PHOTO: Khalid Naji-Allah
Colleen Green
Director at the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development
When Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser proclaimed the bold goal to deliver an additional 36,000 housing units — including at least 12,000 units of affordable housing — to the District by 2025, she knew it was going to take a strong team to make that goal a reality.
To that end, the mayor in January appointed Colleen Green as director of D.C.’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD). Green came from a background in both private and public residential development, including as the owner and operator of a property and construction management firm in the New York, D.C. and Richmond, Va., areas. She also worked in real estate finance at Bank of America, Fleet and KeyBank.
Within Green’s first month, the DHCD provided financing to VER Preservation Partners, a partnership between National Housing Trust’s NHT Communities and IBF Development, to preserve more than 200 affordable housing units in Wards 7 and 8.
Then, in March, DHCD delivered financing to produce more than 340 affordable housing units in Wards 1, 7 and 8, made possible by annual contributions to the Housing Production Trust Fund by Mayor Bowser.
In June, Green was on hand as Gilbane Development Company, in partnership with MED Developers, Equity Plus Manager LLC and Housing Help Plus, broke ground on the construction of Phase 1 at Barnaby & 7th, an affordable housing development with 169 units in the Washington Highlands neighborhood of D.C., for which DHCD also helped facilitate financing.
Green and her team are making inroads to help produce affordable housing options for District residents at low to very low income levels, but the work is never over.
