|
Legal/Trademark Privacy Policy |
| HOME | GRANTS | PROGRAMS | PUBLICATIONS | ABOUT US | FAQ |
James A. Johnson Fellows, 1999 Fellows
Get to know our 1999 Fellows.
Robert Boulter, President In 1991, Robert Boulter founded Jubilee Enterprise of Greater Washington, which is affiliated with Jubilee Housing and the Enterprise Foundation. Mr. Boulter is responsible for the development and operation of large multifamily rental properties throughout the Washington, D.C., area. Under his leadership at Jubilee Enterprise, affiliated neighborhood corporations have acquired five properties with a total of 1,337 rental units. From 1978 to 1990 while employed by the Rouse Company, Mr. Boulter served as vice president of Jubilee Housing. During that time, he was responsible for the development, rehabilitation, and property management of nine multifamily buildings with 315 housing units. Mr. Boulter has demonstrated dedication and commitment to making affordable housing available to all needy families. In addition to his work with Jubilee Enterprise of Greater Washington, he is a founding board member of the Washington Area Housing Partnership, Churches Conference on Shelter & Housing, and Vision D.C., the local partner of World Vision. As a founder of the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing Development, Mr. Boulter helped eliminate divisiveness among area housing providers that were competing for the same limited funding. With the Johnson Fellowship, Mr. Boulter will visit and study the best examples of nonprofit and resident-focused property management companies. He will also interact with leaders from faith-based communities who are breaking new ground in transforming lives and communities.
Lorna Bourg, Executive Director Lorna Bourg is executive director and cofounder of the Southern Mutual Help Association (SMHA), a rural community development corporation. In the past three decades, Ms. Bourg has designed, developed, and administered rural programs in health, housing, education, job training, and youth and adult leadership development. As an organization founded and led by women, SMHA emphasizes and designs with women's growth, empowerment, and leadership as a goal. SMHA has directly invested $22 million in rural housing and community development with an economic impact of over $150 million. In its early days, SMHA was known for creating new opportunities, taking strong positions of advocacy, winning class-action suits, and being featured on "Sixty Minutes" for uncovering extreme poverty and violations of the civil rights of sugar cane farm workers. More recently, SMHA is known for its innovations in sustainable agriculture and rural homeownership. As an example, farmers who once chased SMHA from their land to prevent contact with farm workers now donate land to SMHA to help farm workers become homeowners. Understanding the importance of compromise, Ms. Bourg has helped bring SMHA from a confrontational to a partnership-building model. Ms. Bourg designed and implemented SMHA's comprehensive Building Rural Communities Program for Economic Development in a ten-county area. The program included housing and community infrastructure, education, health/wellness, environmental asset planning, family and youth initiatives, and leadership training. Additionally, Ms. Bourg designed, developed, secured funding for, and implemented a $250,000, ten year, one percent loan fund for low-income rural homeowners. In 1997, Ms. Bourg helped design and implement one of nine national pilot programs of the Rural Home Loan Partnership, which changed the USDA homeownership program practices. With the Johnson Fellowship, Ms. Bourg will find innovative solutions to pressing issues such as rapid coastal development, rising land costs, and an increasing income gap.
James Buckley, Executive Director James Buckley is executive director of the University Neighborhood Housing Program (UNHP). While studying at Fordham University, he worked as a community organization intern at Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition (NBCCC). Mr. Buckley later worked as the director of the Reinvestment Project at the NBCCC and was responsible for attracting over $100 million in public and private funds to area neighborhoods. This led to the creation of 1,500 units of safe, sanitary, affordable housing units for community residents. As a result of these efforts, two additional nonprofit community housing corporations were created and went on to develop residential properties with tenant or community ownership. In 1989, Mr. Buckley founded UNHP, the result of a collaboration between Fordham University and NBCCC. UNHP became a conduit for loans between conventional lenders and community groups that need funding for property acquisition. In addition to funding, UNHP provides these community groups with technical assistance, including assistance on lead poisoning prevention. Mr. Buckley was appointed to HUD's Task Force on Lead Based Paint Hazard Reduction and Financing. While analyzing the impacts of welfare reform, UNHP identified child care as a major issue and organized a family day-care provider network of more than 30 women who are licensed by the City to take care of children in their homes. With the Johnson Fellowship, Mr. Buckley will develop a broader perspective on housing and community development issues and challenges in order to explore replicable models that can be shared by community development groups nationwide. In addition, he will hone his design, research, and analytical skills to better serve the community groups for which he provides technical assistance in the area of financial planning and project analysis and planning.
