Jolene Kline, executive director of the North Dakota Housing Finance Agency (NDHFA), will retire July 1.
She has been with the agency for 34 years and has held the top post for six years.
Throughout her career, Kline championed numerous state and federal initiatives, bolstering diversified housing options. During her tenure as executive director, NDHFA became the go-to for housing across the state through expanded programming and collaborative partnerships, according to officials.
“As I officially end this chapter of my life and my time here at NDHFA, I hope that I, alongside the NDHFA team, was successful in making a positive difference in someone’s life every day,” Kline said in a statement.
She began working at NDHFA in 1985 as an eligibility technician for the Sec. 8 Housing Assistance Payment program. She moved up a couple years later, working in Sec. 8 contract administration as a program specialist. In 1990, she became the agency’s low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program administrator.
The federal LIHTC program is the largest producer of affordable housing for low-income households both nationally and in North Dakota. Since the program began in 1986, NDHFA has allocated $58 million in tax credits resulting in the production or rehabilitation of more than 8,200 rental units in 61 communities statewide. The private capital investment is valued at over $500 million.
When the agency’s planning and housing development division was formed in 2006, Kline was named the first director and charged with carrying out a strategy to address the state’s housing challenges. She developed programs and employed innovative ideas to address workforce and senior housing shortages and the rehab of the state’s existing housing stock while providing technical assistance to communities struggling to address their housing needs.
During this time, NDHFA launched a Rural Housing Investment Incentive Pilot Program that supported housing development or substantial rehab in difficult-to-develop areas by offering a dollar-for-dollar match for private-sector investment. NDHFA utilized $400,000 of its own reserve funds for the program. The successful program leveraged more than $6.6 million in housing activity in rural communities.
The state then launched a larger-scale effort with the Housing Incentive Fund, which went on to provide $89.8 million in gap financing to build and rehabilitate more than 2,500 rental units across North Dakota from 2011 to 2018.
Following the retirement of executive director Mike Anderson in June 2013, the North Dakota Industrial Commission appointed Kline as the acting executive director. Six months later, the commission made the appointment permanent.
