Sheila Crowley, long-time president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), has announced that she will retire in 2016. 

Sheila Crowley
Aaron Clamage Sheila Crowley

At the helm of the NLIHC for more than 17 years, she has been a staunch advocate for the nation’s lowest-income households. Most notable has been her perseverance and success in getting the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) enacted and funded. The NHTF will begin providing grants to states next year to help expand the supply of rental housing for extremely low-income households.

Crowley will remain with the organization through April 2016 to ensure a smooth transition for her successor. The NLIHC’s board of directors has formed a search committee and engaged consulting firm Nonprofit HR to facilitate that search.

“Sheila has been instrumental in shaping NLIHC to the force for change that it is today,” said board chair Brenda Clement in a statement. “Her leadership has been extraordinary. NLIHC is grounded in the conviction that access to safe, decent, affordable housing is a basic human right, and Sheila has carried the torch.”

Crowley is one of this year’s Affordable Housing Hall of Fame inductees. She and the other inductees will be honored at a ceremony during AHF Live, which will be Nov. 18-20 at the Fairmont Millennium Park in Chicago.