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Mission and Vision

Our Vision
We envision a future where every person’s need for shelter is met through the availability of safe, clean and affordable housing.

Our Mission
IHI’s mission is to serve the most vulnerable sector of Baltimore’s population by matching people to housing opportunities, through implementing and executing innovative strategies to increase the supply of sustainable affordable housing within racially and economically integrated communities.

Our Values
Our unique approach allows us to connect shareholders with new and existing programs, policies, and people to create measurable value in expanding the supply of housing. Our leadership and staff are entrepreneurial, strategic, collaborative, passionate, and conscious.


History

IHI was founded in 1996 by Bernard L. Tetreault, David Rusk, and Richard Dubin. Mr. Tetreault had stepped down from the Executive Director position at Montgomery County\’s Housing Opportunities Commission and intended to share Montgomery County\’s experience in developing affordable housing with the rest of the country. In the early years, IHI operated in a “virtual” state, providing consulting assistance to governments and developers seeking to incorporate mixed income housing into their communities, addressing public housing transformation and HOPE VI redevelopment, and technical assistance to municipalities throughout the county on adoption of new inclusionary housing programs.

IHI has had a great deal of experience with public, private and HUD funded projects. IHI was one of the program managers for the Special Mobility Housing Choice Voucher Program (Thompson) for five years. In this HUD funded program, IHI placed 267 families in homes in areas of opportunity through the Baltimore metropolitan area. Our program focus was on establishing Project Based Voucher placements in areas that were not impacted by high concentrations of minority or impoverished households.

The Broadway Homes Program, part of the Special Mobility Housing Choice Voucher Program, assisted a group within the Thompson Program. Former residents of Broadway Homes in Baltimore City were given assistance in moving into homes developed by Homes for America. IHI provided pre-move and postmove case management services and successfully moved twenty-seven families to areas of opportunity in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel and Harford Counties.

IHI also worked with Enterprise Community Homes on two separate private projects to relocate residents that were over-income when the apartment community was being renovated using federal tax credits. We assisted 12 families in relocating to new rental housing and 6 families with purchasing a home. IHI helped families develop a plan to move, and provided homeownership and financial management counseling.

In 2006, IHI was selected by Housing Authority of Baltimore City to carry out a portion of the remedy that resulted from the Bailey Consent Decree, called the Enhanced Leasing Assistance Program (ELAP) which provides housing assistance to non-elderly persons with disabilities through the Housing Choice Voucher Program (formerly Section 8).


Today,  IHI focuses its grassroot and community efforts at the local level in Baltimore City, and surrounding counties, serving the most vulnerable sector of the population by matching them with housing opportunities.

Executive Staff


Samuel, Jordan Executive Director, joined IHI in early 2019.  Active in Baltimore community-based organizations, Mr. Jordan has served as Community Housing Program Director for the Midtown-Edmondson Community Organization (M-ECO).  He was M-ECO’s coordinator of community-proposed housing projects with special attention given to Baltimore’s Project 5000 (2011-2014).  The project sought to secure housing and develop vacant properties in Midtown-Edmondson to stabilize communities and moderate Baltimore’s growing population loss.

Mr. Jordan was appointed (2009-2012) Senior Advisor to the President of the Washington, DC-wide HUD-certified Resident Advisory Board (RAB) representing over 20,000 residents in 8,000 public housing units on 56 properties owned and managed by the Washington, DC Housing Authority.  He guided the RAB in its resident-education programs for HUD policies including Moving to Work and Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD).  He led collective actions leading to enforcement of HUD regulations in housing inspections, late-payment penalties, and eviction appeals.  As a registered Affordable Care Act Assister, Mr. Jordan organized and coordinated special information and enrollment programs in DC public housing communities for Affordable Care Act registration.

Mr. Jordan founded the Baltimore Transit Equity Coalition in 2016 to complete the Baltimore Red Line light rail project and recover its transformative economic benefits for the Baltimore metropolitan region and the African American, Hispanic, low-income, and transit-dependent communities adversely affected by the cancellation of the project in 2015. He has conducted community livability, issue organizing, and skills training programs in Baltimore and Washington, DC over the last twelve years.

Morgan Rouse, Program Manager, joined IHI in the spring of 2018 as the Program Manager for the Bailey Consent Decree (ELAP).  She comes to IHI from Catholic Charities where she managed a staff of five full time case managers at My Sister’s Place.  Ms. Rouse has worked with hundreds of underprivileged clients, while also participating in policy and program development. Ms. Rouse has also worked at Penrose Properties in Philadelphia as a supportive services coordinator, in addition to the City of Baltimore in the Community Relatiohe has extensive background in program management and human services in the fields of homelessness, corrections, and property management. 

Board of Directors

Executive Board

Dr. Rev. Hoffman Brown, III – Interim President
Rev. Brown has been instrumental in securing twelve housing properties in the Forest Park Community in his present charge as Pastor of the Wayland Baptist Church of Baltimore, Maryland, under the guidance of a 20-year development plan. Wayland Village, under construction in 2010/11, is a 90-unit seniors housing complex and senior center. Dr. Brown is the founding Co-Chair of B.R.I.D.G.E. (Baltimore Regional Initiative Developing Genuine Equality), a nonprofit coalition of faith-based churches and organizations, whose purpose is to bring social, economic, and political equity to the city of Baltimore and surrounding counties. To date, B.R.I.D.G.E, in coalition with IHI, labor unions, and other nonprofit organizations, has been instrumental in changing legislation in Baltimore City to require that all construction of housing include 10 – 20% low- and moderateincome units. From 1981 until 1985, Dr. Brown led the Mount Zion Baptist Church of Staunton, Virginia, to purchase rental property adjacent to the church building. He led the Main Street Baptist Church of Smithfield, Virginia (1985-1991) in a $400, 000 refurbishing/restoration of their 50-unit low-income housing complex, Church Manor. Dr. Brown also led the Main Street Baptist Church in securing $2.5 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to construct the low-income senior’s complex, Covenant Place.

