Please join New Partners Community Solar—together with government officials, rooftop owners, members of the press, solar companies, nonprofit housing providers and, most importantly, its resident beneficiaries—in celebration of one year of generating renewable energy benefits to affordable housing tenants across the District.
This solar program, launched by New Partners Community Solar with extensive pro bono support from Nixon Peabody, was the first to use the District of Columbia’s community solar law to transfer tens of thousands of dollars in solar energy benefits generated on commercial buildings to affordable housing tenants living throughout the District, at no cost.
New Partners Community Solar will also formally announce its new community solar initiative, which will be more than five times the size of its original program and will benefit hundreds more affordable housing residents.
Guests will gather on the rooftop to recognize and thank the partners involved in this exciting project:
A light lunch and refreshments will be served.
Saturday, March 10, 2018
11:00 am–1:00 pm
Rooftop Terrace at
799 Ninth Street NW
Washington, DC 20001
Questions? Contact Genevieve Hulick at 240-472-8969 or genevieve@npsolar.org.
HAND: Why is affordable housing important to you?
CM: I believe that all people deserve safe, decent housing that is affordable. This includes adults, children, families and people with disabilities living in rental units or owning their own home. Safe and affordable housing alleviates some of the stressors in life that especially low to moderate-income people and communities experience. Housing is one of the building blocks of creating a healthy community as it creates stability for individuals and families. Once an affordable home is secured, in ideal situations, families are able to afford healthy foods and have access to quality healthcare and education. These components are necessary to create economic growth and have vibrant communities.
HAND: What recent accomplishment(s) is your organization extraordinarily proud of?
CM: In 2017, with a small staff, we were able to accomplish so much. We had a great year of originating $12.2 million in total lending and we ended the year with an outstanding portfolio of $26.3 million. 100% of all borrower created benefits for low-income people, 72% of all borrowers were nonprofit organizations committed to economic justice and 96% of all projects financed were located in low-to-moderate income census tracts. With our first ever NMTC allocation, our focus in 2017 was on rolling out this exciting program. To date, we have closed four NMTC projects. We anticipate using the remaining allocation for two projects in 2018. With our CapNexus program, which is an online database, community development practitioners posted a record amount of 55 deal and capital opportunities in 2017. The website has collectively posted over 200 opportunities valued at $1.6 million in opportunities. We are continuing to explore other exciting initiatives for 2018 and beyond. In addition, our staff has participated in retreats and team building exercises that have strengthened our team.
HAND: Have you run into any challenges over the last several months? How did you and your team overcome them?
CM: Having enough capital to meet lending demands has been our biggest challenge in the last several months. In 2017, we had a very robust pipeline and could have easily originated well over $12 million in new lending activity. However, having enough capital in hand to meet this demand was a challenge. We approached this challenge in several ways. We increased our fundraising efforts and were able to increase both our grant and debt capital. We have also been exploring off balance sheet lending models that will be used to meet market demand. In 2018, we continue to be faced with this challenge. We are creating strategies to obtain new capital that can be used to meet our lending demand. This includes outreach to current and new partners. We will continue to explore and look forward to implementing new programs that will result in earned revenue and our improve bottom line.
HAND: What lesson(s) did you learn?
CM: We learned the importance of 1) coming together as a team to solve a problem. The comraderie was great and made us closer and more effective as employees of PCG. 2) The importance of always seeking new opportunities and never being complacent with “that’s the way we’ve always done it” mentally.
HAND: What are you and your colleagues looking forward to?
CM: We are optimistic and looking forward to 2018. This will be a challenging year for us and for our industry. None of us can sit on our laurels. However, it’s important to be optimistic. PCG ended 2017 strong and we have begun 2018 even stronger. We are looking forward to all of the positive possibilities.
HAND: What do you enjoy most about your work and why?
CM: I get to live my values through the work that I do every day. I get to meet, work with and interact with very smart and committed people.
HAND: What do you wish that you could change about our industry?
CM: I would make the community development finance sector more visible. CDFIs do great work and make a big difference across the country. Yet, few people know what we do. That needs to change.
HAND: If you could describe your work in one word, what would it be?
CM: Determined. Determination to make the world a better place fuels the fire that gives me the energy and enthusiasm to get up each morning, and go out into the world for social and economic justice for all!
HAND members are on the move! In an effort to highlight the great work that our membership is doing, we have launched a series titled, “Five Minutes with” – an informal conversation with our members on their recent projects and the affordable housing industry. In the latest edition, we caught up with Angie Rodgers, the Director of the New Communities Initiative in DC’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning & Economic Development (DMPED). Check out our conversation here:
HAND: Why is affordable housing important to you?
AR: I have both personal and professional reasons. I grew up (for the most part) in public housing in Memphis, TN. We didn’t start out there, but my mom went through what a lot of women go through. She separated from my stepfather, and he had been the primary breadwinner. Public housing provided us with decent, safe and affordable housing while my mom got fully back into the workforce. Not having to worry about where we were going to live gave her the space to get us back on track. It’s important to me that other families have that opportunity to stabilize and then grow, the way my family did. We went from living in public housing to a house that we owned.
