New York
Bridging the justice gap in New York
Creating Low Income Housing in New York

Lawyers Alliance for New York provides much needed legal assistance to nonprofit organizations that acquire, develop and operate housing affordable to low income New Yorkers. While some of this work is done exclusively by in-house LANY staff, and some is done almost exclusively by volunteers, much is done through an active co-counseling relationship between the two. These projects offer challenging and complex legal work, wonderful clients and rewarding outcomes. We invite you to join Lawyers Alliance in being part of the solution to the ongoing crisis in housing affordability for a significant portion of our neighbors.

The legal work for these projects includes corporate, real estate and finance, and sometimes also includes tax and partnership law. Our clients are usually nonprofit organizations which create affiliates or subsidiaries, often entities known as housing development fund corporations, to acquire property, secure construction and permanent financing, and develop and manage the property. Sometimes our clients become partners with private investors in these endeavors, in order to raise money from the federal low income housing tax credit program. Occasionally our clients are tenants who form a limited equity cooperative to own the buildings in which they live, and who become the shareholders in the cooperative.

The legal work may be complex or fairly simple. It may involve negotiating a purchase and sale agreement with a private owner or acquiring property owned by the City of New York. It may involve one loan from the City or the State, or a combination of City, State and private loans, as well as equity investments from limited partners, who require a heavily papered transaction. The library entitled "Creating Low Income Housing in New York" is intended to provide volunteer attorneys with sample documents from the range of transactions which we have worked on. We hope these documents will help to demystify the process and encourage transactional attorneys to work with us in the future.

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