Tishman Speyer to Launch Affordable Housing Arm
- By
- Jul 21, 2020
Tishman Speyer has hired affordable housing veteran Gary Rodney to head up a new platform that will focus on building and investing in homes for low- to middle-income residents in New York City.
Rodney will officially start the newly created role in September, a representative of the company told Multi-Housing News. The executive has served since 2016 as chairman of low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) syndicator CREA LLC, after working for more than two years as president of the New York City Housing Development Corp. (HDC).
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In the new role, Rodney will help Tishman Speyer source opportunities for the ground-up construction, redevelopment and acquisition of quality housing that is affordable to low- and middle-income residents. The platform will initially concentrate on the five boroughs of New York City, according to a statement by the company.
Rodney’s role at CREA entailed helping finance affordable housing in cities throughout the U.S. At HDC, one of the country’s most active Housing Finance Agencies, he oversaw about $14 billion of assets, including a multifamily portfolio of more than 190,000 units and $10 billion in mortgage loans. HDC is also the largest municipal issuer of mortgage revenue bonds for affordable multifamily housing.
Rodney previously served as executive vice president for development at Omni New York LLC, a real estate developer specializing in the preservation and development of affordable housing, and as director of development at BFC Partners.
Tackling the housing gap
Tishman Speyer, which has a global portfolio of commercial and residential real estate valued at around $96 billion, said it wants to address a housing affordability gap that affects thousands of people. The National Low Income Housing Commission estimates that there is a shortage of 612,854 rental homes affordable and available for extremely low-income renters across New York State.
The company’s previous efforts in the affordable housing space include MIRA, a 400-foot, 392-unit condo tower in San Francisco, of which 40 percent of the units are below market rate. The building in the Transbay neighborhood recently received its Temporary Certificate of Occupancy and is touring interested buyers.