Meet Eric W. Price, the new president and CEO of The NHP Foundation (NHPF), a major nonprofit affordable housing developer and owner.
Price was elevated to the top post this year after nearly six years with the organization, most recently serving as president. He led the issuance of the nonprofit’s first $75 million social bond in 2023 and worked to obtain a $5.5 million federal Capital Magnet Fund award in 2021. These achievements have helped NHPF leverage private capital to expand its work and deliver more affordable housing to communities nationwide.
Earlier in his career, Price served as executive vice president of the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust and deputy mayor for planning and economic development in Washington, D.C.
He takes over the CEO post from Richard Burns, who has moved into a senior adviser role to focus on select strategic initiatives and has joined the board of trustees.NHPF owns and manages 60 properties across 16 states and the District of Columbia.
What is your outlook for the affordable housing sector this year?
It’s still early with the new administration coming in. I think we're going to learn more over the next six months and throughout the year. What we do know is every administration comes in with their own priorities, so I'm sure there'll be new priorities and new initiatives that will come forward. I expect that to happen, and then the question is when the federal government makes those decisions, how do the states react and how do the local governments react because that's who we do our business with—at the local level.
On the finance side, we haven’t heard anything so far that changes the structures or transactions that we are doing. Interest rates have settled where people can underwrite against those. There was a minute when some of the state housing agencies and others were facing so much uncertainty that it was making developers be much more conservative in their underwriting, which was squeezing deals in terms of how much more gap financing you would need. I haven’t heard that from developers recently.
What trends will you be closely watching this year?
We’re active in certain markets, and we’ll be looking to see how we can be more strategic and focused in those particular markets this year. We’ll look at what opportunities and what programs these communities will be focused on. For example, in some markets there's been a big push toward workforce housing. That’s one trend that we’ve seen. We've also seen more and more people start to think about single-family housing but structured as a multifamily deal.
For us, it’s going to be about how can we better execute and how can we be more focused and make sure we are using our resources in the right way.
What will be NHPF’s priorities in 2025?
First, we're going to finish what we’ve started. We have a lot of deals in predevelopment and development. We will continue to prioritize those deals and move them forward. We will also look at the places where we’ve been active and see how we can expand upon the deals we’ve done. For example, we've been very active in providing supportive housing in Houston. That’s something we didn't do in the past, but we're doing more now. We’ve hired someone in-house who has a wealth of expertise in that area, so that might be an area we want to grow. We will continue to pursue opportunities there and are always looking for markets where we can replicate that type of success.
We also went through a period of doing SROs (single-room occupancy) in Chicago. That was the city’s focus. Washington, D.C., has had a priority on making sure affordable housing is available throughout the city, so we’ve got a couple of deals in the pipeline that we’re working on in high-wealth areas to bring affordability to those neighborhoods. Those are difficult to structure because the costs are higher, but the city has made a commitment and been able to come up with the resources to help do that. We’re going to make sure that we are aligned with public agencies going forward as we look for future opportunities.
You mentioned when a new White House administration comes in, it brings its own priorities and ideas. What changes will you bring as the new leader of NHPF?
In our acquisition strategy, we've been looking at where there are opportunities around the country. I'm going to be looking for us to be much more strategic in those neighborhoods where we're currently in and make sure that we're adapting to the priorities of those markets. That’s a little bit different than saying there's a good deal opportunity in this state or in that state. It will be refocusing our resources, our people, and our financial resources. We have a passive house project under construction in Connecticut, so we will look to see if there are other similar opportunities in Connecticut. Or are there opportunities for that in other markets we're in because we learned a lot from that? I don't know the answer, but that is an example of what I’m talking about. We’ve done really nice supportive housing projects in Houston, so we’ve talked about doing that at scale, but we have to do that in partnership with a provider of services. We’ll be looking at some of those things going forward.
What’s a development that you will be breaking ground on or will open this year that you're excited about?
Curtis Cofield ll Estates is our passive house project in New Haven, Connecticut. In Houston, we will also be completing RoseMary’s Place, a supportive housing development. Another project that we’re working on is The Terraces at Park Heights in Baltimore. The city assembled 16 acres and issued an RFP (request for proposal) that we won. It is a multi-phase development. The first phase is senior housing and then multifamily. What’s unique is it will include over 70 single-family homes that will be affordable.
How has NHPF been evolving over the last several years, and what can other affordable housing organizations learn from what you've done?
I think what they can learn, and not just from us, is if you want to be a successful business, you have to stay focused. You have to find your line of business and become very, very good at that. At my business school graduation, we had a speaker come in and give a bunch of homilies. One of them was an old saying, ‘You can be a jack of all trades and a master of none.’ You don't want to be that, right? You want to be able to be committed and dedicated, hire the right people to help carry out that mission, stay focused along the way, and then execute, so we'll be focusing on those components. If we do that right, then we should be able to carry our mission forward.