"There's frankly a lot of darkness throughout the country right now," Casey said as the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh announced $5.3 million in grants. "This announcement today is a shaft of light, a beacon of hope."

The grants form a portion of funding for 16 projects for low-income residents. They include $500,000 to build 10 apartments in Stable Flats, a development planned for a carriage company's stables in Northern Liberties; $500,000 to build 24 three- and four-bedroom homes in Strawberry Mansion; and $350,000 to build 54 apartments for seniors in West Philadelphia.

Philadelphia has had to compete with other cities for shrinking federal housing dollars, while the private housing market has shriveled.

But the resources of the regional Federal Home Loan Bank - a cooperative of more than 300 banks - have grown and become increasingly focused on Philadelphia. The Pittsburgh bank covers Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia, and is one of 12 such banks nationwide chartered by Congress in 1932 to guarantee funding for mortgages, according to the bank's Web site.

The banks devote 10 percent of their profits to affordable-housing projects. The $17.8 million awarded for 2007 represents nearly four times the $4.8 million doled out in 2003.

In that same, FHLBank's contribution to Philadelphia went from $650,000 in 2003 to more than $5.3 million this year, according to bank figures. The 16 projects, funded through a variety of sources, including yesterday's grants, total more than $77 million.

"We stepped up to the plate, just as we were designed to do 75 years ago," said John Price, president and chief executive officer of the bank.

It's the kind of help that Mayor Nutter, who joined Casey at a news conference at City Hall, will need to meet his goal of building 1,000 units of affordable housing a year. Nutter has proposed adding $1 million annually to the city's Housing Trust Fund, which finances such projects, but City Council members have said they need to see more.

After the news conference, Nutter said he planned to offer more detailed plans to address the city's need for 60,000 affordable housing units.

"My commitment is to leverage as much funding as we can to get the heart of the affordable housing crisis here in Philadelphia," Nutter said. "We have to do more than what we put forward in the course of the budget process, and that's our goal."