To raise the visibility of women in all facets of the multifamily industry, Multifamily Executive is highlighting 10 leaders who are making a difference in housing policy, property management, development, finance, social impact, and proptech.
While we share their stories and how they are advancing the industry, they also share valuable advice for their peers as well as those coming up in the industry.
New to her role this year is Sharon Wilson Géno, president of the National Multifamily Housing Council. Her advice: “Don’t try to adapt to those things that are not you. Stay true to yourself.”
Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia L. Fudge shares the message she would give to herself if she was just starting her career: “Opportunities do present themselves,” she says. “You just have to be available and ready to accept them.”
For Kelli Carhart, executive managing director and leader of CBRE Multifamily Capital Markets, she recognizes the value in recruiting women leaders. “I came over to CBRE because there was a woman who identified and actively recruited me,” she says. “I need to actively recruit women who would be great in positions. I am making a more concerted effort to bring talented women into the organization.”
Elizabeth Francisco, chief experience officer at Inhabit, adds that self-promotion is important. “Make sure you’re celebrating your accomplishments. I think we’ve got to do a better job of understanding and promoting our accomplishments,” she says.
And Lisa Newton, senior vice president of operations at Hines, says she wants to see people—women and men—do the best they can in their current jobs. “Don’t look at your next step until you master where you are today, then the opportunities will be endless.”
Kelli Carhart,
CBRE
After spending 17 years at Freddie Mac, serving as vice president of multifamily production and sales, Kelli Carhart decided the time was right to move to a new role and learn more about other lending sources in the multifamily industry.
It came during a season of changes for her—getting married, having a child, and the pandemic—as well as at a time when Freddie Mac had seen some leadership moves.
“It was a ripe opportunity to transition myself,” she says.
In January 2021, she joined CBRE and most recently had served as head of multifamily production.
Her move paid off. Two years later, she was tapped to become executive managing director and leader of CBRE’s Multifamily Capital Markets platform, which combines investment sales and financing as well as brings the investment banking into a single, fully integrated service offering. In this role, Carhart also oversees the continued national expansion of CBRE’s multifamily business across five regions, guiding leaders in each geography.
While her bread and butter has been on the debt side, she says there has been a bit of a learning curve to bridge the gap between debt and sales, and she’s striving to integrate those better.
“I want to make sure we’re thinking about how we can add value to our clients and approach them strategically as a platform,” she says.
Carhart also is prioritizing her team and clients to continue to grow CBRE’s business.
“Nothing beats face-to-face interaction, and that’s always emerging for both parties,” she says. “It’s important to be in front of clients and the team that you are leading because you learn things that you wouldn’t obtain virtually.”
Just a couple of months into her new role, Carhart has a lot of goals that she’s focused on, including technology deliverables and transparency.
“People want real-time data, and we need to have avenues to provide that to our clients. Having an efficient avenue to deliver information is one of my focuses,” she says. “I’m also really focused on communication and transparency. I want to equip the team with having information—research, data, and marketing materials—and being able to deliver that to the clients.”
Elizabeth Francisco,
Inhabit
Elizabeth Francisco has been on a journey in her 25-plus-year career in the multifamily industry, but throughout her different chapters her focus has remained on the customer experience.
She started out as a leasing agent; helped launch ResMan, a leading property management platform for the multifamily industry; and now is chief experience officer at Inhabit, a software company serving the residential, commercial, and vacation rental management industries that acquired ResMan in 2021.
“Everything that has made me successful can be attributed back to my teams; I value and prioritize the way I engage with other people,” she says. “You don’t build a business by yourself.”
Francisco relies on her on-the-ground experience and by listening to team members and customers.
She was instrumental in bringing ResMan to market. ResMan was created during the Great Recession to help multifamily operators navigate the market’s uncertainty and protect their portfolios’ financial stability.
“One thing that made the platform successful was learning to listen with intent, whether that was our new product team or our front-line managers. For example, I did not know the first thing about building software when we started; what we did know was property management,” she says. “We had a constant feedback loop with every level of our management team. I had walked in their shoes so there was genuine compassion and respect for the job at hand. But, unfortunately, they were the ones being asked to do more with less due to the recessionary environment. Customers, internal and external, will always will tell you what you need to do to be successful. You just have to listen.”
Francisco says she feels fortunate to have been there for ResMan’s start, taking the platform to market and going through the various rounds of investment, and now still being part of the team at Inhabit after the acquisition.
From a growth perspective, she says you can see how committed Inhabit is to its teams and what it is doing in the space to deliver best-in-class management platforms. The firm, which has grown to 1,100 employees across the U.S. and multiple countries since 2016, serves over 4 million residential and vacation property management units.
While still active in multifamily, Francisco also is working on Inhabit’s vacation platform side and is hoping to bridge the lessons learned.
“From the surface, one can see the similarities between the two divisions— short-term rentals, and we’re long-term rentals. But you also have to understand the nuances of those two spaces. What’s exciting for me is how I think about the future. How can we leverage the best parts of both divisions? Whether you look at the existing technology or individual team members, our product and development teams are very forward-looking. One thing that I love about the vacation rental space is the treatment of the guest experience. Imagine if every resident in the apartment community felt like a valued guest.”
Francisco has been through past cycles and is prepared for the uncertainty in today’s market.
“2023 will be another transformational year for both the vacation and multifamily property industries,” she adds. “I’m looking forward to being in the conversation on both sides to help our teams and customers navigate today’s market conditions. There are a lot of headlines about the economy right now. While we have some headwinds, I know it’s manageable. I remember a time when rent growth projections like we are seeing this year were more the norm. You have to be the voice of reason, take a step back and not overreact, and use the data.”
Marcia Fudge,
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Marcia L. Fudge is in her third year as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Formerly mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and a member of Congress for more than a decade, she was tapped to be the nation’s top housing official by President Joe Biden shortly after his election in 2020.
“One of the things that we pride ourselves on at HUD is making clear to the people that we serve that government really can work to their benefit and give them the hope and belief that we can make their lives better,” she tells MFE sister publication Affordable Housing Finance. “That is my real goal in this role.”
The agency’s recent efforts have included taking new steps to bolster the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing mandate, which was dismantled by the Trump administration. HUD and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness are also behind the House America initiative, working with local leaders to use American Rescue Plan Act resources to address homelessness.
AHF: You have a long and wide list of issues to cover in your job, but as you go into your third year as HUD secretary, what is priority No. 1?
Fudge: It’s the same as it’s always been: It’s to make sure people in this country have decent, affordable, safe housing. Of course, there are things like the resources we have put into Healthy Homes so we can eradicate lead and mold. You shouldn’t live in a house that makes you sick. We want to be sure that we have people who can grow healthy, especially young people. We want people to live in communities of opportunity, so they can be in a position to get good jobs and to have health care. It’s the same from the beginning. It’s how to make the lives of the people in this country who have been either underserved or overlooked better. That’s our job.
AHF: What’s a policy change that you would like to see get made this year?
Fudge: There are a number of them. I would say, off the top, one of my priorities for this year is to find a way to reunite families who are living in public housing. If someone has a felony record, when they leave prison they cannot live in public housing. But, there are so many people who have felonies for things that are not violent, that are not abusive, that are not crimes against children, and that are not sexual abuses. They’re just people who may have been in a bad situation. If we can reunite families, we can keep the recidivism rate down. We can let children live with their mother and father. We can create an environment where people feel better about themselves. I think in the long run what we want to do is encourage people to do the right things, to work hard, to try to pull their families through difficult times.
AHF: Rising developments costs are a major issue for affordable housing developers. What is HUD or the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) doing to help developers create more housing?
Fudge: We have encouraged housing finance agencies to assist with low-interest loans. We have increased the amount of the Housing Trust Fund. We have made Community Development Block Grants more flexible. We have put more resources into our HOME dollars. We’re doing our part as best we can, but the thing that I think we are doing best is interacting with mayors to say “take a look at your zoning.” The president put in his budget billions of dollars to encourage communities to look at their zoning because we know zoning changes or lack thereof have increased building costs by as much as 40%, somewhere between 30% and 40%. We’re trying to say “take a deep dive and see if you have policies that make it more difficult or policies that encourage people to build.” We’re also providing more vouchers.
AHF: Talk about the racial disparities that exist in homeownership. How can we improve in this area?
