The AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust (HIT) is a way affiliated unions put their pension funds to work to create jobs and bolster communities. This week, the program announced a partnership with Emerald Fund, Inc., “one of San Francisco’s premier real estate development companies with expertise in bringing housing to neighborhoods with access to public transit” that will create over 600 jobs and create over 300 housing units. Projects of similar scale have been accomplished in St. Louis and several other cities in 2011.

From the HIT media center:

With the hundreds of union workers to be employed on this project, the investment in 333 Harrison helped the HIT surpass its goal of creating 10,000 union construction jobs around the country through its Construction Jobs Initiative. The HIT launched the jobs initiative in mid-2009 in response to the AFL-CIO’s call to action on high unemployment, especially in the building trades. Since then, the HIT has provided financing for more than 30 projects representing more than 10,000 jobs for union workers and more than 9,000 housing units in 18 cities, including San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, St. Louis and the Twin Cities. Projects financed through the initiative represent nearly $1.8 billion of development activity and over $800 million in HIT financing.