Brooklyn's Alafia lands $217M for its next 273 apartments
A layered tax-credit, tax-exempt bond and green-energy stack keeps one of New York's largest affordable builds moving.
L+M Development Partners and Apex Building Group have closed $217 million in construction financing for the next phase of Alafia, a 2,600-unit affordable master plan in East New York, a reminder that in the current rate environment large affordable projects still move only when the capital stack is layered from several public and private sources at once.
Why it matters
The financing is the story. With conventional construction debt expensive and affordable rents unable to carry market-rate leverage, the deals that pencil are the ones that assemble tax-credit equity, tax-exempt bonds, agency debt and utility-backed green financing into a single close. Alafia’s stack is a template for how ground-up affordable supply gets built at scale right now, and it shows developers and capital partners which structures still work when a project cannot rely on rent growth to close the gap.
The numbers
The $217 million package for Phase 3 funds 273 affordable apartments. Construction debt came from Redstone Bank, Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. New York State Homes and Community Renewal contributed $97 million in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit equity, alongside $14 million through the state tax-credit program and $57 million from tax-exempt bonds. The wider development sits on the 27-acre former Brooklyn Developmental Center site and is planned for roughly 2,600 affordable homes at full buildout, with a community center, a 50,000-square-foot medical facility, a senior health center, ground-floor retail and more than 20,000 square feet of public green space.
What’s next
Phase 3 is expected to complete in 2029, extending a buildout that will run for years across the site. The close lands the same week New York committed $1 billion to nearly 3,000 affordable homes statewide, underscoring how much of the state’s pipeline now depends on stacked public financing. Track the market at the New York hub.