Forsyth Street frequently works with cities around the country to help them identify and design solutions that address the challenges they face in implementing and supporting policy related to affordable housing development, acquisition, and preservation for both rental and homeownership, along with other community development goals. These assignments involve working with stakeholders from the public and private sectors to design new programs that address shortfalls in affordable housing production, all while complementing the public sector’s housing-related goals. Forsyth is especially called upon to solve challenges where the inflexibility and timing of capital sources are impeding the swift creation and preservation of affordable housing

Current assignments include clients in cities such as Boise, Austin, Nashville, and Tulsa. Past assignments have included New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Rosa / Sonoma County, and San Mateo County, among others.

Forsyth has worked with a wide variety of lending organizations focused on accelerating the deployment of clean energy solutions, with a special focus on low-to-moderate income communities. This work has included developing new programs, evaluating the feasibility of market strategies, drafting business plans, performing credit analysis on potential investments, and assisting with capital raising. 

Assignments have included: 

• Supporting the Opportunity Finance Network’s successful $2.3b grant application to the EPA Clean Communities Investment Accelerator program, including designing a process to comprehensively evaluate the climate lending capacity of community lenders.

• Working with Homewise to design a new set of climate lending programs for its homeownership programs in New Mexico.

• Assisting the Connecticut Green Bank with the planning and launch of Inclusive Prosperity Capital.

• Serving as financial advisor to NYCEEC, the country’s first local green bank, since its inception.

• Assisting the New York Green Bank in the design and launch of its $250mm Community Decarbonization Fund, an effort solely focused on deploying concessionary capital through intermediaries into disadvantaged communities.

• Working with NRDC and the Coalition for Green Capital to create a strategy for lending intermediaries to gain access to a new, low-cost, centralized pool of clean energy capital focused on low-to-moderate income communities.

• Partnering with Climate Impact Advisors to create a business plan for the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank.

• Assisting the Montgomery County Green Bank with creating the financial component of the organization’s strategic plan and refining its product set.

Forsyth Street is currently serving as the financial advisor to the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission in leading the business planning effort for the Bay Area Housing Finance Agency (BAHFA), the first regional housing finance authority in California.  As part of this effort, Forsyth Street is leading a multi-disciplinary team to design the strategies and financial programs that BAHFA will use to address the vast range of housing needs and inequities across the region. Once the financing programs have been developed and approved by MTC and BAHFA’s various governing bodies, Forsyth Street will support the implementation of BAHFA. This will involve supporting the agency to quickly and efficiently finance housing projects and programs, identifying appropriate staffing models, while also developing lending infrastructure required for the agency to begin making loans and investments.

Forsyth Street serves as financial advisor to The San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund (SFHAF), a public-private-philanthropic partnership established in 2017 to provide powerful new tools for producing additional affordable housing in San Francisco. Forsyth Street worked for the City and County of San Francisco’s Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development (MOHCD) to design, create and capitalized the fund. Forsyth remains engaged as a financial advisor to SFHAF, supporting development of new programs, capital raising, and supporting credit analysis. In 2020, Forsyth assisted the Homes for the Homeless Fund, SFHAF’s wholly-owned subsidiary, in piloting a new financing model designed to leverage philanthropic capital with public sector financing commitments to create permanent supportive housing. The fund’s prototype project will create over 140 new units of supportive housing on an expedited cost and time schedule, and will recycle its original $50 million philanthropic commitment to create additional supportive housing units in the future.

Forsyth Street is currently assisting Habitat for Humanity’s U.S. Office in formulating strategies to advance its affordable housing financing practices. This has included helping create new capacities in the form of a new Affordable Housing Solutions team, identifying solutions for the Habitat business model to adapt to conditions in a rapidly changing housing market, and assisting local affiliates with refining the financing approaches for innovative mixed-income project models.

