A new public investment is poised to bring new housing units to Boston’s Nubian Square. The funding also marks an early step in the implementation of a novel public funding method aimed at helping bolster more housing construction.

A $10.5 million investment from state and city funds will help launch a development of 110 rental units at 20 Malcolm X Boulevard, one that will bring a mix of affordable and market-rate housing to the neighborhood.

“The thing about housing is that you need an actual place and an actual team to build it, and then that team needs permits and financing,” said Kenzie Bok, administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, which helped oversee the city funding of the project. “This is a situation where we’ve got a great permitted building, but the financing hadn’t come together.”

On the state side, the project is funded through the Momentum Fund, a housing fund that was created under the 2024 Affordable Homes Act. Through the fund, the state directly invests in housing projects, with the promise of a certain level of affordable units, instead of the tax incentives or grants that often make up state support for developments. Like private investments into housing developments — and unlike subsidies through grants — the state dollars are ultimately paid back by the developers.

“This is a tool that will be paid back,” said Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll. “It essentially makes us a partner co-investor on projects that are permitted.”

State officials said they believe the fund is the first of its kind in the country.

Chrystal Kornegay, CEO of MassHousing, described the fund as “the public sector taking a much more active role into private development. One of the reasons we designed the Momentum Fund is to really mirror an equity product that private developers are used to dealing with,” she said. “It allows for the government to play a role and to be able to recycle the money.”

The first use of the fund, for a development project in Milton, was announced in April 2025. That project broke ground in July 2025 and will include 23 affordable rental homes and 69 market-rate dwellings.

On the city side, the money comes through the Boston Accelerator Fund, a $110 million housing fund created to match state investment in projects through its Momentum Fund.

“I think it’s really designed to meet this moment that we’re in, where everybody agrees that housing is just an essential need and the market is not providing it on its own,” Bok said. “When you have something that’s an essential public need and the private market isn’t supplying it, that’s a place where we need government to get involved.”

By having money extended through the fund later returned, rather than just being given as a subsidy, such an arrangement also allows for the government to support development in a more extensive way. “Over the long run, your investment in housing is going to be able to stretch further,” Bok said.

The partnership between the state and a municipality is part of a model that Driscoll said she’d like to see extended across more communities in the state, especially as building costs rise.

“We’re looking for innovative ways to bring resources together,” Driscoll said. “A partnership between the state and the city, each kicking in some dollars, is really key and pivotal to helping get this project off the ground.”

Bok said the partnership is exciting, and she expects it to be a beneficial tool in the neighborhood, but that it marks continued collaboration with the state on housing issues.

“It’s not a new set of partners — we all work together every day — but it is a really new and exciting vehicle for us to be doing together,” Bok said.

Officials said they also see the development at 20 Malcolm X Boulevard as a timely project, as the Nubian Square neighborhood sees a host of efforts to revitalize the area. In January, Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology opened its new campus in the neighborhood. The long-awaited Jazz Urbane Café is soon slated to open in the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building. And a handful of other projects are expected to bring new housing units, arts and culture and lab space to the square.

Kornegay said she’s “super excited” that the new development, which itself is a revitalization, is adding to that mix. The development, which will be led by SV+Partners and Trax Development, will be built in a lot that is currently empty, but one that Bok said used to be houses before it was demolished during urban renewal in the late 1960s or early 1970s.

“Oftentimes, what happens with new development projects, there are communities that don’t necessarily experience the opportunities for growth,” she said.

“We’re happy that our Momentum Fund tool is making this happen all across the commonwealth, and in places in cities that don’t necessarily get access to that.”

Bok said she thinks it has been a priority for the city, as well as staff at the Boston Housing Authority, to see continued support in the neighborhood.

“It’s long been, I think, a concern of the city that the community vibrancy of Nubian Square is matched with private and public investment,” Bok said. “I think that this is a really great step forward.”