Margaret Salazar is director of Oregon Housing and Community Services (OHCS), the state’s housing finance agency.
Prior to leading OHCS in 2016, she was director of the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Portland field office for two years. Salazar joined HUD in 2006, where she first financed the development of hundreds of multifamily units across California, Hawaii, and Nevada. She later served as the department’s associate deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing at HUD’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Salazar has deep roots in Oregon, having grown up in Hood River and Portland.
What was your path into affordable housing?
I started my career in philanthropy in the San Francisco Bay Area, directing grants to grassroots organizations working for social and economic justice. A friend asked me to volunteer on a local affordable housing campaign focused on just-cause eviction. This was in the late 1990s, at the epicenter of the first “dot-com” boom. As the job market took off, the population exploded and low-income people, especially people of color, were either pushed out or left behind. By the early 2000s, the eviction rate in Oakland had tripled. I served on the steering committee of a grassroots effort to win eviction protections at the Oakland ballot box. Going door to door and talking to seniors and families facing no-cause evictions, losing their homes with no place to go—that was a searing experience. We ended up getting the ordinance on the ballot and winning a just-cause eviction policy in a razor-thin campaign. And I jumped into affordable housing work and never looked back.
What was a pivotal moment in your career?
I began my affordable housing career at the HUD San Francisco regional office, where I worked on affordable housing preservation initiatives and eventually led a team of underwriters to finance Federal Housing Administration multifamily transactions. In the early days of the Obama administration, Carol Galante, then president and CEO of BRIDGE Housing, based in San Francisco, was named deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing programs. Carol asked me to do a detail with her in HUD headquarters to develop a national multifamily preservation strategy. It was a crash course in drafting legislation, leading national initiatives, and making dozens of incremental changes to regulations, handbooks, and policies that added up to a whole new way of doing business. I found that my on-the-ground experience was a huge asset to HUD headquarters, where people were hungry for real-world information.
What is OHCS working on this year?
The agency joined Oregon Gov. Kate Brown in releasing a robust five-year Statewide Housing Plan on Feb. 11. The Plan represents two years of work for the Agency and establishes six priorities that we will be keenly focused on over the coming years. We have ambitious priorities and goals around equity and racial justice, ending unsheltered homelessness for Oregon’s children and veterans, increasing the supply of permanent supportive housing, closing the affordable rental housing gap and reducing housing cost burden, increasing homeownership opportunities, and we will be taking an intentional approach to addressing the housing needs of rural Oregon. In 2019, operationalizing these priorities will be our focus. If folks are interested in hearing more about our Statewide Housing Plan they can take a look on our website at https://www.oregon.gov/ohcs/pages/oshp.aspx
What’s a recent move that OHCS has made that other states or cities can learn from?
OHCS has a very unique role as a housing finance agency as we sit within state government. For us, this has brought about unprecedented opportunity. We have not only been very thoughtful and intentional in our development of the Statewide Housing Plan, but the plan itself has had a huge impact on Gov. Brown’s 2019-2021 legislative agenda. Gov. Brown really came out big in 2019 and has introduced a housing policy agenda that requests over $400 million in resources to end homelessness and bring more affordable housing opportunities to Oregonians. Gov. Brown is a housing champion, and I like to think that our work has played a big part in influencing that.
Share with us an interesting statistic or fact about housing in Oregon.
Oregon has had some of the lowest vacancy rates in the country over the past five or so years. Many of our communities have vacancy rates that have hovered around 1%, which is closely tied to increasing rates of homelessness among Oregonians. In fact, Oregon has the third highest rate of unsheltered homelessness and the second highest rate of unsheltered families with children experiencing homelessness in the United States. These numbers represent a stark reality for our state, but I believe that OHCS can lead our state out of this crisis.
What do you do better than a year ago?
Because this has been such a strong year for housing in the state legislature, I have gotten a lot of practice with legislative testimony!
Favorite quote:
After learning about Darwin: “When mice evolve, will they turn into Mickey Mouse?” – my daughter, Veronica, age 4
Hidden talents:
When I can overcome my stage fright, I am a pretty good singer. This is definitely a hidden talent, though, and only emerges at sporadic karaoke events.
Advice for networking at industry events:
Industry events provide a lot of opportunity to learn from the great work happening all over the country. My greatest learnings have been peer to peer. Don’t let those opportunities pass you by. Find ways to add value to the people in the room. As a representative from a relatively small state, I often think about how national or regional organizations might be looking for a place to pilot a new initiative, and how we can all benefit.
If you unexpectedly had a day off, where would we find you?
Hiking the trails around Portland.
What else would you like to accomplish?
I would like to see my twins, Gabriel and Veronica, get involved in making our community stronger.
