A Minneapolis-St. Paul senior cooperative housing development will receive $4.7 million in funding from the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT). The project, to be constructed at Applewood Pointe of Roseville at Langton Lake, will create about 70 union construction jobs and will produce 48 housing units in a four-story building offering residents an array of amenities.

“We were able to put together an innovative financing package thanks to our strong working relationship with Dougherty Mortgage, the FHA lender for the project,” said HIT Investment Officer Chris Shaw.

United Properties, a cooperative developer in the Twin Cities region will develop the project. In 2009, the HIT provided $17.6 million for another United Properties project, the recently completed Applewood Pointe of Bloomington at Southport, which created 101 senior housing units and approximately 130 union construction jobs.

The two Applewood Pointe projects are part of a construction jobs initiative under HIT. The initiative was launched in early 2009 to help promote economic recovery, with the goal of creating 10,000 union construction jobs by spring 2011. The HIT has achieved more than 90% of that goal, having financed 30 projects to date in the Twin Cities, Boston, Chicago, New York, St. Louis, San Francisco, Milwaukee and other cities. These investments have created more than 9,000 union construction jobs and 9,300 housing units across the country, with total development costs of $1.5 billion.

“Today’s economy is a challenge for the construction industry,” said Harry Melander, executive secretary of the St. Paul Building and Construction Trades Council. “Fewer lenders are putting up the money for new projects,” he added. “We need jobs, and the HIT is delivering those jobs with its investments in union-built projects in our region.”

The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust is a fixed-income investment company registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. It manages $3.9 billion in assets for 350 investors, which include union and public employee pension plans. The HIT invests primarily in government and agency insured and guaranteed multifamily and single family mortgage-backed securities. Since its inception, the HIT has invested $6 billion to finance more than 97,000 units of housing nationwide, generating more than 66,000 union jobs.

See more information from the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust.