SoLa Impact, a minority-led housing developer, announced a $25 million investment from PayPal for its fourth fund, the Black Impact Fund.
The investment further scales SoLa’s production of high-quality affordable housing in California’s major urban markets. PayPal’s investment in SoLa’s Black Impact Fund is part of PayPal’s $535 million commitment to advance racial economic equity and support Black and underserved communities.
“PayPal is uniquely positioned to create economic opportunity for underinvested communities. This investment will contribute to progress in closing the racial wealth gap and providing access to affordable housing in Black and brown neighborhoods,” said Martin Muoto, Chief Executive Officer, SoLa Impact. “We are excited to add PayPal to our cohort of leading corporate investors with a strong commitment to driving long-term transformative change and addressing economic inequality in historically underserved communities.”
With more than a decade of demonstrated results in several of Los Angeles’s lowest-income neighborhoods, SoLa Impact has combined access to affordable housing with access to education, capital, and ownership to uplift Black and Latinx communities.
“Our investment in SoLa Impact’s Black Impact Fund is part of our ongoing focus on sustained engagement and progress in areas of economic equality and social justice,” said Aaron Anderson, Senior Vice President and Treasurer, PayPal. “Affordable housing is key to building financial health and we are committed to doing our part to break the cycle of inequality by partnering with SoLa Impact, an organization that is creating high-quality affordable housing, while creating economic opportunities in historically overlooked communities.”
The Black Impact Fund is deploying capital in Southern California as the state faces a need to confront its homelessness epidemic.
With an existing portfolio of over 1,500 housing units, SoLa Impact is currently in development on an additional 1,500 affordable housing units and plans to add another 4,000 units in California over the next two years making SoLa Impact one of the nation’s largest Black-led developers and operators.
