RIVERSIDE, Calif., Sept. 16, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The City of Riverside has secured a $20 million revolving line of credit from City National Bank to help expand its neighborhood stabilization efforts targeting vacant, foreclosed and abandoned homes throughout the city.

The credit facility will allow the city to effectively leverage federal and local funding, thereby allowing it to acquire more homes in more neighborhoods than by using federal and local dollars alone.

Through the Neighborhood Stabilization and Targets of Opportunity programs, the Housing Authority of the City of Riverside acquires and rehabilitates distressed properties that then are made available for sale to first-time homebuyers. Lease-to-own and rental options are available for middle- to lower-income households.

The credit facility almost triples the combined funding available to acquire vacant and foreclosed homes. The more than $31.5 million in funding includes a $5 million allocation from the city's Redevelopment Agency and a $6.5 million Neighborhood Stabilization Program grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

To date, 20 residential properties have been acquired, with another 16 in the preliminary stages of rehabilitation. The city has begun rehabilitating two of the acquired properties.

The city intends to return to productive use another approximately 350 homes that are located in high-visibility areas and neighborhoods with the highest concentrations of foreclosed or at-risk properties.

Citywide, more than 4,400 properties -- almost 4.5 percent of all local housing units -- went into foreclosure between July 1, 2007 and May 13, 2009. Using federal guidelines, 34 of Riverside's 62 census tracts have been identified as among the most severely impacted areas of the city.

"This partnership between the City of Riverside and City National Bank will make a significant impact on our neighborhoods. It will allow us to purchase a greater number of distressed homes and transform them from a negative impact on the neighborhood to a positive example of pride in homeownership," according to City of Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge.

"This is an outstanding example of using public and private resources to address a serious public issue," said Breck Fleming, senior vice president and manager of City National Bank's Riverside Commercial Banking Services.