People

Craig Stevens is the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s new state coalitions director. Stevens served for eight years as Western Pennsylvania coordinator for the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania (formerly the Pennsylvania Low Income Housing Coalition). He previously was a consultant with the Delaware Housing Coalition and was the Community Partnership Facilitator for the Interfaith Housing Task Force of Wilmington, DE. He has a long career in advocacy and human services, including work for the Office of Prevention at the Delaware Department of Services for Children, Youth and Families, the Mental Health Association of Delaware and Delaware Legal Services.

The Enterprise Foundation’s New York office has selected Jim Himes as its new director. Himes was most recently president of Enterprise Financial Pathways Corporation (EFPC). A Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar, Himes spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs before joining the staff of Enterprise New York to develop a project that would deliver financial services to people in low-income neighborhoods. That project led to the founding of EFPC and the development of the income tax preparation and financial planning tool, MoneySite. Himes also serves as chairman of both the Greenwich, CT Housing Authority Board of Commissioners and the Greenwich Democratic Town Committee, and is a board member of Family Assets, LLC, a CDFI based in Bridgeport, CT.

The Campaign for Affordable Housing board of directors announced the appointments of Julie Bornstein as president, Chip Halbach as treasurer and chief financial officer and G. Allan Kingston as secretary. Bornstein served as director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development and was a member of the California State Assembly, serving as chair of the Democratic Caucus. Halbach is the founder and executive director of the Minnesota Housing Partnership and is a member of several affordable housing boards and organizations, including the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Fannie Mae Foundation Public Education Initiative. Kingston is president and chief executive officer of Century Housing. Kingston is also the current chairman of the Board of Governors of the National Housing Conference.

Joe Weisbord has accepted a new position with the Fannie Mae Foundation where he will manage the Foundation’s national homelessness and supportive housing initiatives. Weisbord served for four years as staff director with Housing First!, an alliance of over 250 community, business, civic, labor and religious organizations working together to promote solutions to New York City’s housing crisis.

The William Penn Foundation selected Feather Houstoun as its new president. Houstoun previously served on the Foundation’s board of directors as part of the team overseeing grantmaking related to the environment and community development. She was also an executive with AmeriChoice. Houstoun has worked at every level of government, serving as Pennsylvania’s secretary of public welfare during Governor Tom Ridge’s administration, treasurer of the State of New Jersey under Governor Tom Kean, chief financial officer of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and in a number of senior positions with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Boston-area community groups building affordable housing using energy-efficient, environmentally friendly practices and techniques can benefit from the $7 million in grants and loans made available for the Green Building Production Network by Boston Community Capital, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, New Ecology, Inc. and the Tellus Institute. The GBPN will finance five community development projects that integrate state-of-the art design practices. Projects will be selected based on their level of “greening” and cost effectiveness. In addition, the program expects to explore real estate practices that could transform the ways CDCs typically work. www.bostoncommunitycapital.org.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition selected Moises Loza as the recipient of the NLIHC’s 2005 National Housing Leadership Award. Loza is executive director of the Housing Assistance Council and long-time member of the NLIHC Board of Directors. In addition, the Minneapolis High-Rise Representative Council received the 2005 Community Advocacy Award in recognition of its exemplary civic engagement campaign in 2004. MHRC is a grassroots public housing high-rise tenant organization. Recipients will be honored at the NLIHC’s Housing Leadership Reception on May 3. www.nlihc.org.

The Drum Major Institute for Public Policy launched a Fellows program that will give New York City’s grassroots leaders access to the broader public policy debate and give a powerful voice to the progressive agenda. The inaugural Fellows are: Andrew Friedman, founding co-director of Make the Road by Walking, a nonprofit, membership-led organization; Mark Winston Griffith, founding director of the Central Brooklyn Partnership, a nonprofit organization that builds community-owned financial cooperatives and conducts research on and advocacy for community reinvestment; Kate Kyung Ji Rhee, director of the Prison Moratorium Project, a multiracial group of young activists, community members and formerly incarcerated people in NYC that works to reinvest resources into communities most affected by criminal justice policies; Maureen Lane, co-director of Welfare Rights Initiative, a grassroots student activist and leadership training organization that seeks to mobilize, empower and support women directly affected by welfare policy; and Majora Carter, founder and executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, a community organization dedicated to the implementation of sustainable development projects. www.drummajorinstitute.org.

The National Community Development Association awarded Family Eldercare’s Lyons Gardens Senior Housing Community (Austin, TX) the first Duvernay HOME Program Award of Excellence for being one of the best affordable housing projects across the country. Lyons Gardens is a public/private venture that created affordable housing options for low-income seniors. www.ncdaonline.org.