Fast forward about 15 years, and I’m working at the DC Fiscal Policy Institute, where I started out doing research on general income and poverty trends for DC households. I was looking at census data, and how much extremely-low income households – those making roughly less than $25K a year – spent on their housing costs. I was floored by the number of families spending not just 50 percent of their income on their housing costs (which is the threshold for being defined as severely housing-burdened), but by so many who were spending 70, 80 and even 90 percent of their income on housing costs. I thought, “this is what’s hurting poor families,” because how can you focus on improving your health, education, savings or reaching any life goals if where you’re going to live is constantly up in the air? Those families are in survival mode, and if we want them and their kids to do better, we have to focus on stabilizing this very basic factor – where they live.
I’ve been working on affordable housing in some capacity (research, policy, advocacy, grants/philanthropy, and development) ever since.
HAND: What recent accomplishment(s) is your organization extraordinarily proud of?
AR: I’m most proud of three things: (1) We have significant movement on development in all four NCI neighborhoods that did not exist before. I’m particularly proud of our plans for the Park Morton development (Georgia Avenue NW) and Lincoln Heights/Richardson Dwellings (Deanwood area) where we’ve been able to craft plans to redevelop without involuntary displacement from those neighborhoods. They will be national models that counter the long history of public housing redevelopments where neighborhood change often comes at the expense of displacing long-term residents. (2) We developed a platform that we call “100% Resident Success,” which is all about providing a path to success for every resident in an NCI neighborhood, no matter where they ultimately choose to live. It has provided an important framework for us to challenge ourselves and our partners to respond differently to the residents we effect, to define what success means, and to measure whether we are meeting our mark. (3) Last year we launched “Neighbor Up,” a network of individuals who care about equitable development of our neighborhoods (particularly the ones around public housing). Lots of people are talking about community building in “third spaces;” we are actually doing it! We launched a citywide network – Neighbor Up DC; we’ve also launched neighborhood specific networks around the Park Morton development (Neighbor Up Park View) and around Lincoln Heights/Richardson Dwellings (Neighbor Up Marvin Gaye).
HAND: Have you run into any challenges over the last several months? How did you and your team overcome them? What lesson(s) did you learn?
AR: Oh, where to start! We run into many hurdles; too numerous to count or detail in this space. A lot of what we’re doing at NCI is challenging the way our partners do business – from planning to financing to lease up – so that’s difficult. My overall lesson (for myself and my team) is that if you are going to challenge, you have to give your partners the time and space to catch up. The point is not to set them up for failure; the point is not to embarrass them; the point is not to be antagonistic. The point is for all of us to win in the end. But someone has to be the one pushing, and right now that’s us.
HAND: What are you and your colleagues looking forward to?
AR: We spent the last 2 ½ years planning and challenging ourselves to look at our work differently. This year marks the beginning of a lot of implementation. We’re looking forward to that!
HAND: What do you enjoy most about your work and why?
AR: I like tough problems, and I like tackling questions to which others thought there were no good answers. When I took the job at DMPED to run NCI, I had been grappling for a while with this question of how to make the industry provide better housing options and more housing choice for extremely low-income households. Traditional public housing has been declining for decades, and our major affordable housing tool (LIHTC) often hits at a slightly higher income band. I view NCI as an opportunity to tackle this tough question, and to see if I can stumble on better answers than the ones we currently have. This is what gets me out of bed in the morning.
HAND: What do you wish that you could change about our industry?
AR: I would change two things, and they are related. (1) We need better policies, tools and practices to respond to housing challenges for extremely-low income households. We have some resources and strategies if a household is in crisis, but not as many for the vast majority whose main challenge is just that they don’t earn enough. Our answer for those households seems to be to push them to earn more money. This isn’t a bad thing, but as a single strategy it ignores all of the roadblocks these families face (in health, education, criminal justice, and social/economic policies that support inequality) on their quest for higher incomes. This leads to my second point: (2) Our industry needs to be better educated about how all of these things tie together and affect housing choice so that we can respond better to extremely low-income households. Because NCI focuses on public housing residents, we spend a lot of time thinking about these linkages, and how to use our influence as the main gap funder on our deals to encourage partners to respond better. We were proud to support the DC Housing Authority in instituting a policy that says if a household is eligible for public housing, they will be eligible for new NCI units. Lots of people said that we would never close a tax credit deal with that criteria; critics said it was too…generous. We closed our first deal under the new policy about 9 months later, and that building will begin lease-up this spring.
We all operate by rules, guidelines and practices that we need to begin to question – Are there changes I can make so that my product responds better to low-income households?
HAND: If you could describe your work in one word, what would it be?
AR: Necessary.
The National Housing Trust (NHT), a Washington D.C.‐based nonprofit and HAND member, focusing on affordable housing preservation, recently announced the appointment of Priya Jayachandran as President. Effective February 1, 2018, Jayachandran will succeed NHT’s long‐time President, Michael Bodaken.
