For years, Carol Galante has been a leading voice for housing. With a history in local government and having served as president and chief executive of BRIDGE Housing Corporation, assistant secretary for Housing/Federal Housing Commissioner at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and as the deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing programs for five years in the Obama Administration, Galante has a passion for and penchant for housing economics.

She currently teaches at her alma mater UC Berkeley and serves as director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation. It’s in that role that she became a dean for the 2018 HIVE Conference, using her past experience, leadership and insights to guide the audience of builders, developers, legislators, architects, financiers, entrepreneurs and other housing leaders, to action around more affordable housing solutions.

Galante combined her experience analyzing the data, her time in the industry along with her professorial skills to develop a strategy that the housing industry could adopt moving forward for true progress. So, here, you can watch a 20-minute video of Galante’s presentation at HIVE, detailing the issues and the action items that truly speak to what the data has to offer.

Wow, quite a presentation, and a more poignant, clarified understanding of how we, as a group of housing leaders, can collaborate to promote a better future for the housing industry. Since Galante was on stage in November 2018 at HIVE, the Terner Center has been tracking on several initiatives that are real world examples of the kind of change that needs to take place.

Industries and even individual organizations with an impact on tightening markets have started taking action and so have certain markets. Here is a short list of some of the innovations in process and support that have happened since November.

  • California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed a $1.5 billion “Marshall Plan” for affordable housing with five bold ideas for the state to take action on.
  • Portland House Speaker Tina Kotek is working to expand the supply of land for building housing by opening up single-family neighborhoods to very small apartment buildings. That bill, House Bill 2001, would be the first of its kind nationally.
  • The Minneapolis City Council voted in early December 2018 to eliminate single family zoning.
  • Developers and architects are starting to use the Opportunity Zone incentive introduced as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
  • Microsoft pledged $500 million in a strategic draft to improve Seattle-area housing
  • In November, Cisco, LinkedIn and Pure Storage collectively pledged $20 million to build affordable homes in the Bay Area.
  • Across the country in Charlotte, NC, Ally Financial, Bank of America and Barings announced a $70 million investment to improve affordable housing situation there.

All are concrete examples of the support that the housing industry needs, the transparency, and the ongoing battle to educate the public sector.

Leaders like Galante will be taking stage in 2019 to give the same thoughtful dissection of housing’s issues and the solutions that can start taking shape. Save the date for December 4 and 5, 2019 back in Austin, TX.

This story appears as it was originally published on our sister site, www.hiveforhousing.com.