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Rob Corley
CEO, Neighborworks Housing Solutions
Age: 46
Industry experience: 23 years
Rob Corley’s childhood was defined by two distinct phases: the first in an Irish immigrant family “living the American dream,” and then a period of economic and housing insecurity on the South Shore after his father’s livelihood as a real estate developer was cut short by serious illness. That gave Corley a first-hand perspective on his clients’ struggles at Neighborworks Housing Solutions, a nonprofit that provides foreclosure and eviction prevention services and counseling for approximately 9,000 clients annually south of Boston. The agency, formed in 2019 by a merger with Kingston-based Housing Solutions of Southeastern Massachusetts, has approximately 80 employees in four offices.
Q: What was the impetus for the merger of the two organizations?
A: It’s about capacity in the region to deliver on some of the services we provide, or expand and better provide them throughout the region. From an affordable housing standpoint, for a long time the region didn’t have the capacity to develop across six Gateway Cities. By joining forces, I think we answered the call for the region to leverage more resources into southern Massachusetts, and the services we deliver across the larger region. There’re some economies of scale by getting to a certain size, and that was important to our board. We were sort of dating each other, and both organizations had a history of partnerships.
Q: How has the pandemic affected your day-to-day operations?
A: The same as everybody, we have many services that we provide that were face-to-face, so we had to quickly develop an electronic way of processing and using mail, and everybody was working from home. And we did it. We are considered first responders, so we were working the entire time. In some ways, it forced us to modernize and streamline our services, which is great.
Q: How have your organization’s resources been stretched by the caseload driven by COVID-19 eviction and foreclosure pressures?
A: The rental assistance is a grant program we administer for the state that has seen the largest uptick. We had a housing crisis before COVID-19, and for that program, we had spent our annual allocation as of March 1. That’s $1.6 million annually, and it was all gone by March 1 and then this happened. We’ve seen an incredible increase in people looking for assistance and information. We’ll easily double in a quarter what we’d do in a year, and that trend is continuing. As we see the moratoriums ultimately end, we expect it will get worse and the state has responded quickly with over $60 million in homeowners and rental assistance.
Q: Which communities in NHS’s service area have seen the biggest need for assistance?
A: For rental assistance, it would be as you’d expect: the Gateway Cities, the communities that have the most rental housing – Brockton, parts of Weymouth, Fall River, New Bedford, Plymouth. In general, the Gateway Cities have been hit a little harder with unemployment as the residents work in the industries that have been hardest hit in this crisis.
Q: What is NHS’s most recent housing development and how many others do you have in the pipeline?
A: We have ones under construction in Holbrook and downtown Brockton, and two smaller projects: a group home for adults with developmental disabilities in Quincy’s Germantown, and a veterans home in an old town building in Marshfield. Our most recently completed project was in Quincy Point: 140 units of new construction mixed-income development that won the ULI’s 2019 Jack Kemp Excellence in Affordable and Workforce Housing award, showing how you can do mixed-income housing in one place. The property included the administration building to the old Fore River Shipyard, a vacant and underutilized lot since the shipyard closed down. It’s one of the nicest buildings in the city.
Q: What are the most important sources of funding for NHS’s development projects and availability in 2020?
A: The local sources are very important, which come from the federal government’s HOME funds, or local housing trust funds, but the state funding is critical and low-income tax credits are very important. We are a little bit concerned about the investors’ appetite for tax credits right now. There’s instability out there, and that causes instability in that market.
Q: What are the foreclosure prevention options available to clients?
A: Right now, we have funding up to $4,000, and in some cases up to $10,000, for homeowners who are or will be having trouble paying their mortgage. Unemployment rises, and evictions, and the third step is foreclosure. We have resources to keep people in their homes, and we have a staff of HUD-certified foreclosure coaches and financial coaches and counselors. We’re offering education for free during the time and we have record numbers of people looking to take advantage of low-interest rates, but inventory is low and it’s a tough market for buyers.
Corley’s Five Favorite Non-Fiction Books
- “American Nations” by Colin Woodard
- “Common Ground” by J. Anthony Lukas
- “Red and Me” by Bill Russell & Alan Steinberg
- “Leadership on the Line” by Marty Linsky & Ronald A. Heifetz
- “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein
