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May 2024

Tapestry welcomes Chris Mohan as Investment Analyst

By News

Tapestry Community Capital is excited to welcome Chris Mohan to the team! Chris will work for the summer as an investment analyst, supporting

 various teams within Tapestry as we level up our work with affordable housing providers, share knowledge and resources about community finance widely, and much more. 

Chris’s first foray into the world of social finance was two-fold. As a student in business and engineering at Western University, Chris joined the school’s climate justice group, leading investigations into the university’s investment portfolio and greenwashing practices in its responsible investing strategy. He also interned with the LEAP | Pecaut Centre for Social Impact, supporting ventures focused on health and women’s economic resilience. “It was after that experience that I knew that I wasn’t leaving the social impact space,” Chris says.

Now, working with Tapestry as a participant in Propel Impact’s Summer Analyst program, Chris is excited to dive into community finance. “I’m really excited to be at Tapestry. I first heard about Tapestry through that YouTube video by About Here highlighting the Kensington Market Community Land Trust, and I thought that was such an exciting opportunity to actually fund community power,” Chris says. “I really think as community bonds scale, we’re going to unlock so many amazing new opportunities for us to reinvigorate not just housing and community projects, but also local democracy.”

Chris is interested in the behind-the-scenes working of community finance for another reason, too: “I do hope one day to work on nonprofit or co-housing developments for my community and for my family,” Chris shares. “With the high interest rates on mortgages, it’s just an impossible feat to actually be able to pay a mortgage lender and accumulate the down payment required…And at the same time, as an added bonus, we can move away from this more individualistic and separated lifestyle.”

When Chris isn’t working or dreaming up future housing co-ops, he enjoys reading (mostly nonfiction, but he’s open to fiction recommendations), cycling, and volunteering at a Toronto organization called Charlie’s Freewheels, where he helps teach young people about building bikes.

We hope you’ll have the opportunity to meet Chris soon. If you’d like to get in touch, you can reach him at chris@tapestrycapital.ca. Welcome to the team, Chris!

Tapestry Community Capital chosen as a CMHC Level-Up semi-finalist

By Affordable Housing, News

Tapestry Community Capital is proud to share that we’ve been selected as a semi-finalist in the CMHC’s Housing Supply Challenge!

What does it mean? We’ve received funding to continue our work supporting affordable housing providers across the country in raising community capital. From building new affordable, net-zero housing in Kamloops, B.C. to preserving affordable units for residents of Toronto’s quickly-gentrifying Kensington Market, the work affordable housing providers do is essential and they need better financing options.

 

What is the Housing Supply Challenge?

From the CMHC website

The Housing Supply Challenge invites citizens, stakeholders, and experts to propose solutions to the barriers to new housing supply. The challenge will distribute $300 million in funding over 5 years.

Successful submissions that address barriers to supply will receive funding to prototype or incubate their proposal. Following the prototype stage, a number of selected finalists will share a pool of additional funding to implement their proposed solutions.

Each round awards proposals that address housing supply barriers such as building timelines, construction productivity, and improving data on land availability.

How do community bonds support affordable housing?

Community bonds are a social finance tool that can be used by charities, non-profits and co-operatives to finance socially and environmentally impactful projects. Similar in many ways to a traditional bond, they are an interest bearing loan from an investor, which has a set rate of return and a fixed term.

For affordable housing providers, community bonds can:

  • Help fill financing gaps — for example, there aren’t many other financing paths to cover pre-development costs like buying land, having architectural plans drafted, and legal and consulting fees.
  • Build community support for more affordable housing — affordable housing providers can grow their network of supporters by offering their communities investment opportunities.
  • Contribute to local economic development — by offering returns to everyday community members rather than big banks, community bonds build community wealth, indirectly helping to end the housing crisis.

Learn more about Tapestry’s Investing in Housing program here, and about the CMHC’s Housing Supply Challenge here.

For media inquiries, contact Kylie Adair, Communications Lead at kylie@tapestrycapital.ca. For general inquiries, get in touch with our team at info@tapestrycapital.ca.

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