Affordable Housing Finance

NEW DIRECTIONS

HUD Team Takes Shape

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE • April/May 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. Carol Galante is taking her experience as an affordable housing developer to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Her appointment as deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing programs is one of several moves that have been announced recently as President Barack Obama puts in place the HUD leadership team.

Galante will be responsible for HUD’s financing support for the development and preservation of privately owned rental housing and will be integral to several new initiatives that promote sustainable development. She has been president of BRIDGE Housing, one of California’s leading nonprofit housing developers, since 1996.

“People have focused on fixing the single-family problem, which certainly needs to be the top priority, but there is definitely a role for multifamily, and I think this administration gets that,” she said in an interview with an editor from Hanley Wood, publisher of AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE. “The administration understands that rejuvenating and refinancing our nation’s multifamily housing stock is critical. Equally important is keeping that housing stock healthy. Greening it and building more of it in the right places is important.”

David Stevens, president and COO of Long & Foster Cos., has been nominated as assistant secretary for housing and Federal Housing Administration commissioner. Stevens has been executive vice president, national wholesale manager, at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage’s wholesale channel and vice president of single-family business at Freddie Mac.

Raphael Bostic, a professor at the University of Southern California’s School of Policy, Planning, and Development, is Obama’s pick to be assistant secretary for policy development and research at HUD.

Peter Kovar, chief of staff for Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), is the nominee for assistant secretary for congressional and intergovernmental affairs.

Helen R. Kanovsky, COO of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, has been nominated for general counsel. The trust invests in housing securities for its institutional investors who are union and public pension plans.

Fred Karnas has also joined HUD as senior adviser to Secretary Shaun Donovan. He was director of the Arizona Department of Housing.