Like many in my baby boomer cohort, I’ve had a remarkably fortunate career in my chosen career: affordable housing. The year I started to work in housing, 1974, Congress created the Section 8 program and Community Development Block Grants… and VHDA was launched. I went to work there two years later when the staff was fewer than 20 people. I had a front row seat to the blossoming of our nonprofit housing industry in the 1980s & 90s. For more than 40 years, I’ve worked at the national, state, and local level, on all sides of the table: administrator, developer, funder, policy maker, advocate.
More than anything, I’ve had the good fortune to meet and work with wonderful, competent, and committed people throughout my career. This has continued to the present moment.
Last year, with the arrival of my first grandchild, I decided that it was the right time to begin to shift my work schedule and my priorities. Almost 15 years ago, I started a small housing consulting company, Housing and Development Advisors (HDA), that has focused on affordable housing development, programs, and policy. In the past year, two of my colleagues have become my business partners.
Erica Sims, a veteran of NYC nonprofit housing development with a degree from MIT and a mild Midwestern temperament, has agreed to be our managing partner, guiding our work in the years ahead. Jonathan Knopf, a millennial data wizard with a MURP from VCU, has also become a partner, keeping us on the cutting edge of data and communications, which is a core competency of our work. Most importantly, both of my partners share a commitment to the mission of expanding housing affordability and making our city and our state a better place.
As for me, I do expect to keep doing this work for at least a few more years, but at a reduced pace. I like what I do too much to walk away completely… and when I do, trust me, there will be a big party to which you will all be invited. In the meantime, I’m so happy to have great young colleagues that carry the work forward.
— Bob Adams
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