Lilly Endowment is giving the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County a 30-million-dollar grant for the expansion of affordable housing.

The grant will help address two critical challenges, with those being the abundance of vacant properties and the shortage of affordable homes in the South Bend area.

The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County says the area is nearly 16-thousand affordable homes shy of what is needed.

$10 million will be used to build a mixed-income neighborhood in southwest downtown South Bend and the other $20 million will be shared with Elkhart and Marshall counties.