Gulf Coast Housing Partnership and the East Baton Rouge Council on Aging have opened the Lotus Village Senior Living Community, a 56-building, 116-unit affordable senior housing community located at 1600 Gracie St. and 715 N. 16th St. in Baton Rouge, La.
The $25 million development of the community was partially funded through Cedar Rapids Bank and Trust Co., which provided $13.1 million in bonds for the community’s construction, as well as a joint funding venture between Red River Bank and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas that procured an additional $750,000, as part of an Affordable Housing Program subsidy. Following the community’s opening, EBRCOA will provide supportive services for residents.
Lotus Village began construction in 2021, alongside an accompanying Geriatric Healthcare facility and an open-air grocery market. Sectioned into duplex and fourplex buildings, the community is fully affordable, offering residences for seniors earning less than 80 percent of the area median income. Across the community, renters have access to a centralized administrative building that features a food pantry, computer room, exercise room, activity center and a commercial kitchen.
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Situated within one mile of downtown Baton Rouge, the community has quick access to the state capital’s parks, cultural sites and entertainment offerings. An on-ramp to the Interstate 110 is half a mile away.
FHLB’s financing endeavors
The financing, development and opening of Lotus Village takes place as the nation’s affordable senior housing developers simultaneously face an aging population, labor shortages and an increasingly difficult capital markets landscape. In addressing such capital shortages, many branches of the Federal Home Loan Bank have funded the development of many recent affordable projects. The Affordable Housing Program subsidy procured for the development of Lotus Village was part of a larger $17.2 million in financing for 26 projects around the South. In November of 2022, FHLB San Francisco procured funding for the development of Berkeley Way Apartments and the accompanying Hope Center, an affordable housing community with an adjacent homeless service facility in Berkeley, Calif.