Fudge: It’s unconscionable in many ways that the gap between Black and white ownership is as big or bigger than it was in 1968 when we passed the Fair Housing law. I think it’s a black mark on our nation that we would allow the same kind of discrimination that we were fighting in 1968 to continue today. My concern is that we need to address it in a way that says to people not only will we not tolerate it, but that we’re going to make significant change by doing things like working on property valuation. We’re saying that you’re no longer going to communities of color and devalue their properties. You’re not only devaluing their properties, but you’re taking away generational wealth. ...We’ve penalized people who have student loan debt, primarily that’s people of color and poor communities. It’s more difficult if you have student loan debt to get a loan than for people who may have the same exact amount of indebtedness with a credit card. We have decided that we are going to make it a level playing level. We’ve also decided that persons who come to us and were deemed to have no credit or not be creditworthy, we’ve now said if you have a positive rental history we’re going to consider that credit. We’re working on ways to encourage the minority community. We’re calling out things that we know are wrong. Fair Housing is the law of the land, and we intend to enforce it.
AHF: Can you share an update on the House America initiative. Be critical. Where has it met your expectations, and where has it not?
Fudge: Actually, it’s met our expectations everyplace. We have about 100 communities. The goal was for each community to determine how many persons who are either homeless or at risk of being homeless that they can put in stable homes as well as to put a number of houses or units of housing on the market. In one year, we housed more than 100,000 people and put nearly 35,000 affordable housing units on the market. Each city met its goal. They were conservative admittedly, but they were determined to try to address the issue. Homelessness is a crisis in this country, so is the lack of affordable housing. We cannot do it alone. When cities commit to put those resources in place and to put housing units on the market, it makes our job so much easier. I think in one year it was a great success.
AHF: You’re the first woman to lead HUD in decades. Why do you think that’s significant?
Fudge: It’s been 40 years. I think it’s significant for a couple of reasons. One is the fact that when you look at our largest population that we deal with on a regular basis, those for whom we provide rental assistance, we probably affect about 5 million households a month. Many of those households are led by women. When you think about the number of people living on the street, the number of women have been increasing, especially senior women. It’s also important that people hopefully see someone who is possibly more compassionate, more concerned about their well-being, and has some real-life experience as to what it takes to live in communities like the communities we work in every day.
AHF: You’ve been a mayor, a Congress member, and a U.S. secretary, what skills have helped you the most?
Fudge: The first would be just listening to people. So often those of us in government decide early on that we know what’s best for people as opposed to talking to the people we are trying to help. I think that would be No. 1. As you talk about my skills as a mayor, housing was a huge issue as it is today in every single community. People need housing, decent housing, and you also deal with how to get people to and from their homes to their jobs, so transportation and housing, those are things I’ve learned. As a member of Congress, you learn what legislation can really do, how it can change people’s lives. You pull all those things together, and you can see a bigger picture than you can if you’re just in one role. You see a much, much larger landscape of what can and cannot be done.
AHF: What would you tell a younger Marcia Fudge beginning her professional career?
Fudge: I believe that I would say opportunities always come, no matter your station, no matter where you are. Opportunities do present themselves. You just have to be available and ready to accept them. Sometimes we overlook opportunities because we’re not prepared to accept them. I think the better prepared you are gives you a brighter and bigger future. … It’s always about being ready. Preparation and education for me are the things that I would say most.
Ruth U. Hoang,
Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners
With a personal mentoring mantra of “build and uplift extraordinary people and places,” it’s clear that Ruth U. Hoang is passionate not only about the buildings she helps develop, but the team behind them as well as those who dwell inside. As senior vice president of development at Jair Lynch Real Estate Partners, she oversees sponsored real estate investment projects from planning to construction completion. Hoang began her career in real estate at a consulting business in 1998. It was then that she realized the endless possibilities of the industry.
She says, “I fell in love with real estate when I realized that the buildings I had been consulting on, like affordable senior apartment communities, could positively change the lives of those living in them. As my career evolved and I shifted into development, I began to understand that I was not just developing buildings, rather I was developing and impacting the surrounding communities, the environment, and the people who called those buildings home. Whether our focus was on the stormwater management we installed, the demolition of dilapidated buildings being replaced by brand-new homes and stores, or the curbside appeal that made residents feel at home once they arrived at their door, I understood the gravity my career had on the communities around me, and that understanding led to the deep passion I have for it today.”
