise to invest, and they have the construction experience, to make tremendous progress together.”

For more information about LISC Jacksonville’s Emerging Developers Program, contact Chuck Shealy, real estate and lending program officer, at cshealy@lisc.org.