The Louisiana Housing Finance Agency's Board of Commissioners awarded a total of $15 million in tax credits to Acadiana Outreach Center's planned Joie De Vivre affordable housing complex. The Louisiana Housing Finance Agency's Board of Commissioners awarded a total of $15 million in tax credits to Acadiana Outreach Center's planned Joie De Vivre affordable housing complex. The LHFA approved AOC's project application requesting $1.5 million a year in credits over 10 years. Developers project they can sell those credits up front for approximately $12 million. The development has also received $1.25 million in state and federal grants, and plans to secure a $1 million loan from the Lafayette Public Trust Financing Authority and a $2.2 million mortgage.
The project has generated some controversy among Mills Addition residents, who fear the project's impact on their historic neighborhood. Those concerns, along with tax credit limits, forced AOC to scale down its plans for the project before submitting its tax credit application in September. The development is now planned as a six building, 72-unit, mixed us complex centered on the corner of West Second and South Pierce Streets near downtown. AOC has said they hope to break ground on the development in the first quarter of 2011 and possibly be open for business by sometime in 2012.