Reflecting on the Past Decade

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been working on the top affordable housing stories of the decade. And I started to reflect on my time at Affordable Housing Finance, since I’ve worked for the magazine for most of the decade, starting in January 2001.

I can’t keep track of how many issues I’ve helped to produce over the years, but we have covered the latest industry issues, too many developments and developers to count, as well as two of the nation’s biggest tragedies—Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina.

We’ve covered three Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretaries with scrutiny: Mel Martinez, Alphonso Jackson, and Shaun Donovan.

We celebrated the low-income housing tax credit’s 20th anniversary in 2006.

We started our Readers’ Choice Awards in 2005. Over the past five years, we have had 170 finalists and some fabulous grand-prize winners, including Maverick Landing in Boston; Solara in Poway, Calif.; Broadway Crossing in Seattle; and 990 Polk Street in San Francisco.

We’ve inducted 21 leaders into the Affordable Housing Hall of Fame, which we started in 2006 to recognize outstanding achievement in the industry. Inductees include Herb Collins, the late Cushing Dolbeare, Chuck Edson, Bart Harvey, Rep. Charles Rangel, Bobby Rozen, Richard Baron, the late Gale Cincotta, the late Terry Duvernay, Ron Grzywinski, the late John Pritscher, Conrad Egan, the late Clara Fox, Rep. Barney Frank, Carla Hills, Nicolas Retsinas, Renée Lewis Glover, the late George Knight, John McEvoy, Sister Lillian Murphy, and the late Don Terner.

In 2004, we created AHF Live: The Tax Credit Developers’ Summit  specifically for affordable housing owners and developers. It was a success, and we’ve held one each year since. Keynotes have included Donovan when he was commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, and just this year, Carol Galante, HUD’s deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing.

I’ve met some great people from the affordable housing industry and have learned a lot over the past decade. And I look forward to learning and sharing even more in the coming decade.