With placemaking for residents at the heart of what Hoang does, she is purposeful in her planning and execution of functional, comfortable, and energy-efficient spaces. Currently, Hoang is excited about the opportunities the firm’s Barcroft Apartments acquisition brings. “It’s a 60-acre community in the heart of Arlington County, just a few miles from downtown D.C. and the Pentagon, with a vision of preserving and enhancing the existing affordable apartment homes while redeveloping components of the property into a modern mixed-use community,” Hoang says.
She is excited for the opportunity to engage with residents whether through Jair Lynch’s resident services programming or the renovated and new attainable apartment homes. While backed by a trusted and talented team, Hoang credits her success to her husband and two children as well. “Creating and maintaining work-life harmony is a hard task but one I continue to work on, because I love both the wife and mother I am but also the passionate developer I’ve become. I learn every day from each of the roles and hope that I’m continuously changing and shaping myself into a better person.”
Lisa Newton,
Hines
Lisa Newton has helped grow and scale the U.S. multifamily business at Hines, a privately owned global real estate investment, development, and management firm with a presence in 314 cities in 30 countries. The firm manages a $96 billion portfolio of high-performing assets across residential, office, retail, industrial, and mixed-use strategies worldwide.
Recognizing the cyclical nature of commercial real estate—when office is down, multifamily might be up, and vice versa—Hines started developing a strong pipeline in 2012 for multifamily assets in the U.S. With decades of strategic leadership and multifamily operational expertise, Newton joined the team in 2014.
“I spent the first several years in a subject matter expert role, working to bring all the excellent products and services Hines had developed into multifamily,” says Newton, senior vice president of multifamily operations.
When the firm decided to bring its multifamily assets in house, Newton was instrumental in the launch of Willowick Residential as Hines’ property management division. The division is named after founder Gerald D. Hines’ first multifamily building in Houston’s River Oaks neighborhood—The Willowick.
Today, Newton says Hines has 39 developments with 11,700 units under management in the U.S. and Canada. “We will grow with just the development pipeline,” she says. “We will get in the 18,000- to 20,000-unit range by 2024-2025, as long as developments aren’t delayed.”
She adds that the new development pipeline for residential is three times the pipeline of its office projects—18 million square feet of living product compared with 6 million square feet of office.
Hines also recently ventured into its first third-party management deal on the East Coast.
“It’s been development, acquisitions, and the property management arm growing,” she says. “Now, we may see some growth in our third-party fee business.”
Newton, who is on the firm’s Management Services Committee, appreciates Hines’ ability to work with different product types.
“We really are leveraging decades of experience and relationships wacross Hines’ different resources and departments,” she says.
One example she cites is a new mixed-use development, Fenton, in Cary, North Carolina, that Hines is managing. The firm partnered with Columbia Development and USAA Real Estate on the 92-acre project, which at buildout will feature over 2.5 million square feet of multifamily, retail, office, restaurant, and hotel.
The initial phase opened a year ago and comprises 250,000 square feet of specialty and experiential retail, including a high-end movie theater; the 357-unit Allison at Fenton multifamily community; and 195,000 square feet of Class A office space.
Donna Preiss,
The Preiss Co.
Donna Preiss, founder and CEO of The Preiss Co. (TPCO), has been a pioneer in the student housing sector. Touted as the nation’s largest woman-owned student housing company, it owns and manages 65 communities and 34,000 beds. Hear from Preiss about TPCO’s growth plans as well as its new internal technology company.
MFE: How did you get your start in the multifamily industry?
Preiss: I started my real estate career in 1986 as a broker. I helped investors find small one- to four-unit investments and was an active investor myself. After five years, I created a management company to take care of my investments and investors. After 10 years, I started doing small developments. I did my first purpose-built student housing project in the late 1990s and have been focused on student housing ever since.
MFE: What made you decide to launch your own student housing firm?
Preiss: While doing our first student development in 1999, we recognized the huge demographic bubble—millennials—that was about to graduate from high school. We had significant success in our first two years building over 450 condos in Raleigh, North Carolina, and 400 condos in Clemson, South Carolina. We were one of the first developers to recognize the value of delivering high-speed internet off campus. We recognized the competitive value of developing a purpose-built project that was tailored to students’ needs, including targeted architectural designs, social programming, and technology. This early success and pioneering led to our pivot and focus onto student housing.
MFE: How does The Preiss Co. set itself apart in this sector?
