Magazine Inducts Five into its Hall of Fame

Renee Lewis Glover, President and CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority, is one of five inductees to Affordable Housing Magazine’s Hall of Fame. Glover is credited with changing the face of public housing through the agency’s willingness to demolished large tracts pf public housing and replacing it with mixed-income developments.

While receiving her fair share of criticism from public housing advocates, she has transformed public housing in Atlanta and serves as a model for other housing authorities nationally which have replicated her success in communities large and small.

Joining Glover in the Hall of Fame are Sister Lillian Murphy, CEO of Mercy Housing; John McEvoy, former executive director of the National Council of State Housing Agencies; and posthumously George Knight, former director of the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (now NeighborWorks America) and I. Donald Turner the first executive director for Bridge Housing in San Francisco.

Murphy led Mercy Housing from its base in Denver when it started with 220 units and now has 37,000 units it has helped develop, finance or preserve. It is currently serving more than 124,000 people. It also owns more than 14,000 units scattered across 250 affordable housing properties.

McEvoy was the force behind ensuring the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) became permanent and is indexed to inflation. He spent many years in Washington working on Capitol Hill and as a lobbyist in a Washington, DC-law firm before spending 12 years with NCSHA.

Knight helped grow NRC to where it was helping ten times more families under his leadership according to a tribute submitted by Charles Gould to the magazine. Knight died from cancer in 2008. According to a tribute submitted by Rick Holliday, Terner was a force in pursuit of affordable housing for those in need. He died in a plane crash in 1996 which also took the life of Ron Brown, who was the Secretary of Commerce at the time of the crash.

Congress Still Hasn’t Finalized Funding for 2010

It appears Congress will pass another continuing resolution to keep the government open until the end of the year until issues surrounding appropriations bills are resolved. Before any action is taken on the FY 2010 appropriations bills, Congress till needs to resolve how earmarks are going to be treated. Earmarks are special projects inserted into the appropriations bill by Members of Congress to fund their special projects. Some members want to subject these special projects to competitive bidding. A continuing resolution is a legislative mechanism which allows the government to remain open at 2009 funding levels until a new funding bill is approved by Congress and signed by the president.