“I am honored to lead such a talented group of people, many of whom I have worked closely with throughout my career,” said Jayachandran. “I look forward to maintaining the Trust’s impact in the affordable housing world and expanding our work through new strategies and partnerships.”
Bodaken praised the Board’s choice, saying “I could not be happier for NHT. I have nothing but confidence in handing the torch to Priya and know NHT will thrive under her leadership.”
Jayachandran is currently Senior Vice President of Affordable Housing Development at Volunteers of America (VOA) where she creates and implements strategy for affordable housing development, acquisition and recapitalizations as well as manages the development pipeline and budget. Prior to her role at VOA, Jayachandran was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), managing the largest department within HUD and some of the Department’s most important programs.
Prior to joining HUD, Priya spent more than 15 years in community development and real estate banking in New York and Washington, D.C. at both Citi and Bank of America. She also worked for the Inter‐American Development Bank (IDB) in La Paz, Bolivia as a consultant to women’s microcredit organizations; Credit Suisse as an investment banking analyst; and California State Treasurer Kathleen Brown as a Capital Fellow. Priya also previously served on the HAND Board of Directors and as a speaker at the 2017 Annual Meeting & Housing Expo Awards Luncheon.
HAND would like to congratulate Priya on her new role and also thank Michael for his service to the industry. We wish them both the best in their next endeavors!
You can read the full announcement here.
On the heels of its inaugural symposium & fundraiser, NHP Foundation (NHPF) has quite a bit to celebrate! Held on October 17th in Washington, DC, the event was titled, “An Afternoon of Learning, An Evening of Recognition.” NHPF recognized Senators Orrin Hatch (R) UT and Maria Cantwell (D) WA with Trailblazer Awards, for their efforts to support national affordable housing policy. Additionally, Emily Cadik (Director of Public Policy at Enterprise Community Partners) and Todd Crow (Executive Vice President & Manager of Tax Credit Capital, PNC Real Estate) were honored with 2017 Affordable Housing Advocacy and Visionary Awards respectively. NHPF raised a grand total of $370,000 to go toward its Fund for New Development, which supports the acquisition, pre-development, development and service-enriched affordable housing properties in communities around the country. The program also featured an academic study by the UVA Batten School for Public Policy “Pay-for-Success” Lab and a panel discussion.
We recently spoke with Stephen Green, the organization’s Chief Operating Officer & Chief Investment Officer, to catch up on all things NHPF:
HAND: What recent accomplishments is your organization extraordinarily proud of?
NHPF: [The] completion of three renovation projects and initial acquisition of five projects including two in partnership with DC tenant organizations.
HAND: Have you run into any challenges over the last several months? How did you and your team overcome them?
NHPF: Certainly the biggest challenge has been managing the changes in the tax credit markets that have come as a result of the talk of tax reform while participating in advocating for the retention of the PAB program. We have also looked at diversifying in order to be less dependent on the 4% bond program.
HAND: What are you and your staff looking forward to over the next year?
NHPF: We are looking forward to closing on several bond transactions, as well as increasing our provision resident services at several properties and planning year two of our extraordinary Symposium and Fundraiser which we just sponsored this past October where we honored Senators Hatch and Cantwell for their bipartisan efforts on behalf of the LIHTC as well as leaders in the affordable housing industry.
HAND: What lesson(s) have you learned this year that you hope to apply to your work moving forward?
NHPF: We learned the value of engaging with those inside and outside the industry via events, written materials and sponsorships to continue to promote the importance of affordable housing, and the importance of sharing these and other learnings with the next generation of those involved in all aspects of creation and development of affordable housing.
HAND: What do you enjoy most about your work and why?
NHPF: I enjoy both the challenges of doing this work as well as the rewards of being part of providing people with better housing and greater opportunities.
HAND: If you could describe NHPF’s work in one word, what would it be?
NHPF: Committed! We completed a wonderful video demonstrating NHPF’s work in the industry through our complete renovation of Cleme Manor in Houston, which really sums up our work and it’s titled “Delivering on our Commitment” – you can see it here.
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Guest List & Dietary Preference: If your registration includes a luncheon table or multiple guests, please submit guest names and menu choices by May 1, 2020. Submit guest names here.
Housing Expo: Plan to exhibit? Download the Housing Expo FAQs here.
Omni Shoreham Hotel Room Block: For attendees looking to secure overnight accommodations on May 25th, HAND has secured a rate starting at $189 for conference attendees. There are a limited amount of rooms available, so visit this link today to reserve your room. May 10th is the last day to secure a room at the discounted rate.
Ad Submission: The artwork for advertisements should be submitted to annualmeeting@handhousing.org. You can download the ad spec sheet here. Deadline for ad submission is April 13, 2020.
Cancellations & Changes: If you wish to cancel or change your registration for the Annual Meeting & Housing Expo, please send a request in writing to annualmeeting@handhousing.org. All cancellation requests made prior to April 27th will receive a 50% refund. For cancellation requests made after April 27th, no refund will be provided.
Door Prizes: Are you interested in donating a door prize to this year’s Annual Meeting? Email annualmeeting@handhousing.org to coordinate with our team.
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