Preiss: 1. Front office and back office. Front office: concentration on culture; prioritizing the experience for the team members and for the clients. Back office: successful execution of targeted business plans. 2. Tenure of employees. Our leadership teams both in the corporate office and on the site level have worked together on average for over 20 years each. 3. Technology: From the beginning, we have used technology to enhance the staff and student experience as well as more efficiently execute our business plans.
MFE: What is most rewarding about working in the student housing business?
Preiss: Students are a refreshing demographic. We catch them when they are the most optimistic about life. We have the ability to positively influence our leaders of tomorrow. The complexity, necessary scale, and continual changes of the student housing industry keep it from becoming a commodity.
MFE: What are you most excited about in the year ahead?
Preiss: We're excited for what we think to be some of the best student housing fundamentals we've seen in our industry in the year ahead. Enrollments are up, new supply is still under what new demand will be, and leasing efforts continue to outpace all prior years.
One priority would be focused growth of our management portfolio, either through acquisition or strategic third-party relationships. We have a goal of 40,000 beds by 2024 and have grown by 15% (roughly 4,500 beds) in the last five months, so we're on our way to reaching that goal.
We're also extremely excited about the prospects of our new affiliated business line, Iris Technologies. We've created a new opportunity through the creation of Iris for TPCO to leverage its best-in-class technology team as a service for other owners/operators in the space to use for all of their technology-consulting needs. From bulk-managed Wi-Fi to smart technology to access controls to audio/video, Iris will be able to consult with owners/operators that want to use a third party to provide solutions for all of their proptech issues.
MFE: Are there any recent developments that you are most proud of that you can share?
Preiss: In spite of the economic challenges of 2023, we expect to have a very successful year. We are excited about our new Iris technology platform. We are excited about the record number of development projects—five— that are at some stage of completion. We are excited about a 20% growth in our third-party management platform.
MFE: What advice do you have for women coming up in the multifamily/student housing industry?
Preiss: Speak up and get noticed. Be flexible about traveling. Take advantage of any opportunities that you are given. For example, volunteer to speak and participate on conference panels. Volunteer to work on new company initiatives. Always add maximum value in whatever role you find yourself in.
Kendall Pretzer,
Grace Hill
As CEO at Grace Hill, Kendall Pretzer is contributing to the successful careers of many in the multifamily and commercial real estate industry. She says, “Most of my career has been spent on the owner/operator side, working with the people who take care of the residents. It’s always moving, always changing, always presenting opportunities and challenges to solve. It excites me to see how passionate and caring the management teams are both on and off-site. I love that we, at Grace Hill, can help care for and educate these people, helping them to do their jobs safer, in a more efficient and productive way.”
Pretzer joined Grace Hill in 2018 after the firm purchased her company, The Strategic Solution. She was appointed CEO in May 2021 and has since seen the company continue to evolve as technology changes. “We are committed to providing a continuous cycle of improvement to help businesses and their people continue to improve. We are thinking and working every day for the betterment of our customers, our industry, and the people who take care of people where they live and work,” Pretzer adds.
Caring deeply for her team and the people they serve, Pretzer continues to adapt as the industry changes—especially involving technology. Through acquisitions, including The Strategic Solution, Kingsley Surveys, Edge2Learn, and Ellis, the company has brought resources and information into one tech stack to better assist customers. Offering more than learning, Grace Hill has solutions for policy management, resident and tenant surveys, mystery shops, and online reputation management.
“We talk with our customers to understand what they are worried about, what keeps them up at night, what are the pain points or blockers that prevent them from doing their jobs better, safer, faster. By listening and understanding their pain points, we can develop products that solve our customers’ problems,” she says.
A natural problem-solver who thrives on change, Pretzer is always looking for ways to continue innovating and expanding. “We will always be focused on listening to our customers, providing information, insights, resources, and recommending actions to help people and businesses. And I’m happy to be here among the smart people at Grace Hill and our caring customers in this wonderful industry.”
Pamela West,
Nuveen
Beginning her career as a language arts teacher, Pamela West thought it would be fun to take on a marketing job during the summer with CBRE, writing and producing offering memorandums for its institutional multifamily sales team. The experience uncovered West’s hidden passion for real estate, and she never looked back. After earning her master’s, she joined Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA).