Gordon Chin, Executive Director Gordon Chin has been the executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center (Chinatown CDC) for 22 years. Because of his leadership, the Chinatown CDC is recognized nationally as a "cutting edge" organization, one which has been a model of comprehensive strategies to improve inner city neighborhoods. The Chinatown CDC has been responsible for the preservation and development of over 2,200 units of affordable housing. It has built this "bricks-and-mortar" track record while sustaining a renowned program of neighborhood planning, environmental and transportation planning, tenant organizing, economic development, and public policy. Mr. Chin was instrumental in getting Chinatown rezoned from "commercial" to "mixed use," which was more reflective of the neighborhood. In the formative years of the organization (1976-78), he had the foresight to know that it would take a long-term strategy to build Chinatown property owner acceptance and political consensus on an issue as ambitious and sensitive as rezoning. After ten years of building credibility, and relationships, in 1986 the Chinatown Re-Zoning Plan received a unanimous vote of the Board of Supervisors with broad-based support from all segments of the community. The Re-Zoning Plan "defined" Chinatown as a neighborhood with strong housing preservation controls and a clean land use delineation between Chinatown and the adjacent Financial District. Mr. Chin has nurtured the importance of values in the work of Chinatown CDC, especially the value of diversity. In addition to the projects the organization has implemented for the Chinatown neighborhood, its developments house African Americans and Filipino and Russian emigre populations. Mr. Chin's leadership in public policy advocacy for immigrant Americans is evidenced by his articles, speeches, and leadership on the board of California Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA). He is also on the national boards of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and the Center for Community Change (CCC). Mr. Chin spoke to the President's Commission on Race when they met in the Bay Area. With the Johnson Fellowship, Mr. Chin will take a three-month sabbatical to reflect, rest, learn new things, write, travel, and synthesize his varied experiences as a guide for the future.
Rodney Fernandez, Executive Director Rodney Fernandez, executive director of the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation (CEDC), has been leading the organization for 22 years. In 1977, Mr. Fernandez worked with the Cabrillo Improvement Association to develop Cabrillo Village, one of the first farm-worker housing cooperatives in the country. Cabrillo Village was a $12 million, 27 acre, 160-unit planned community which involved social services, rental units, single family homes, a convenience store, a ceramic tile factory, and a cabinet shop. In 1982, Mr. Fernandez was instrumental in the planning and creation of CEDC. With his leadership, CEDC has developed 715 units of family, senior, and farm-worker housing in nine communities in Ventura County. Every CEDC project is approached comprehensively to bring together community building, homeownership counseling, acquisition and rehabilitation of existing homes, and economic development. To leverage its resources, CEDC has developed partnerships with nine of the 11 communities in the county, resulting in $40 million dollars worth of neighborhood reinvestment. Mr. Fernandez has worked to overcome many of the obstacles of developing housing in rural California including high construction costs, scarcity of contractors, and the extremely low incomes of farm-worker residents. He has developed relationships with almost 20 private partners and another 20 nonprofit partners; maintained a balanced funding base with self-generating fees from CEDC's in-house services; and developed an in-house construction company to reduce CEDC's reliance on outside sources and increase its viability. As large and sophisticated as CEDC has become, Mr. Fernandez has maintained its grassroots involvement, encouraging community groups to take a greater role in decision making and, ultimately, in asset ownership and responsibility. On the regional and national level, Mr. Fernandez founded and chaired the California Community Economic Development Association (CCEDA), has chaired committees of the Federal Home Loan Bank, and has served on the board of the National Low-Income Housing Coalition. With the Johnson Fellowship, Mr. Fernandez will take a short sabbatical away from the day-to-day management of CEDC, rejuvenate his energy, explore new solutions, and think beyond the needs of the organization.
H. Lewis Kellom, Executive Director H. Lewis Kellom is the CEO of Homes in Partnership (HIP). During his 19 years of leadership, he has expanded HIP's service area to five counties and its housing production capacity from seven homes each year to over 100 homes annually. Mr. Kellom was instrumental in the formation of the Nonprofit Housing Roundtable of Central Florida and served as the first president. The Roundtable is a consortium of nonprofit housing providers, community development agencies, and local lenders who combine resources and share information. Under Mr. Kellom's leadership, HIP serves as the administration agent of the Apopka Collaborative Growth Initiative, a group of fourteen nonprofit agencies who form a collaborative effort toward empowerment of the rural and urban poor in the Apopka community. As a member of the Florida Advisory Council, which works with Job Services of Florida, he has initiated neighborhood street fairs in an effort to bring more employment opportunities to communities where HIP builds houses. Notably, Mr. Kellom secured a $500,000 zero percent loan from the Orange County Florida Housing Finance Authority in 1998 to capitalize a revolving construction fund, and this year, he has negotiated with the State Housing Finance Corporation a $2 million set-aside of bond funds for permanent mortgages. Mr. Kellom holds several leadership positions including acting president of the National Housing Coalition board of directors, member of the USDA Rural Development Strategic Planning Steering Committee, and member of the National Farmworkers Project Directors Association. He was instrumental in assisting the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta to shape a rural financing strategy that serves as a national model for the FHLB system. For years, Mr. Kellom had a vision of achieving community outreach from a mobile office that could travel as a self-contained unit. Recently, he made this dream a reality when HIP purchased a motor home and hired an outreach counselor to travel with the "mobile office." With the Johnson Fellowship, Mr. Kellom will implement ideas and partnerships that could provide a total service-oriented housing network to replace disjointed, fragmented, and competitive services. 1999 James A. Johnson Community Fellows Selection Committee
Sharon King
|