The Acacia at Youngtown is now leasing! Click here to apply!
The Acacia at Youngtown is now leasing! Click here to apply!
In Eagle, Colorado, the clock was ticking for 120 working-class families.
Eagle Villas, a 120-unit affordable apartment community nestled in one of America’s most expensive mountain corridors, had been their home for nearly 30 years. Restaurant workers. Grocery store clerks. County employees. The people who keep a resort community running but can no longer afford to live in it. In Eagle County, average home values exceed $1 million and one in three residents is cost-burdened, paying more than 1/3 of their income for housing. Eagle Villas wasn’t just housing. It was the last affordable lifeline for a workforce with nowhere else to go.
And it was about to disappear.
A 90-Day Window. No Room for Error.
When a low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) property’s affordability restrictions expire, the outcome is almost always the same: rents double overnight, families are displaced, and a community loses something it can never get back. Eagle Villas represented more than 50% of all affordable units in the town of Eagle — and there’s no land available at a price point that would make rebuilding 120 units feasible. Once gone, it would be gone forever.
When Ulysses Development Group (UDG) identified Eagle Villas in 2023, the property was already listed on the open market with a clear signal: a new owner would be free to charge market-rate rents. We had roughly 90 days to act before the community was lost.
Here’s the problem: assembling a full affordable housing capital stack — federal tax credits, state grants, local subordinate debt, and bond financing — cannot be done in 90 days. The approval processes, regulatory requirements, and financing timelines make it structurally impossible.
So we built a different path.
A Two-Step Structure That Required Real Risk
Rather than wait for financing to fall into place, we moved first. UDG arranged a $27 million bridge loan through the National Equity Fund and filled a $13 million gap with funding from Eagle County’s Housing and Development Authority, Colorado’s Transformational Housing Loan Program, and our own capital. That allowed us to purchase the property and secure affordability before permanent financing existed.
Then came the harder part.
LIHTC rules restrict tax credit use on recently transferred properties. To unlock eligibility, we engineered a “step-in-the-shoes” structure: Eagle County’s Housing and Development Authority passed an inducement resolution committing to approximately $34 million in Private Activity Bonds, allowing UDG to step into their regulatory position and access the LIHTC equity that would have otherwise been off the table.
The final capital stack ($69 million across JP Morgan Chase, National Equity Fund, CHFA, ECHDA, the Colorado Department of Local Affairs, and Eagle County) closed a $13 million financing gap that no single source could cover alone.
120 Families. 60 More Years.
Throughout a $12.6 million renovation in a mountain community with limited construction capacity and compressed building seasons, every resident was temporarily displaced. UDG arranged and funded hotel accommodations for all 120 households because preservation isn’t just about saving a building. It’s about keeping a community intact.
The outcome: affordability at Eagle Villas is now secured for the next 60 years. Rents unchanged. Families home.
With Colorado projected to lose 4,400 affordable units by 2030, Eagle Villas is proof that proactive preservation works when you have the right partners, the right expertise, and the will to move when it matters.
