The fallout from the recent failure of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) is having wide-reaching effects across the country. Take Boston, for example, where advocates for multiple in-progress affordable housing developments are concerned about their future following the bank's collapse. 

The Boston Globe is reporting on the underpinnings of their dilemma, which concerns the future of the bank's over $1.6 billion worth of investments in the city. 

The now-dissolved SVB had purchased the previously-fledgling entity known as Boston Private Bank in 2021, leaving many of its nonprofit clients vulnerable in the wake of the failure. Boston just unveiled its plan to add some 803 units through a $67 million investment, but the 600 or more units derived from projects that were underwritten by SVB remain on precarious footing in spite of several reassurances and the recent FDIC intervention.

“While people have gotten some certainty that for specific projects the investments will be honored, there’s been no blanket statement that all of Silicon Valley’s obligations will be honored,” Kevin Murray, an interim executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, told The Daily Free Press, Boston University's student newspaper. “That still creates a certain uncertainty.”

Other cities like Los Angeles are feeling the hit too. SVB had recently invested $11.2 billion in underserved communities in California and Massachusetts alone, investments that are now up for grabs along with others assets as part of an auction sale that is expected to close next week. 

“I don’t know who’s going to step up when Silicon Valley Bank walks away,” LA-based nonprofit affordable housing funder, Ari Beliak, told KQED. “Without them, we don’t know who’s going to step into that void, if anyone’s going to step in.”