Tim Sullivan
Timothy C. Sullivan
Title: Executive Director, MassHousing
Age: 48
Experience: 25 years
Tim Sullivan grew up in Brookline and attended the same schools his children do today. He has spent most of his career working in public service on issues of housing. Now the executive director of MassHousing, he and his team spend their time on creative projects to increase housing opportunities in the state. He volunteers for the Coolidge Corner Theatre, an institution he has loved nearly all of his life, and likes to coach his kids in their athletic pursuits.
Q: Your career track has been pretty consistent so far. How did you get into the field of affordable housing?
A: I was a political science major so I always gravitated towards policy. I actually began college with a political science/civil engineering joint major, but I found I was less interested in the civil engineering part. I always had a really strong set of quantitative and math-related skills. What’s been interesting for me in my career is that I started in and stayed in the housing space, for the most part, but I’ve been able to utilize my quantitative skills in public finance jobs. Budgeting jobs really play to my strengths.
I started my career in the attorney general’s office as a paralegal in the consumer protection division. I was primarily responsible for and spent most of my time dealing with what people call mobile home parks, but the proper term is manufactured housing communities. That division handles enforcement in the statutes and in the notices and we would get all kinds of big and small complaints to dig into. It’s an interesting landlord-tenant relationship because you own your home, but they own the land. And they’re not really mobile, so once you’re there, you’re kind of stuck. It’s interesting and complicated because it’s the intersection of the rights of the owner of the land and the owner of the home. If it goes badly, it doesn’t end easily.
Q: That’s an interesting start. Where did you go from there?
A: I went to graduate school and ended up working at a not-for-profit senior housing organization, which was an interesting combination of service delivery and targeted products for seniors, like lines of credit and in-home counseling for folks who were interested in reverse mortgages. Then I started off as a budget analyst for the state and got promoted to director of finance. Then I ended up going for about 20 months to the Big Dig, after their finances blew up. I went in and got the federal finance plan back on track. There was a moment when the cost over-runs were so large that the federal government wasn’t sure they wanted to fund the completion of the project. It took a lot longer to get that on track than we had hoped, but we did it.
Then I went back to serve as state budget director and that was right after 9/11 happened. Dealing with both big fiscal cliff association as well as all the fear and investment in public safety … it was a really complicated time in the world of the state budget.
Then the CFO job at MassHousing came up and it really struck me as a good opportunity to get back into housing and leverage the things I learned in the public finance world. That was in 2002 and I’ve been here since, first as CFO, then the deputy director of rental lending, now beginning last year, as executive director.
Q: Is Massachusetts a particularly difficult market to increase affordable housing?
A: Massachusetts has an incredibly rich history in terms of housing. We’re the only state that has right to housing for homeless families. We have 45,000 units of state-financed housing. There are only four states in the entire country that finance housing like we do. Our state inventory is bigger than our federal inventory. We have Chapter 40B, which people talk a lot about. I think a lot about what MassHousing’s role is in that.
We also have a very big portfolio of rental loans, over 60,000 units in 400 developments. The management companies of those developments generate over $300 million of goods and services activities throughout the year. We want to connect some of that activity to minority- and women-owned businesses. We think we’re the only state in the country that does this.
Q: What project are you most proud of so far?
A: I would say Gateway at Lynn. It’s still in construction. It has a deeply affordable component, it has another middle-income piece and a piece aimed at people who were formerly homeless, and some workforce-rate units. Absent this program, you really don’t see programs like this. It will remain affordable for at least 30 years.
Our ability to put our workforce tier into the deal basically got the deal done. I also think it will make the deal better over the long term. I think it will better serve as an anchor around Lynn where there is potentially a lot of housing being produced. That’s my proudest development. But also, I took over this position in January 2016, and it was our biggest lending year ever. We did about 5 percent more than we’d ever done before, so we were incredibly busy. We were also incredibly busy both in rental and homeownership. To do well in both parts of the business was incredible. We ended the year with a bang, getting three agency upgrades, two from Moody’s and one from Standard & Poor’s. Given all we did last year, to finish it that way with those great comments about the management team was extremely gratifying.
Top Five Films Sullivan Likes To Quote:
- The Godfather I & II
- Jerry McGuire
- A Few Good Men
- Caddyshack
- The Big Chill
