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With a goal of doubling its size in a short period of time, Mutual Housing California has added a new member to its board of directors who has been there and done that when it comes to handling growth for one of the country’s biggest nonprofit affordable housing developers.
Corinne Morrison worked for nearly two years as the chief financial officer for Eden Housing, Inc., at a time when the company based in Hayward was undergoing dramatic growth, to the point where it has developed and managed 130 communities with 8,700 apartment homes that currently house more than 22,000 residents. She also became vice president and controller of BRIDGE Housing in San Francisco which has developed 17,000 apartment homes since 1983.
Morrison has worked in finance and accounting for nearly 25 years. She opened up her own consulting business in November 2017, and a year later she became the CFO for Summitview Child & Family Services in Placerville, which provides residential and outpatient therapeutic services.
She thinks her perspective from working for the biggest affordable housing companies could be a terrific asset for Mutual Housing as it deals with the challenges of rapid growth.
Mutual Housing can get it done, Morrison said, although she predicted, “It’s not going to be a walk in the park.”
She was interviewed by Mutual Housing communications consultant Andy Furillo:
Q: What do you hope to bring to Mutual Housing based on your past experience with Eden and Bridge?
Morrison: The experience at Eden was very challenging and rewarding. I was there for a little shy of two years as chief financial officer. That was my first experience working for a nonprofit housing developer in that role. And I think what I can bring from that experience to the board is that Eden grew very fast in a very short amount of time. We had a large learning curve, for the staff and for the board. I would say Eden probably doubled in sized over a three-year period. A lot of it was looking at growing the portfolio in a different way, meaning through acquisitions and rehab and thinking about doing third party management.
Q: What do you think are some of the major challenges of so much growth in such a short period of time?
Morrison: From a board perspective, is, is probably the structure. It could be the bylaws. It could be how frequently the board meets, the number of committees and the types of committees of the board, what those roles are. It could be the skill set of the board. You might need different sets of expertise to support management through that change. I think from a staffing point of view, for the people working on the ground day to day and doing the work, it’s thinking about how do you change the process to make it more efficient, to handle all the growth, without adding to the head count, because the money is going to lack, and you’re not going to have the extra resources even though you still have the extra work.
Q: With all the bond funds being approved by state voters and also in some cities and counties, what do you see in the short-term future for building affordable housing in California. How do you see the low-income housing tax program playing out over the longer term, beyond the life of the bonds?
Morrison: To be honest, I think we’re in a very different industry now, and I have experience with a lot of affordable housing and tax credits and was involved in the nitty gritty at the state and the federal level, with all of those moving parts. From a personal standpoint, I think I’m a prime example of the crisis that we have in California. I lived in san Francisco for over 20 years, I had a pretty good job, and I couldn’t even afford to live in Bay Area anymore and I had to relocate to Sacramento area. If you are minimum wage earner, it’s even harder. I think everybody has a right to safe housing that is affordable at all levels.
Q: Is it achievable for Mutual Housing to double in size in the next five to seven years?
Morrison: I think it’s definitely doable. I think it’ll be about thinking about all of the details that go into it, ensuring that you are proactive on certain things and not being reactionary, and having those hard conversations and discussing it and knowing that maybe not everybody’s going to be in agreement, then you try to do something and come back to the drawing board if something else needs to change. I think the agency can go through something like that and be successful at the end. But it’s not going to be a walk in the park.
Q: What do you see as the number one obstacle toward achieving that goal?
Morrison: – Coming from a finance and accounting background, I’m always going to go back to obtaining the financing necessary. It’s also thinking about infrastructure, not only to the departments that are bringing in the revenue. It’s also the development of your back-office support. And thinking about all of those different components, and tasking those departments on being detailed on how are you planning to accomplish this? What resources do you need or what infrastructure do you need to make it a reality? I think it comes down to communication. I think it’s being really transparent between all the departments and not working in silos, and I think that is a key when you have these huge spurts of growth.
