Preserve affordability while increasing the nation's workforce housing supply

Help stabilize workforce housing communities via beneficial private financing

Sponsor-Dedicated Workforce (SDW) is a creative financing solution that increases the supply of affordable housing available to workforce renters by offering borrowers competitive pricing and underwriting flexibility. It provides incentives for borrowers of conventional properties that establish rent restrictions as part of a private financing approach to address the affordability crisis for the missing-middle renter. Borrowers that create or preserve rents, on a minimum of 20% of the units, affordable to renters earning up to 80% Area Median Income (AMI) or, in certain metros, up to 100-120% AMI can leverage SDW.

Who are workforce renters?

In many cities across the country, it can be difficult for middle-income households to rent housing in the areas in which they work. This is in part due to rent growth outpacing wage growth for decades¹, and a limited supply of housing affordable to these workers who rarely qualify for housing subsidies. Workforce housing is often seen as housing affordable to households earning between 80-120% of AMI, specifically targeting middle-income workers living in a particular geography.

Reversing trends

SDW financing enables borrowers to increase affordable housing for workforce renters. Consider these trends:

• Rents have risen by an average of 38% over the past decade.²
• A high of 22.4 million renter households, representing half of all households, spent more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. Among these cost-burdened households, 12.1 million had housing costs that consumed more than 50% of their income, an all-time high for severe burdens.¹
• Cost burdens continue to climb the income scale. While all income groups had increasing cost-burden rates from 2019 to 2022, middle-income renters making $45,000 to $74,999 saw their cost-burdened share rise the fastest with a 5.4 percentage point increase to 41 percent.¹