Forsyth Street supports the operations of the RED Housing Fund (RHF), a new independent nonprofit formed by the Renewal Enterprise District (RED), a joint powers authority with the City of Santa Rosa and Sonoma County as members. With project priorities outlined by the Renewal Enterprise District, RHF is designed to address the region’s critical need for housing across the income spectrum to create a well-balanced housing market in an area where very little dense, infill development has occurred. RHF provides several types of loan products that are designed to both complement existing financial resources, while also activating new sources that have previously been unwilling or unable to support this type of housing development in Sonoma County.

Forsyth Street originally was hired by the RED to design, create, and capitalize the fund. Following its launch the Fund has continued to engage Forsyth Street to support new program development, credit analysis, fundraising, capital management, and loan servicing.

Grounded Solutions Network (GSN) is the nation's leading catalyst for the creation of permanently affordable shared equity homeownership. Forsyth Street Advisors, in partnership with JRW Strategies, helped GSN create the Homes for the Future Fund, a strategy to significantly scale and expand access to shared equity homeownership. This Fund will be a new social enterprise that acquires and rehabs existing single-family homes for rent and ultimately conversion to permanently affordable homeownership. Forsyth worked to create a comprehensive set of market strategies and business plan for Homes for the Future and is continuing to support the capital raising and launch of the fund.

Forsyth was retained by a consortium of foundations to plan and launch the Joint Ownership Entity New York City (JOE NYC) a new, non-profit organization able to support the city’s non-profit affordable housing community. JOE NYC is designed to strengthen the asset and property management capacity and outcomes of participating Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and the industry as a whole; to bolster the cash flow and balance sheets of participating CDCs; to enhance the ability of CDCs to secure financing for their development projects; and to help ensure the long-term affordability of the properties in its portfolio and the stability of the communities within which they are located. Forsyth’s initial engagement in the planning phases of JOE NYC involved a feasibility analysis, followed by a multi-year process to launch the organization including development of governance structures, financial analysis, fundraising, solicitation of CDC members and staff recruitment. Since its official launch in 2017, Forsyth continues to support the organization’s work as financial advisor. Since its launch JOE NYC has enlisted 11 member CDCs, spanning the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan; built assets of $250 million; and taken title to more than 50 projects comprised of 2,164 units across 151 buildings with the pending transfer of ~1,550 additional units in 84 buildings. JOE NYC has extended the reach of the non-profit housing community, exemplified by the installation of rooftop solar to cover the energy needs of 115 properties over a four-year period.

Forsyth Street has helped several clients with complex neighborhood and economic development plans, often in collaboration with planning and architecture firms. Our approach blends close attention to local trends and community input with the use of financial modeling to better inform stakeholders and help guide the development of new strategies. This synthesis of understanding community-level economics, housing development, and the built environment helps inform the creation of plans that have both short and long-range goals rooted in realistic possibilities for transformation. Notable efforts include the Diego Beekman Neighborhood Plan (2017) and the Downtown Niagara Falls Development Strategy (2021), among others.

As the housing market deteriorated around the country in 2008 and 2009, Forsyth Street worked with leading national housing nonprofits in an unprecedented collaboration to establish the National Community Stabilization Trust (NCST). NCST has become a key connector between community-based organizations and distressed assets in their communities. Forsyth Street served as the Fund Manager for the Stabilization Trust REO Capital Fund — a subsidiary of NCST that provides financing for the acquisition and rehabilitation of distressed property — from the fund’s inception in 2009 until its conclusion in 2019. 

Over its 10-year term, the REO Capital Fund made over $61 million in loans to twenty-two community-based organizations in fifteen states and the District of Columbia, facilitating the acquisition and rehabilitation of over 660 units of previously distressed housing.

The United Nations Development Corporation is a New York State public benefit corporation created in 1968 to assist the United Nations community with its office space and other real estate needs. Since 2011, Forsyth Street has been a financial and real estate advisor to UNDC in connection with an anticipated bond financing for construction of a proposed new office building under consideration by the United Nations that would be leased by the UN and used to consolidate staff from other UN locations in New York City. Forsyth Street has assisted UNDC in various real estate matters relating to the transaction, including structuring of the transaction and participating in negotiations with the United Nations.