SP Investment Fund LLC is a private company seeking to make a positive impact through strategic investments in worthwhile causes. In addition to investing in efforts to build and preserve affordable housing communities, SP Investment Fund focuses on innovative startups in medical technology. One such startup, Zenflow, aims to revolutionize the treatment of a condition that affects more than 400 million men around the world. Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), also known as enlargement of the prostate, often causes urinary obstruction. This can lead to a number of complications that can greatly impact the quality of life, such as increased difficulty or frequency of urination and interrupted sleep. Unfortunately, men face limited options for this condition. Drugs developed for the treatment of BPH have limited efficacy, and surgical options are invasive, expensive, and associated with sexual side effects. Zenflow has created an innovative new treatment that offers improved relief from BPH symptoms with fewer side effects. The San Francisco-based startup is pioneering the Spring System, a device that delivers faster relief from BPH symptoms with fewer side effects. Physicians can deploy the device in a single office visit with minimal discomfort for patients and limited risk of complications. Zenflow is testing the Spring System in clinical trials and hopes to release the innovative new treatment soon to the general public.
Dedicated to supporting the construction and preservation of workforce and affordable housing, SP Investment Fund LLC prioritizes those projects that improve tenant quality of life. SP Investment Fund strives to support communities that offer appropriate and relevant amenities and services, so that all tenants can feel comfortable in and proud of their homes.According to a recent survey, more than 90 percent of apartment hunters choose units based on the availability of certain amenities. Data from 2017 rentals reveals that in-unit washers and dryers top the list. Renters seem to prioritize laundry so highly, in fact, that a washer-dryer connection ranks sixth among the year's most popular amenities, and laundry facilities occupy the same spot on the list of most popular community features.Ease of doing basic household chores may also explain the prominence of dishwashers as fifth on the list of desired amenities. Comfort appears important, as well, as air conditioning ranks second and balconies eighth, while swimming pools rank third as a community amenity.
Based in Southern California, SP Investment Fund LLC pursues opportunities nationwide that involve the rehabilitation of affordable housing and/or market-rate workforce housing. SP Investment Fund’s commitment to affordable housing focuses on ensuring that existing regulated apartment senor and family communities extend their affordability covenants and their useful lives through rehabilitation. As highlighted in Multi-Housing News, one area of potential growth is in larger rental units that meet the needs of families. While the majority of investors are focused on meeting the needs of highly paid millennial renters, who are perceived to provide the highest investment returns, senior and family housing should not be overlooked.Experts note that only 22 percent of households are headed by someone under the age of 30. On the other hand, 44 percent are headed by someone 45 and older. Yet, since 2000, less than 10 percent of apartment communities have been constructed with three-bedroom units designed to meet the needs of larger families. This has led to a major supply-and-demand imbalance, which makes larger-unit affordable assets a stable source of cash flow and long-term risk-adjusted returns. Not only are social impact mandates met and operating expenses decreased, but overall occupancy of family housing tends to be higher and more stable from year to year.
SP Investment Fund, LLC, a Southern California-based company in the affordable housing sector, has undertaken numerous residential investments in conjunction with affiliates focused on improving the lives of those in their communities. SP Investment Fund’s investments in affordable housing have been focused on housing serving seniors and families with low and very low incomes. The SP website features access to a number of related resources, including the Urban Land Institute’s (ULI) Building Healthy Places Initiative. The ULI report, titled Retail in Underserved Communities, examines the access of people with limited means to a full range of retail offerings in an era of e-shopping. One major issue in underserved urban areas is that investors tend to focus on larger retail centers, and the small businesses that inhabit space-restricted urban-core sites often are out of reach of large-scale distribution networks. At the same time, the shopping centers that do exist in underserved communities have often lost major anchor chains, such as grocery stores and department stores. Sales volume tends to decline at these centers and members of the local community with mobility issues are the first to suffer, due to a lack of ready access to retail choices. The report points to a need to create coordinated urban revival strategies that encompass housing, retail access, and other aspects of well-being, such as health care. One success story is a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, where coordinated efforts by leaders of the East Liberty community attracted new retail tenants such as Home Depot and Whole Foods, and redefined the area as one with accessible shopping for local residents.
Focused on opportunities nationwide, SP Investment Fund undertakes the acquisition, financing, and rehabilitation of government subsidized apartment complexes. SP Investment Fund has also taken equity positions in several innovative startups involving biotech and health sciences that will contribute to society. In 2016 the company invested in Opentrons, which creates robots designed to enable collaboration among scientists in ways that produce repeatable results. Functions of the personal pipetting robots include automating repetitive, common workflows involving sample distributions and normalized concentrations across a plate. In addition, multiple plates can be filled and mapped within a matter of minutes. The protocol-automating functions of Opentrons’ products are used within laboratories spanning 30 countries. For example, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Blais Proteomics Center, Opentrons’ OT-One is employed in preparing samples for mass spectrometry. The recently introduced OT-One S is twice as fast as its predecessor and can fill a 96-well plate within a minute and a half.
Southern California-headquartered SP Investment Fund focuses on providing value by working with affiliates to purchase and rehabilitate government subsidized and market-rate workforce housing. Also active in the seed capital sphere, SP Investment Fund has placed equity in an array of technology startups, in areas from biotechnology to consumer Internet. In the latter space, SP Investment Fund is an investor in Y Combinator alum Razorpay which has developed a payments platform gateway for Indian companies seeking to operate efficient businesses online. Combining affordable pricing with an API that is developer-friendly, Razorpay’s system includes fully online onboarding designed to place entrepreneurs in a position of control over their payment ecosystems. The Razorpay platform is secure and compatible with the full range of international payment modes, from net banking to e-wallets. At checkout, a single JavaScript line seamlessly embeds cross-platform payment forms such that payments start and end on a single page through the tap of a button. With redirection handled via pop-up, the consumer never leaves the retailer’s site, which in turn maximizes revenue potential.
Investing in projects that deliver a positive social impact, SP Investment Fund and its affiliates focus on real estate and emerging technology investments. SP Investment Fund partners with various entities to provide affordable housing to low and very low income families and has so far invested in over 100 housing projects. Among its partners is Riverside Charitable Corporation. Riverside Charitable Corporation (RCC) is a nonprofit dedicated to providing people who cannot afford life’s basic needs with secure and service-backed affordable housing. It has also help thousands of qualified families buy their own homes. RCC provides community-centered educational and professional social services to the elderly, families, and children. As of 2016, the nonprofit has created over 90 communities, and has 11,366 families residing in RCC homes, with 5,872 of these families below area median income, and 1,701 of these families also living below the poverty line. Free to its residents, RCC’s professional supportive-services programs are self-sustaining and self-funded by each community and serve more than 10,000 families.
