The Dorchester-based Joseph J. Corcoran Company and its public and private partners recently broke ground on a unique project in Chelsea, Massachusetts. At the Innes Redevelopment, 96 units of public housing built in the 1950s will be transformed into a market mixed-income community alongside 40 units of middle-income housing and 194 market rate units in a transit-oriented, Class A property.

The affordable units will be interspersed throughout the buildings and indistinguishable from those with higher rents—same finishes, same management, and same access to quality amenities. None of this would have been possible without establishing a strong, transparent partnership between our development team, which includes John M. Corcoran & Company as a co-developer, and our public partners, the Chelsea Housing Authority, and the Innes Resident Association.

So, what’s the big deal? In an era when virtually all public housing is rebuilt using the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program (LIHTC), we are using the private capital markets to finance the replacement of the existing public housing, while adding new housing units to the market.

Private capital is funding numerous wood frame, energy efficient, Class A apartment deals throughout Greater Boston. The innovation by the Chelsea Housing Authority is that by accessing this same capital to rebuild and restore its aging portfolio, the LIHTC dollars that would have been required to rebuild its 96 units at Innes are now available to other community development organizations that build affordable housing.

It should also be noted that our public-private partnership is utilizing a program created by the Baker administration called the Partnership to Expand Housing Opportunities (PEHO). With a focus on state public housing, PEHO encourages housing authorities to procure a development partner and encourages the team to seek alternative funding sources.

My presentation to the Chelsea Housing Authority proposed a market-based mixed-income model in which the Innes residents will live next door to market- and middle-income residents. My proposal was strengthened with two concrete examples that I grew up with: the transformation of America Park to King’s Lynne in Lynn, and the transformation of Columbia Point to Harbor Point in Dorchester.

Both developed by my father, Joseph E. Corcoran, they rely on market-rate units to generate the income that makes the developments operate financially and to provide income for supportive services for residents who need them. That operating model is identical to the operating model that will be utilized at Innes. We’ve merely replaced the sources necessary to provide the capital to rebuild, from the public sector to the private sector.

I hope that the next governor will continue to fund the PEHO program and that more housing authorities will discover this model as a viable option to rebuild their aging housing portfolios. The Chelsea story is proof that private capital can be used to provide better living conditions to many more public housing residents across the Commonwealth.

Joseph J. Corcoran is the president of Joseph J. Corcoran Company.