Massachusetts groups awarded $130m under New Markets Tax Credit program

By Chris Reidy, Globe Staff

Massachusetts groups have been awarded $130 million under the annual allocation of the US Treasury Department’s New Markets Tax Credit program.

Bay State recipients include Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp., a private nonprofit investor and lender that received a New Markets Tax Credit allocation award of $65 million. MassDevelopment, the state’s finance-and-development agency, received a $40 million allocation under the program. And the Community Builders Inc., a Boston-based nonprofit developer of mixed-income housing, received a $25 million allocation, according to a Thursday press release from Massachusetts Housing Investment Corp., or MHIC.

“The New Markets Tax Credit addresses one of the most significant obstacles to economic development that low-income communities face: a lack of access to patient, private investment capital,”Treasury Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Cyrus Amir-Mokri said in a statement. “The $31 billion worth of tax credit investments nationwide in past years have gone toward preserving jobs and bringing community facilities and new businesses into neighborhoods that desperately needed them. I expect today’s awardees will continue that trend.”

In a statement of his own, MHIC president Joe Flatley added that the allocation under the program “means that we can continue to build on the expertise we have developed using New Markets Tax Credit financing for projects that create jobs and economic opportunity throughout New England.”

The Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund said in a Wednesday press release that 85 organizations nationwide have been selected to receive $3.5 billion in New Markets Tax Credit.