Multifamily developer and manager The NRP Group is going strong on affordable housing with a $175M spend on the construction of four workforce apartment complexes across Texas.
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The developer intends to bring 922 apartment units online in these four communities by 2022 with rental prices that cater to the salaries of essential workers and families making $50K or less per year.
One of the developments that broke ground recently is the Independence at Collin McKinney in the DFW suburb of McKinney. The remaining three developments — The Arcadian, Luna Flats and The Scott at Medio Creek — are in San Antonio.
The Cleveland-based firm has been building multifamily across price points in Texas for nearly 20 years, but its mission to build workforce housing escalated even further when the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the need to ensure essential workers in healthcare, education and emergency services have access to affordable housing in Texas metro areas.
“As the pandemic has approached, we talk about your everyday heroes, your essential workers, the people who are on the forefront of our economies and our minds, and so it’s been more of a focus [for us] to try and look for areas where we can house those people,” NRP Senior Vice President of Development Jason Arechiga told Bisnow.
Getting the deals done in areas like Collin County, where McKinney lies and where residents have pushed back on multifamily developments in the past, takes time and patience and a willingness to highlight how these communities benefit the city and keep essential workers close by, Arechiga added.
“Workforce housing and affordable housing has kind of an education process,” he said. “Because, frankly, in some people's minds it has a negative connotation, so we need to be able to go into a community and say, I don’t think this is what you think it is. You do need places for essential workers ... firefighters, teachers and policemen, and you need to see who is living here and also you need to see the quality of the developer who is building it.”
NRP Group has developed 65 affordable housing projects to the tune of $1.5B since opening in Texas in 2004.
The latest developments in San Antonio are located at 4611 East Loop 1604 North and 9130 Excellence Drive, while the McKinney development is located at 2150 Collin McKinney Parkway to the west of Central Expressway.
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