Early last year, the Central New York Community Foundation made two recoverable grants totaling $1.86 million to Home HeadQuarters (HHQ), a nonprofit housing and community development organization serving Syracuse and the broader Upstate New York region. These short-term, low-interest investments ensured HHQ could continue delivering critical affordable housing programs while awaiting reimbursements from state and federal grant contracts.
The first grant, totaling $1 million, supported the construction and sale of eight high-efficiency homes on the Near Westside of Syracuse. Designed with low- and moderate-income families in mind, the homes were built to advanced energy standards — with LEED certifications, super insulation, solar panels, and all-electric infrastructure — to reduce long-term utility costs and ensure lasting affordability. Seven were new constructions and one was a substantial rehab of an existing structure retrofitted with the same energy-saving technologies.
All eight homes were sold to first-time buyers with household incomes averaging 65% of the region’s area median income (AMI). According to HHQ, most of the buyers were the first in their families to ever own a home, setting the stage for future financial stability and generational wealth.
The second recoverable grant of $860,000 enabled HHQ to maintain its emergency home repair and housing stabilization programs while awaiting a $4 million reimbursement from the Community Development Block Grant COVID-19 program (CDBG-CV). With this support, HHQ renovated, sold, or stabilized 58 housing units on Syracuse’s Southside, including:
- 10 homes were sold to new owner-occupants
- 24 units of affordable rental housing were preserved at a formerly derelict apartment building
- 14 blighted properties were demolished to improve neighborhood safety and appearance
- Additional units were repaired or stabilized for continued affordable rental
These efforts were clustered around streets such as South Salina, Kennedy, Borden, and Kirk, reinforcing neighborhood investment in visibly concentrated ways
“You now have streets where we’ve introduced new homeowners, safe rentals, and removed hazardous buildings, all in one pocket neighborhood,” said Kerry Quaglia, founder and CEO of Home HeadQuarters. “We’ve seen appraised values go up. The street has a whole different look and feel.”
Without the Community Foundation’s flexible funding, Quaglia says HHQ would have been forced to pause key programs, delay contractor payments, or turn away qualified buyers. Instead, the recoverable grants enabled continuity in service delivery while positioning HHQ to leverage more than $5 million in public investment for long-term community impact.
“At some point, cash flow becomes critical; that’s where the Community Foundation’s advance of funds was absolutely essential,” he said “We were able to run our operations and maintain programming while the reimbursements trickled in. It made a huge difference.”
These recoverable grants are part of the Community Foundation’s growing local impact investing program, which uses a portion of its main investment pool to make strategic, mission-aligned investments that generate both financial return and social good. Through this program, the Community Foundation has now deployed over $6.65 million to advance housing, business development, and economic inclusion in Central New York.
Our impact investing program provides sustainable long-term benefit to the community while preserving capital and attaining a modest financial return. We engage in this practice by carefully selecting opportunities such as loans, equity investments, guarantees or recoverable grants that align with our mission and contribute to the betterment of Central New York. Learn more at cnycf.org/impactinvesting.Â
