Honorees to Be Recognized at November 14 Reception in Boston
September 16, 2011– National Housing & Rehabilitation Association Executive Director Thom Amdur announced today the recipients of NH&RA’s 2011 Affordable Housing Vision Awards: Sandra Henriquez, Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; and Boston accountant and past NH&RA President John Mackey. The pair will be honored at a ceremony on Monday, November 14 at the Intercontinental Hotel in conjunction with NH&RA’s Fall Developers Forum.
NH&RA’s Vision Awards have been presented since 2004 to affordable housing and community development leaders for their invaluable contributions and years of dedication to providing affordable apartments for American families. NH&RA President and CEO Peter Bell notes, “Sandra and John have helped deliver tens of thousands of safe, affordable homes to low-income residents in Massachusetts and around the country.”
Sandra Brooks Henriquez was sworn in as HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing on Monday, June 22, 2009 after being unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As part of the senior leadership team at HUD, Henriquez oversees the nation’s public housing and rental assistance programs that assist approximately 3.2 million low-income families. She is also responsible for the Department’s Native American and Native Hawaiian programs, which serve 562 federally recognized tribes. NH&RA Executive Director Thom Amdur notes, “Assistant Secretary Henriquez’s tenure at HUD is only the latest stop in a distinguished career dedicated to serving the housing needs of America’s neediest citizens. She is one of the leading architects behind the Obama Administration’s next generation housing policies and one of the nation’s strongest voices for public housing revitalization and modernization.”
Prior to joining HUD, Henriquez served for 13 years as the Administrator and Chief Executive Officer of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), one of the nation’s largest public housing authorities. At BHA, she was responsible for an 850-person workforce, a $280 million budget and nearly 25,000 units of public housing and other affordable housing serving approximately 10 percent of the city’s population. Henriquez’s leadership made BHA one of the leaders among housing authorities for redeveloping old public housing developments into thriving mixed-income communities using HUD’s HOPE VI Revitalization program. She also created housing strategies and programs to help the homeless; introduced green principles into BHA’s business practices and building maintenance and construction; and used Energy Performance Contracting to retrofit the housing authority’s outdated heating systems to make them more efficient and less costly to operate.
Assistant Secretary Henriquez has also demonstrated her commitment to the community serving on the Board of Directors of the YWCA Boston for nine years including two years as President. In honor of Assistant Secretary Henriquez’s commitment to civil rights and fair housing, the YWCA Boston created its Sandra B. Henriquez Racial Justice Award in 1995. The award is given annually by the YWCA Boston fordemonstrated commitment to ethnic diversity, equal opportunity, and a work environment that encourages and supports diversity and the advancement of people of color. Henriquez has also served as President and Director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) and as Director of the Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association in Boston.
Prior to BHA, Henriquez worked for Maloney Properties, Inc., a full service real estate property management firm specializing in the delivery of services to resident-controlled and non-profit sponsored housing, and as the Director of Housing Management and Tenant Services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Housing and Community Development.
For more than 30 years John Mackey has served as a trusted advisor and leader to affordable housing developers, non-profits and public agencies. An accountant by training, Mackey’s practice focuses on business advice, long-range planning, structuring of real estate transactions and extracting value from older properties. As an advisor, he has innovated deal structures enabling developers to leverage multiple layers of financing in affordable housing and historic preservation transactions. Mackey has structured hundreds of tax credit transactions including dozens of public housing revitalization projects involving low-income housing tax credits. He is also one of the nation’s foremost experts on structuring transactions utilizing historic tax credits, new markets tax credits and state tax credits. NH&RA Executive Director Thom Amdur notes, “John is one of the affordable housing industry’s unsung heroes. As an advisor to developers, John has quietly guided hundreds of transactions serving thousands of low-income residents to completion. He has also provided steady leadership to numerous affordable housing organizations, including NH&RA.”
Mackey is a principal and a member of Reznick Group’s real estate transactions practice in the firm’s Boston office, which he helped found. He is a long-time leader within NH&RA and served as Chairman of NH&RA’s Board of Directors from 2004-2006. John currently serves on the Association’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee and is a former judge of NH&RA’s J. Timothy Anderson Awards for Excellence in Historic Rehabilitation. In addition, he serves as a director of other organizations, including Preservation Mass and National Association of Home Builders Tax Credit Steering Committee, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the publication Housing & Development Reporter. Mackey has also previously served as a director of the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition and Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association.
For more than 40 years, National Housing & Rehabilitation Association — sponsor of the Vision Awards as well as the J. Timothy Anderson (“Timmy”) Awards for Excellence in Historic Rehabilitation — has been providing an ongoing forum for professionals in affordable housing and historic rehabilitation to exchange information and build new business relationships.
The Vision Awards ceremony begins at 6:00 pm on November 14 at the InterContinental Boston. All registrants at the NH&RA Fall Developers’ Forum, to be held October November 14-15 at the 100 Federal Street Auditorium (Bank of America Building) in Boston, are invited to attend the ceremony. Individual tickets to the event are also available to non-registrants for $80 and may be purchased through the Fall Developers Forum online registration system. Attendance is included in the Fall Developers Forum full registration.
For more information on the “Vision Awards,” registration for the Fall Developers Forum or NH&RA, please visit our website at www.housingonline.com or contact Thom Amdur at 202-939-1753, tamdur@housingonline.com.
