After 22 years with the National Affordable Housing Trust (NAHT), Lori Little will soon retire. She has served as the organization’s president and CEO for the past seven years.
“I’ve had the great honor and privilege to work in this field—one of affordable housing and two the nonprofit field,” says Little. “… Not very many people get to say that what they’ve done in their career supports people who are maybe fragile or maybe haven’t had all the advantages that the world has to offer. What I’ve gotten to do is to lift up and support those people. It feels like an important way to end my career is to be able to say that putting residents first in this industry really helps us think about the right way to be.”
Little was at JPMorgan Chase involved in single-family home transactions when she made the move to working in affordable housing. She had come across an ad in The Columbus Dispatch newspaper in Ohio. NAHT was seeking someone to administer the closing process for its real estate deals, but the ad included a puzzling acronym—LIHTC—that Little didn’t recognize.
“That was what I was doing, helping on the single-family home side, and I thought, ‘I could do that. I’ll go figure out what LIHTC is,’” recalls Little, now a low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) authority.
She was hired as a closing manager and became the ninth employee at NAHT, a national nonprofit LIHTC syndicator and specialized financial intermediary and development advisory firm. It is a joint venture of the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) and Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF).
Little has held key leadership roles at the organization, serving as capital markets and investor relations director, before stepping into the top post in 2017.
She played a pivotal role in getting affordable housing deals done during the 2008 and 2009 economic crisis. During this time, developers were poised to build important projects, but then everything slowed to a crawl as financial markets struggled. In addition, there was concern the federal Section 8 rental assistance program would be eliminated.
Little and NAHT came up with an innovative idea for a “structured enhanced fund” that led to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation providing a $20 million guaranty to help support affordable housing projects.
This effort, which brought together philanthropy, nonprofit developers, and major financial institutions, helped mobilize needed capital to save at-risk housing. Little was instrumental in ensuring that this new big idea would work. The program successfully closed a lot of deals without having to draw on the MacArthur Foundation’s guaranty.
Other milestones in Little’s career include the launching of the Strong Families Fund, a partnership with The Kresge Foundation to provide service coordinators at family housing developments, a move that was based on efforts at Section 202 properties that serve older residents.
Recently, NAHT and LIIF worked with Goldman Sachs' Urban Investment Group to establish a fund to support Black developers. This was in response to Black developers often citing a lack of access to capital as one of their major challenges.
“Those kinds of innovations are the things in my career that I look back on,” says Little, noting the importance of being able to work on and discuss initiatives, such as service coordination, that make a huge difference in people’s lives.
In another example, NAHT and SAHF have been leaders in making the connection between health and housing, including partnering with UnitedHealth Group, which has made significant investments to help build needed homes.
While affordable housing in and of itself is important, it can also be a linchpin to launch other programs to help individuals, stresses Little. “We see affordable housing is so much more than just housing for the people who live there.”
Little, who will remain at NAHT through February, says she felt it was the right time to step down and “support the next generation of leaders.”
After years of working on a national level, with deals in 49 states, Little says her future plans include becoming active on issues around Dallas, where she lives.Brian Dowling, who was recently interim chief revenue officer, has been named interim CEO of NAHT, which has about 30 employees.
“Under Lori's leadership, NAHT impacted countless lives,” says Andrea Ponsor, SAHF president and CEO. "We look forward to Brian continuing these efforts of preserving affordable homes and building inclusive communities for residents."
As part of a farewell celebration for Little, NAHT is hosting a day of service at an Ohio affordable housing community that it helped financed as the LIHTC syndicator approximately 20 years ago.
“The NAHT team is at its best when we’re serving,” Little says.