The Shelter Group has sold off its affordable-housing portfolio as it shifts focus to its Brightview senior living business.
Enterprise Homes, a Baltimore-based affordable-housing developer, has acquired The Shelter Group's 43 affordable-housing properties, which include 4,153 apartments. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The Shelter Group decided to shed its affordable-housing portfolio as growth at Brightview made it difficult to manage increasingly disparate lines of business, said Jeffrey Hettleman, executive vice president at The Shelter Group.
Brightview includes 35 independent, assisted-living and dementia-care communities along the East Coast. All operate around the clock, making senior living a much more service-intensive line of business, compared to affordable housing, Hettleman said.
The vast majority of the organization's employees, a total of 3,600 people, work for Brightview.
Meanwhile affordable housing became a smaller and smaller piece of the company, with about 175 employees, Hettleman said.
"We felt it would be better for that business to be within an organization where that was their focus, that was the bulk of what they did," he said.
The deal triples the size of Enterprise Homes' portfolio of affordable-housing properties. The 175 employees in that division will move to Enterprise Homes.
"The quality of The Shelter Group's affordable housing portfolio, their excellent management of the properties, the geographic location and alignment with Enterprise's mission made this a very special and attractive opportunity," said Chickie Grayson, president & CEO of Enterprise Homes.