SAN FRANCISCO– Today, the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF) announced the full deployment of the initial $10 million Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund (ICCF), one of the nation’s first affordable housing finance tools specifically designed to support industrialized and modular construction. The initial $10 million fund has now been committed across four affordable housing developments in Northern California that will deliver approximately 430 homes. Building on that success, HAF is also celebrating upsizing the fund to $15 million, supported by JPMorganChase and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.
“Industrialized construction has enormous potential to help us build affordable housing faster, at lower cost, and at the scale California urgently needs,” said Rebecca Foster, CEO of the Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF). “The Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund was created to do just that, and the deployment of our first $10 million demonstrates both the demand for this financing and the promise of industrialized construction. With support from our partners, we’re expanding the fund, so even more projects can be built quickly and help bring down the cost of affordable housing.”
Access to affordable housing remains one of the greatest challenges facing the region. The implications of the crisis are driving exorbitant rent and home prices, homelessness, and even traffic, with many commuters driving hours from more affordable communities to their jobs. In spite of these impacts, financing for affordable housing remains stubbornly elusive. Building new affordable housing traditionally requires developers to secure multiple competitive public funding sources, a process that delays projects for years and drives up costs: In the Bay Area, new affordable developments can take nearly a decade and cost almost $1 million per home.
“Our Housing Innovation bill package is about tearing down the barriers that keep California building housing the same way we did a century ago. But cutting red tape on code and permitting only gets us partway there,” said Assemblymember Buffy Wicks (AD-14). “Developers also need financing that actually understands how industrialized construction works, from factory deposits to production-line reservations. That’s exactly the gap HAF’s ICCF is filling. Seeing hundreds of homes move forward quickly is proof that when we align policy and capital, we can deliver homes our residents need faster and more affordably.”
Launched with founding support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, ICCF was created to address a major barrier facing affordable housing developers: traditional financing sources are not structured to support the unique costs associated with industrialized construction, including factory deposits, production line reservations, off-site materials procurement, and early design and engineering expenses.
“The Bay Area needs to deliver more affordable housing faster and at lower cost, and industrialized construction is an important tool to help achieve those savings,” said Tony Tolentino, Program Officer, Global Philanthropy at JPMorganChase. “JPMorganChase is proud to support the Housing Accelerator Fund, backing scalable financing solutions so more affordable housing projects can move from planning to production—and deliver homes faster for the communities who need them most.”
As California seeks new solutions to address its housing shortage, industrialized construction has emerged as a promising approach for reducing costs and accelerating delivery timelines. The four projects supported by ICCF represent a range of innovative housing developments utilizing industrialized construction methods to reduce development timelines, improve efficiency, and lower costs. The fund’s flexible capital allows developers to access conventional financing for industrialized construction project costs that would otherwise not be available. Industrialized construction, particularly volumetric modular, which includes significant pre-fabricated components, requires deposits from developers for materials and to reserve a spot on the production line, well ahead of the project’s financing closing. HAF’s ICCF loan product provides the early-stage capital developers need to make these factory payments, which, in turn, helps de-risk the loan for conventional affordable housing lenders.
“Through both research and direct project analysis, we have seen compelling evidence that industrialized construction can reduce development timelines, improve cost efficiency, and expand housing production capacity when paired with the right financing tools,” said Ben Metcalf, Managing Director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. “HAF’s ICCF represents one of the clearest and most promising emerging models for how affordable housing finance systems can evolve to support industrialized construction at meaningful scale throughout California and nationally.”
With financing from the Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund, HAF is helping affordable housing developers overcome these financing barriers and move projects into construction more quickly. Projects supported to date include:
- Distel Circle (Los Altos) – Developed by EAH Housing, this 90-home family development is nearing completion, more than 4 months ahead of schedule.
- Fairview Terrace (Stockton) – Developed by Mutual Housing California, this 74-home affordable senior community is now in full production of its modular units. Fairview Terrace is the first of six modular projects Mutual Housing plans to deliver before the end of 2028.
- Click HERE for: Virtual Tour of the Factory-Built Prototype
- 2165 The Alameda (San Jose) – Developed by Cloud Apartments and Community Housing Works, this 172-home middle-income community is Cloud’s proof-of-concept for its unique modular construction technology. Cloud Apartments is expected to close its construction financing in Q1 2027.
- Cleveland Commons (Campbell) – Developed by Charities Housing, this 92-home community for seniors and veterans is expected to close financing in Q1 of 2027.
The success of ICCF builds on HAF’s broader efforts to develop innovative financing solutions that reduce project timelines and costs for affordable housing developers. In December, HAF announced the expansion of the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund to more than $100 million, providing long-term capital to projects pursuing ambitious cost and timeline reductions. The first project backed by the fund just opened at the beginning of June — 1633 Valencia, a 145-unit affordable housing community for formerly homeless seniors in San Francisco’s Mission District, completed in just 19 months at less than $510,000,000 per unit, roughly half the cost of comparable affordable housing developments in the city.
The initial ICCF capital is expected to revolve over the next two years, allowing HAF to redeploy those funds into additional projects and further expand the impact of the program. With the fund now expanded to $15 million, HAF anticipates financing additional housing developments that are expected to deliver more than 1,000 homes over the next decade.
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The Housing Accelerator Fund is committed to the preservation and expansion of quality affordable housing for economically disadvantaged individuals and families throughout the greater San Francisco Bay Area. An innovative nonprofit public-private partnership and certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), HAF works with community-based organizations, local governments, and private and philanthropic institutions to provide powerful new financing tools that accelerate housing solutions for the Bay Area’s most vulnerable residents. This includes the newly launched Industrialized Construction Catalyst Fund as well as the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund and other tailored financing products. Visit us at www.sfhaf.org.