West says, “My career at TIAA has married my passion as a real estate professional while providing financial solutions for our participants, who are ultimately teachers and professors.” Today, she leads the real estate impact investment strategy at Nuveen, where its existing impact housing portfolio, acquired principally through TIAA’s General Account, stands at 121 properties across 41 metropolitan statistical areas with a gross value of over $3.1 billion, as of December.
Approaching each investment with intention, West explains, “Every investment we make must have a measurable outcome. Nuveen’s strategy is to preserve and create affordability for residents earning 60% of the area median income and below. TIAA and Nuveen have been investing in impact for more than 50 years and have focused on this specific strategy for over two decades. In the last 10 years alone, TIAA’s capital has preserved over 50,000 units across the U.S.”
With a full pipeline of opportunities, West is a believer of working together, and her team has grown exponentially over the last year and a half. “TIAA and Nuveen’s executive management teams have been great supporters of this sector and continue to grow our impact investing real estate team to achieve our goal of directly managing $15 billion in assets under management by 2026. We are halfway through that goal, and I have no doubt we’ll be setting new goals next year,” she adds.
Reviewing her more than 20-year career in multifamily and housing investments, West is proud of the outcomes tied to the impact investing strategy. She shares, “When I see the data on credit score enhancements, when I hear a resident moved out of our property to buy a home, or when I get a report stating 70%-plus residents have access to health care at the property that didn’t have access prior to our ownership—those things let me know I’m on the right track, but I have so much more to do.”
Marcie Williams,
RKW Residential
Starting as a leasing agent over 30 years ago, Marcie Williams has met and learned from people involved in every aspect of the business. Now as CEO of RKW Residential, she says, “From colleagues to vendor partners, I have been influenced by all the people I have been fortunate enough to get to know. As my career—and our company—evolves, I apply everything I have learned from these individuals.”
Through a people-first philosophy, Williams drives the third-party multifamily property management firm with over 35,000 single-family rental and multifamily units under management. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, with offices in Miami and Orlando, Florida; Atlanta; and Raleigh, North Carolina, Williams and her team also consult and are growing a footprint stretching seven states.
Whether approaching a new development or strategy, Williams says, “We carefully consider how each decision impacts our team members, residents, and vendor partners before finalizing a plan. If all three categories of people are not positively impacted, we will not move forward.”
Williams is in tune into the evolution of how people and technology are being leveraged to maximize the experience of residents and managers. Acquired by Alfred in March 2022, RKW is implementing Alfred’s technology platform into a large percentage of its communities.
“It is not just about adding the technology—it is infusing that technology with the people we have and creating something new for the entire industry,” Williams states. “It has been a paced and thoughtful rollout, which allows us to assess what is working at every stage and maximize the experience for residents and team members.”
To give back to the multifamily industry, Williams has taught National Apartment Association designation classes for over 20 years. “It is important for me to share my knowledge with the industry, whether it is through teaching, speaking on panels, or serving on industry boards and committees,” she says.
Williams was recently inducted into the Greater Charlotte Apartment Association Education Hall of Fame. “I am most proud of being able to help, mentor, and influence so many people in my career in each role and each organization I have been a part of,” Williams says. “I still have a long way to go with much more to accomplish in my career and at RKW.”
Sharon Wilson Géno,
National Multifamily Housing Council
Sharon Wilson Géno says she joined the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) at the right time. At the beginning of February, she took over as president of the Washington, D.C.-based organization, which brings together owners, managers, and developers that provide apartment homes for 38.9 million Americans.
“Housing is now a kitchen table issue. Everyone is talking about it, no one knows what to do about it, and no one really knows what it is,” she says. “We have an opportunity as housers to step up here and help create fundamental change and real housing policy in this country, which we haven’t really had here before. It’s been in bits and pieces at different times in different places.”
Wilson Géno, who took the helm from longtime leader Doug Bibby, says one of her priorities is to use the lessons learned from NMHC’s membership and to move all of the expertise that’s in the private sector forward to help solve what is a public problem and to rethink what the public-private partnership should look like to house residents in all places at all different price points at different times of their lives.
“This moment in time is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to truly make change in how housing is viewed and the kinds of investments that the private market can make with public participation and support to provide roofs over people’s heads in every different point in their lives,” she says. “That’s what I’m really excited about.”
