Tina Brooks, a community development veteran, has been named the state’s housing policy chief.
As first reported by Banker & Tradesman last week, Brooks will serve under Dan O’Connell, the secretary of housing and economic development. An announcement about Brooks’ appointment did not explain her exact responsibilities and requests for clarification by Banker & Tradesman were not provided by press deadline.
Gov. Deval Patrick has been praised by some housing advocates for creating the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development and elevating housing to a cabinet-level position for the first time in nearly 13 years.
This is the first time, however, that housing and economic development have been combined under one post. Many housing activists were pushing for a separate housing secretary and want to make sure that housing is a priority under the cabinet position that Patrick established.
Brooks, a Jamaica Plain resident, has led the Boston office of the Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC) for the past five months. When reached Wednesday, Brooks declined to comment to Banker & Tradesman.
Boston’s LISC office announced last September that Brooks had been hired as its new director, replacing Mat Thall, who had retired earlier in the year. LISC, a nationwide organization, provides loans and grants for the development of affordable housing, new businesses, schools and other projects that help to revitalize neighborhoods. Brooks served as program director for LISC’s Philadelphia office in the mid- to late ’90s.
“We’re very excited about her appointment and think she’s going to do a great job,” said Joseph Kriesberg, president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations. “We’re thrilled that someone who is from the community development field is going to be in that post – somebody who knows what [community development corporations] can do and understand the role that we play in the field.”
Kriesberg added, “One of the things she will be bring to the job is that she really understands what it means to be a developer and what developers need to get projects done.”
Brooks’ selection came as a surprise to some in the housing industry, who had heard that Charlotte Golar-Richie, head of Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development, was a serious contender for a top position in housing.
Prior to joining LISC in Boston, Brooks worked for GMAC Mortgage. She served as vice president of emerging markets and developed employer-assisted housing programs. When GMAC acquired Paramount Financial Group, a low-income housing tax credit syndicator, she became Paramount’s vice president of development facilitation.
“Given Tina’s vast knowledge, experience and expertise in housing and community development issues, she is the ideal person to elevate to the top housing position within the Patrick administration,” O’Connell said in a press release announcing Brooks’ appointment.
In the early 1990s, Brooks directed real estate activities for a nonprofit development corporation in Philadelphia. Early in her career, she served as a development consultant with The Community Builders, a nonprofit urban housing developer that has completed projects in Boston and other Bay State communities.
