A national housing nonprofit announced Tuesday that it will match Richmond’s five-year $50 million investment in affordable housing — a huge boost to efforts to increase the supply of less costly apartments and homes.

Denise Scott, the veteran president and CEO of the New York-based Local Initiative Support Corp., joined Mayor Levar M. Stoney and members of City Council at City Hall to announce LISC’s new partnership with the city.

Mayor Stoney hailed what he described as a “remarkable” contribution from LISC that will boost to $100 million the total the city can make available to create income-restricted apartments and homes that offer below market rents.

He said it would build on the city’s progress of adding more than 9,000 housing units since 2019.

Ms. Scott, who will retire at the end of the year and leave it to her successor, Michael T. Pugh, to carry

out the commitment, said LISC was impressed with the city’s push to increase affordable housing and sees its new role as helping the city become a model for others.

She said LISC would work with interested lenders and foundations to generate its share of the funding. She said LISC also has begun talks with federal and state officials by putting more resources into this initiative.

LISC also plans to go beyond the financial contribution. Among other things, Ms. Scott said LISC, through its Virginia office led by Jane Ferrara, would set up a developer training institute, work with local housing groups to help them build their capacity for home creation and be involved in other programming activity.

This “is a tremendous partnership,” said 6th District City Councilwoman Ellen F. Robertson, who is credited with being the city’s top champion of affordable housing.

The former leader of a housing nonprofit that helped transform Highliand Park, Ms. Robertson lobbied the administration and the council for years to secure a $10 million-a-year investment in the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund that provides grants to support housing development.

Ms. Robertson recalled the help LISC provided her housing organization and said the when “LISC promises to do something, it gets done.”

LISC is an independent community development financial institution that the Ford Foundation created in 1979 to enable financing of affordable housing.

The group has long been active in the Richmond area. In the past three decades, LISC has invested $165 million to help create 7,000 units of affordable housing, Ms. Scott said.

Nationally, LISC annually provides about $2 billion in grants, loans and investments to 700 partners, enabling about $4.4 billion in housing investment, according to its financial reports. Since its founding, LISC has invested $24 billion and helped create hundreds of mixed-use communities that include apartments, retail stores and community centers.

“The dollars that we are investing into affordable housing send a clear message to where the City of Richmond’s heart is,” said outgoing Council President Michael J. Jones. “All this begins with a roof.

“We understand that having a roof over your head points to having a stable living environment for families and children,” he said. “Too many Richmond families have fallen through the cracks. By committing $100 million to affordable housing, we are seeking to seal up those cracks and address this problem head on.”