Michael Levitt

“I’m very competitive, very aggressive,” is the way Michael Levitt of The Michaels Organization described himself a couple of years ago, on the occasion of the private company’s 50th anniversary. That drive and his enthusiasm — “I’ve always loved what I do” — propelled him to build America’s largest developer of affordable housing as well as set several world sportfishing records (four, all involving marlin, still stand).

By the time he was 30, Levitt discovered his niche of working with government housing programs. “I did the first residential urban renewal in the state of New Jersey,” Levitt recalled during that same 2023 talk. 

Immersing himself in the details of a very technical, bureaucratic business, Levitt worked 15-hour days, six days a week, and loved it, from the conceptualization to the lobbying. As The Michaels Organization grew — it now has more than1,000 employees — it added concentrations in military housing, student housing and what the firm calls “attainable housing” (keeping essential workers such as teachers and nurses in their communities). More than 200,000 people live in Michaels-developed housing.

With a customer-focused attitude — “If there are cost overruns, we come up with the money ourselves” — the organization has developed a reputation for reliability.

For the past 34 years, Levitt and his wife, Pat, have given academic scholarships to residents in Michaels communities through an education foundation, handing out more than $19 million total. 

“The best investment you can make is to send a kid to school,” Levitt noted in 2023. “You send a kid to college. A third of [our scholarship recipients] were women in their 30s on welfare. … They went to nursing or paralegal school, they get off of welfare, get a job, pay taxes — there’s no better dollar investment.”