Affordability is not just our mission – it’s who we are. Freddie Mac Multifamily is committed to promoting rental housing affordability and this comes through in our support for workforce housing.

You’ll find workforce housing everywhere, especially in urban areas and other employment centers. Some typical characteristics of workforce properties:

  • Affordable to renters with lower incomes; such as firefighters, teachers, health care professionals and service workers
  • Privately owned and operated
  • Older buildings with limited amenities and basic interior finishes; usually outfitted with older appliances
  • Newer properties built to serve workforce populations and/or have units affordable at specific area medium income (AMI) levels

Why Is It Important?

About half of all renters are considered cost-burdened, meaning that they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. This burden is much heavier for many lower-income households, where a higher percentage of their income must go toward housing and there is less to spend on other necessities, such as food, clothing and health care.

While we’ve always supported affordability, housing for the workforce population has become a large focus for us. We’re proud to support renters nationwide and to help improve their quality of life.

How Does Freddie Mac Multifamily Support It?

We help property owners/developers buy, refinance and preserve multifamily rental properties. To do this, we work with Optigo® lenders to fund loans ranging from $1 million to hundreds of millions of dollars for properties of all types and sizes –from five units to hundreds of units or one building to several.

We continue to improve and expand our support for workforce housing through many of our Conventional, Small Balance Loan and Targeted Affordable Housing loan offerings.

On average, between our support for workforce housing and government-assisted housing, over 90% of the apartment units we fund each year are affordable to renters earning local AMI or less.

With Freddie Mac Multifamily’s consistent involvement, we bring more funding, consistency and stability to this integral segment of the market. Learn more about our commitment to workforce housing.