Wilson Géno brings a lot to the table that she can tap into in her new role, calling her three-decade career a smorgasbord. As a veteran in the housing industry, she most recently served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of Volunteers of America National Services, one of the nation’s largest owners of affordable and mixed-income housing. She also previously served the nonprofit as its senior vice president of legal affairs.
“I have been a practitioner on the ground talking with residents, I have been a lawyer inside and outside of deals. I have had the opportunity to be on the legislative and advocacy side, and I’ve had the opportunity to be an operator. And I’ve also taught housing law and housing policy as well,” she says.
Policy at all levels of government will be a major focus this year. Shortly before she officially became NMHC president, the White House announced a series of actions to increase fairness in the rental market and further fair housing principles.
“From a 30,000-foot-level, the thing that concerns me the most is the way it was framed and that we need tenant protections like somehow residents who are the clients of the multifamily industry need to be protected from the very people that are helping to support and provide that roof over their heads,” says Wilson Géno. “It perpetuates this old myth of this incredible tension between landlords and tenants. We have come a long way. We have some of the highest housing quality in the world, based in large part because of the type of housing we provide here and that the private market principles really dictate and ensure that we maintain that quality.”
She adds that a host of state and local laws have created systems to ensure a fair relationship and can better deal with situations if there are bad actors.
“Housing is very local at its heart and soul, and it’s best addressed in that framework,” she explains. “The idea that somehow the federal government needs to play a role on top of that system undermines how housing works best, which is that it meets the needs of the particular market, and states and localities have the opportunity to make those adjustments.”
In addition, the NMHC, which was formed in 1978 to fight rent control, continues to address issues around that hot-button topic across the nation.
“Rather than take the long view and do the hard work of making policy changes that will help us develop and create supply, which we all know is the long-term answer, local politicians and others have suggested that rent stabilization-type policies are a quick-fix political answer,” explains Wilson Géno. “You can understand why politicians go that route; however, it’s detrimental to the long-term problem, which is housing supply.”
She adds that by going down the rent stabilization path, those locations will struggle to get that private market investment that is needed to fix the supply problem.
“As a nation, we have invested very well in defense, we have invested very well in transportation, and we have invested very little in housing in terms of direct subsidy. We have just done small incentives relatively speaking and relied on private market capital. If that private market capital sees these kinds of disruptions, like rent stabilization and some of these tenant protection initiatives, that private capital will choose to go elsewhere, and that includes domestic capital as well as foreign capital,” she says.
She adds that private market capital is necessary for supply and worries about what the future could hold if it disappears. “We have the opportunity to fix this problem by leveraging private capital and creating a stable market environment to do so,” she says. “If that gets upended, we won’t have the money to do it, and I don’t have any delusions that the federal government is going to suddenly step up and start putting billions and trillions of dollars into the housing supply. Private market capital is absolutely necessary, and I am worried that if we’re not careful, we will upend the very thing we need the most.”
Another priority for Wilson Géno is to elevate the impact that NMHC members’ housing has on residents.
“We talk about the work we do often in terms of numbers, and those are easy measurements and important. But we don’t talk about the impact of what we do and who we do it for and what housing means to the people served by the housing we provide,” she says. “I’m hoping that we can start to elevate that conversation more and not just talk about what we do and how that’s measured, but measure it more by the impacts we’re having on people’s lives, which are enormous. Data shows the impact housing has on health, education, and well-being, and we really need to start to measure ourselves in a different way.”
She also will continue driving the NMHC’s focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“The commitment to DEI has been something that Doug started and shepherded well before it was a buzzword in looking for ways to bring more diverse voices into this industry,” she says. “We can talk about it and educate about it, but if you’re not showing real numbers, real action, and real economic activity around that and sharing that with people who have not traditionally had access to that, then you’re missing the boat.”
The NMHC in February partnered with six other real estate trade associations as part of the Commercial Real Estate Diverse Supplier Consortium to foster diversity in the industry’s supply chain and expand economic opportunities for minority and women-owned business enterprises.
The organization also maintains a strong women’s initiative. Its annual NMHC Women’s Event earlier this year drew around 730 women. In addition, a video series continues those conversations from the event, and NMHC hosted several networking events in different cities in the past year.
“It’s a great opportunity for women to develop those relationships and generate business opportunities for themselves in the localities where they are,” says Wilson Géno.