The problem

• When the private owner of the 150-unit Walden Oaks Apartments in Woodstock, Ill., decided to sell the property, its low and moderate-income tenants were immediately at risk. The complex would surely make an attractive environment for a different profile of tenants, who might pay significantly higher rents to live among its 13 acres of woods, ponds and playgrounds.

The strategy

• The nonprofit Hispanic Housing Development Corporation (HHDC) asked LISC for help in acquiring and preserving the development as a home for its current residents and as a resource for similar tenants who will want to live there in the future. LISC’s Preservation Initiative played a lead role in using a special HUD preservation incentive for nonprofits to create $3.4 million in financing for HHDC to buy Walden Oaks.

The result

• HHDC successfully acquired the property and kept the rents affordable to the working and senior tenants who live there.