Perica Bell plays a big role at April Housing and in the overall affordable housing industry.
Managing director and head of preservation for April Housing, Bell is instrumental in setting the strategy for the firm and a driving force on its leadership team.
The firm recently completed initial resyndications of four Texas properties with a combined 898 units. It has gone through the process of obtaining low-income housing tax credits and bonds and lining up the necessary financing to begin renovations at developments in Austin, Dallas, and Fort Worth. The Texas deals are notable because they mark April Housing’s first such closings and set the stage for the company’s preservation program.
Bell is also guiding the firm’s exit from older properties in which it is a limited partner, particularly deals with nonprofits or public housing authorities, with the goal that the homes remain affordable for the long term.
In 2022, funds affiliated with Blackstone Real Estate launched April Housing, which is focused on the creation and preservation of affordable housing throughout the United States. While only a few years old, the new firm has assembled a 70,000-unit portfolio.Similarly, while still early in her career, Bell has amassed strong industry experience, connecting with the challenge and mission of affordable housing soon after college.
“From all the seats that I’ve sat in so far is everyone wants to make it happen,” she says. “Everyone is incented in some way to make a project work, to finance that project, or preserve that project. It’s a mix of camaraderie and a little bit of ‘co-opetition’ that has kept the work exciting and rewarding.”
For Bell, it has been important to understand the many partners involved in a deal. “We know in affordable housing that your stakeholders can be much more expansive than in market-rate projects,” she says. “It’s always been my goal to learn the multiple languages of my stakeholders.”
This includes being able to relate with everyone from local public officials to finance partners to residents.
Prior to joining April Housing, she was a managing director at MUFG Union Bank, where she led teams that provided debt and equity for affordable housing. Bell started her career as a young developer with Jamboree Housing, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit housing organizations.
Now, she sits on Jamboree’s board of directors as well as the affordable housing advisory board of the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate. Bell also serves on the planning commission for the city of Signal Hill in Southern California.
Her husband, Stephen Aguilar, is an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California. She recently picked up playing the clarinet again, an instrument she first learned as a young girl.