Tim O’Malley – Secretary
Mr. O’Malley serves as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for AmeriNat, and is a board member of the Florida Housing Coalition, which is an organization that has a similar mission to IHI. Tim has 11 years’ experience working for AmeriNat. During his time he has lead the AmeriNat Sales & Marketing expansion in Florida and Nationally. AmeriNat has added over 175 new clients and $25 million in new revenue under O’Malley’s leadership including, five new State HFA Agencies. Today, AmeriNat is the premier loan servicer for Habitat for Humanity. Prior to his employment with AmeriNat, Tim led new business development for Nikon, Casio and Duracell. Tim is active in the support of affordable housing nationally as an active member of several organizations. He belongs to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. NCSHA, MAHC (Legislative Committee), NALHFA, HAND, Baltimore City Taskforce for Affordable Housing and the Florida Housing Coalition. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in American Studies from the University of Maryland where he played Division I baseball.

Directors

Adam Gross is the Director of the Regional Affordable Housing Initiative at Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI). He has served as Staff Counsel at BPI since 1995, focusing on housing and community development issues. He now leads BPI’s efforts to increase the supply and equitable distribution of affordable housing. Mr. Gross received his BA from Yale University, MA in Public Policy from Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and JD from the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Comment Editor at The University of Chicago Law School Roundtable.


David Rusk is a noted consultant and author who speaks and consults on urban policy challenges, the social and fiscal impacts of sprawl, and educational and land use reform. He is a consultant to the Ford Foundation, and since 1993 has spoken and consulted in over 120 U.S. communities. Abroad, Mr. Rusk has lectured on urban problems in England; Berlin, Stuttgart, and Frankfurt, Germany; and Toronto and Victoria, Canada. In 1997, he served as an advisor to the government of South Africa on metropolitan governance. During 2000, he was a visiting professor at the University of Amsterdam and Delft Technical University in The Netherlands. Mr. Rusk was a New Mexico legislator from 1975-77 and served from 1977-81 as Mayor of Albuquerque. Earlier, he was a civil rights and antipoverty worker with the Washington Urban League and served as the U.S. Department of Labor’s Manpower Administration’s legislative and program development director. Mr. Rusk graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Berkeley, as the outstanding undergraduate student in economics.


Andre Robinson is Principal Contractor at A Squared Community Development Consulting, and Executive Director at Mount Royal Community Development Corp. Andre also serves as a co-chair of the Community Development Committee for Historic Marble Hill Neighborhood Association, and an Executive Producer at Carbon-Fibre Media. He was the Former Managing Director for Harry Belafonte. Andre studied Theatre/Psychology/Russian History & Literature at St. Louis University, attended Gonzaga College High School and grew up in Washington DC.


Gerrit Knaap is the Executive Director of the National Center for Smart Growth and a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Maryland. He has published over 65 peer refereed journal articles and authored, coauthored or coedited nine books. Over the course of his career, he has led several applied research centers, including, since 2002, the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education. He has generated more than $25 million in grants and contracts from foundations and state, federal and local governments. Under his leadership the NCSG has grown to include an annual budget of approximately three million dollars. He serves on Maryland’s Sustainable Growth Commission and Smart Growth Subcabinet, which requires him to meet regularly with state cabinet secretaries and other state and local policy leaders.

Founder of IHI

Bernard Tetreault

Tetreault served as the Executive Director of the Housing Opportunities Commission (HOC) of Montgomery County, Maryland from August 1971 through June 1995. It was his leadership during this 24 years, that earmarks Tetreault’s greatest contribution to the affordable housing industry. In the early 1970’s, Tetreault created and executed the first, and most progressive local housing in the country, by adopting a new inclusionary ordinance and progressive policy called “inclusionary zoning”. Montgomery County is still the oldest, and by far the nation’s largest inclusionary zoning program—a policy that requires real estate developers to set aside a portion of the homes they build to be rented or sold at below-market prices. Tetreault’s game changing focus on deconcentrating poverty in the early years, was brought about by eschewing large-scale public housing projects in favor of placing scattered-site public housing units and two- or three-story family developments throughout the county’s many neighborhoods.

In 2005, Tetreault continued his efforts in inclusionary policy, by establishing the Innovative Housing Institute, a 501(c)3 non-profit that continued to spread the success of Montgomery County’s program by providing assistance to other housing agencies at a national level, which has now spread, to date, to over one hundred high-cost housing markets in California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, Florida, New York City, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Denver and Boulder, Colorado; the greater Washington, D.C., metro area; and Burlington, Vermont. Tetreault founded the Innovative Housing Institute with accomplished thought leaders as David Rusk, the author of Inside Game, Outside Game and Cities Without Suburbs. His continued efforts through IHI, founded the very first national conference on inclusionary zoning, partnering with the National Housing Conference, Business and Professional People for the Public Interest, and PolicyLink. For three years, Tetreault and IHI continued to host and spearhead this national conference, which has led the way for Grounded Solutions Network to continue his efforts.

Tetreault currently is advising the Executive Director of the District of Columbia Housing Authority on complex real estate transactions to revitalize several public housing properties into mixed income developments. Tetreault served as 1st Vice President of the National Housing Conference and as a member of the Board of Directors. He co-founded the Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies, now known as the National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies (NALHFA) and was its national president in 1983 and 1984. Currently Tetreault serves on the Board of Directors of two non-profit housing corporations, Homes for America and the Outer Banks (NC) Community Development Corporation, which he helped form.

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