Q: Mutual Housing can be perceived as kind of a boutique operation. Is there an advantage to being smaller? Is there a sweet spot where a nonprofit can sustain itself for a long-term future but at a smaller size?
Morrison: Unfortunately, I don’t think so. I think the developer fees are so significant to nonprofit housing developers and property management companies, to sustain the head count of the agency or company. I think other agencies or companies have gotten themselves into trouble when their development dries up. Maybe that is poor management. But I do think that until you’re at a certain point where the property management can support the whole back office, I do think that agencies have to continue to grow, and I think that there is always a need. I think it is important to be developing in an area you are familiar with. You know the community. You know the needs. You know the city officials. These larger California companies, I think they approach it differently. And there’s not a wrong way and a right way to do it, but I do think that we’re in such a housing crisis, and there’s such a need, we collectively should always be expanding and growing.
Q: It has to be kind of a fun thing for you, right, to be on a board of directors for the first time?
Morrison: This will be the first board that I will be joining, so I’m very excited. There is for sure going to be a learning curve for me, to be looking at things from a different perspective, trying not to get into some of the detail that I am used to. And also realizing that I might be asking stupid questions. But they might spur an idea or a thought that maybe wasn’t thought of before.
Q: Why does it cost so much to build affordable housing — $500,000 per unit, in some cases. How do you explain it, and is there any way around it?
Morrison: It’s been a topic of conversation since I’ve been in affordable housing for the past 15 years. Unfortunately, the way the tax-credit program, which is predominantly the way we are funding affordable housing in this country, is really built on this sort of concept of a points system, and these points are a lot of time driven by cost. And on one side you have these investors and the government who is wanting to put in a lot of money into these units, and maybe that’s because they’re going to be sustainable. Maybe they’re going to last longer. Maybe they’re going to be more architecturally appealing to the community. Before tax credits, I think public housing was really ugly and really didn’t have a lot of appeal in communities, and were put into communities that maybe at the time didn’t care. Now we’ve swung to the other side of the spectrum, and I think that there is a place where we can be in the middle ground, where the federal government and the states and agencies like Mutual Housing come to the table and say that we can still do something that’s nice and still looks, that’s going to stand the test of time, but not to this cost. It’s hard to find that middle ground, especially in the Bay Area. You also have fair pay and Davis-Bacon (the federal prevailing wage law) and all this kind of stuff. It just gets really expensive.
Q: Any advice or suggestions on how nonprofits can keep construction costs down?
Morrison: I think everybody is trying to figure that out. I think everybody is approaching it from different directions. I know people are trying to do modular, as one example. I think what’s going to be happening more is purchasing an existing property that’s already affordable and doing a rehab on tax credits. That’s the way that people are keeping the cost down.
Q: How did you come in contact with Mutual Housing?
Morrison: I met Roberto (Jiménez, the Mutual Housing CEO) through Julie (Goldfine, Mutual Housing’s chief financial and operating officer). I met Julie when I was working at Eden, I believe, a NeighborWorks training event. I taught the CFO boot camp. We stayed in contact in a CFO working group. When I moved up to the Sacramento area, I reached out to her and I helped her a little bit on a consulting basis.
Q: The Summitview job is kind of a career change for you. Why the move to an agency that is more focused on mental health?
Morrison: I’d been in contact with job recruiters, and I stumbled across this nonprofit job in Placerville that had a CFO opening. I applied, and I had an immediate connection with the CEO. The company has a small housing component. Obviously, the funding is way different, and the work that is being done is way different, but it still utilizes some of those key aspects I had learned in affordable housing. I think it’s exciting to try something new. I would have loved to stay in affordable housing, but now I have the opportunity to be on a board of an affordable housing developer. I still get to be involved in the affordable housing conversation, and I get to utilize those 15 years of experience. And then I get to be challenged here at work and learn mental health. I think there are a lot of overlapping components between that and housing. It’s very challenging work with a very challenging population.