Five Who Have Shaped the Industry

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE • October 2009

BY AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE Staff

AFFORDABLE HOUSING FINANCE’s five Affordable Housing Hall of Fame inductees this year all have been trailblazers in serving low-income Americans.

On the following pages, you’ll read about Renée Lewis Glover, president and CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority; Sister Lillian Murphy, CEO of Mercy Housing; and John McEvoy, former executive director of the National Council of State Housing Agencies. You’ll also read moving tributes about the late George Knight and the late I. Donald Terner.

Knight, a Presbyterian minister, spent nearly 25 years working for the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp. (now known as NeighborWorks America), 10 as its executive director. Under Knight’s leadership, the national nonprofit that provides financial support and assistance for community-based revitalization efforts hit the $1 billion mark for annual direct investment in distressed communities. Also, the NeighborWorks Multifamily Initiative was created to increase organizations’ capacity to take on new housing development by attracting additional public and private investment, strengthen their asset-management systems, and help them develop resident leaders.

Knight retired in 2000, but continued to serve the affordable housing on the boards of the National Housing Trust and Volunteers of America as well as a member of the National Housing Conference. He died of cancer Aug. 18, 2008.

Terner was considered an entrepreneurial visionary for affordable housing. BRIDGE Housing was formed in 1983 from an anonymous grant to the San Francisco Foundation to spearhead new solutions to the worsening shortage of affordable housing, and Terner was a principal founder and the nonprofit’s first executive director. BRIDGE’s approach was to produce thousands of units efficiently while retaining its community service mission.

Terner died tragically on April 3, 1996, in a plane crash with Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and 31 others as part of a humanitarian mission to Bosnia.

But the organization he helped to create is now one of the leading affordable housing nonprofits in California and has provided more than 13,000 homes in its 25-plus years.

Renée Lewis Glover: Inspiring a Change in Public Housing

Sister Lillian Murphy: Murphy Builds a National Power

John McEvoy: McEvoy Victorious for the LIHTC

George Knight: Knight Dedicated to Industry

I. Donald Terner: Terner Relentless in Pursuit of Housing