Housing Authority of the City of Asheville Announces New President and CEO

After conducting a nationwide search, the Board of Commissioners of the Housing Authority of the City of Asheville (HACA) has announced that Ms. Monique Pierre will be its new President and CEO.

Ms. Pierre has spent over twenty-five years as a housing and community development professional, advocating for and developing safe, decent, affordable, and attainable housing.

In an interview with Urban News publisher Johnnie Grant, Ms. Pierre said, “I have high expectations for the work ahead of us in Asheville. We will serve our residents by providing housing and services that dignifies their humanity.”

She noted that in order to succeed in that task, “We must be strategic and intentional in our policy decisions.”

Background Shows Wide, Diverse Experience

Ms. Pierre’s background suggests that she understands both strategy and intentionality. As a proponent of equitable communities, she began her career working in public housing to provide resident services and apply her urban planning skills to the redevelopment efforts of large public housing sites in Detroit, Michigan. Her early years in the field were followed by a variety of experiences in the nonprofit and public sectors, where she honed her community engagement, development, and leadership skills.

She served as the CEO of Partners for Better Housing, a nonprofit housing developer in northwest Arkansas, and prior to that she was the Chief Development and Modernization Officer for the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh, one of the nation’s largest housing authorities. There she oversaw the day-to-day operations of a multi-million-dollar development, modernization, construction management, and compliance division.

Pittsburgh Offers a Template

Her work in Pittsburgh included the development of equitable consolidated planning strategies and the creation of a highly-sought-after tiered RFQ program, garnering the attention of small, moderate, and large expert developers as prime stakeholders. Serving as a subject matter expert to the agency, she successfully negotiated several development agreements to further advance the mission of safe, decent, and affordable housing. Ms. Pierre was a regular participant in public forums, lending her expert guidance in Choice Neighborhood planning, grant management, and low-income housing tax credit-funded projects.

She reiterated that strategy in our interview. “I believe in using the resources at our disposal to uplift the community, socially and economically,” she told The Urban News. Here in Asheville, where development is clearly a focus of the Housing Authority, it is also driven, in Ms. Pierre’s words, “by the need for affordable workforce housing, homeownership and socio-economic uplift.”

Partnerships are Key

Ms. Pierre is no stranger to building strong and sustained partnerships with an abundance of nonprofit agencies, city and county government officials, and a myriad of resolute housing advocates. Her development experience is quite extensive, having served the Montgomery (AL) Housing Authority as Director of Real Estate Development and the state of California as the Section Chief in the Program Design and Development Division. Both roles allowed her to collaborate with developers, architects, the funding community, various boards, and legislative staff.

She has been recognized in the housing field for her expertise and contributions in a variety of forums. She is a two-time recipient of awards from the state of California’s Department of Housing and Community Development for leading the design and implementation of special programs such as the $2 billion bond fund for the No Place Like Home program and the Veterans Housing and Homelessness Prevention Program.

She is a graduate of the California leadership cohort and the Kent County Leadership Enhancement and Development Program. She received certifications from HUD as a Home Certified Specialist, Novogradac Property Compliance Certification, and the National Development Council, earning a certification in Development Finance. She trained at Rutgers University in their Public Housing Directors Training Program and with NAHRO in their Executive Directors Program.

Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ms. Pierre earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Michigan State University. She is a proud “Army Mom” to her son Mercer Pierre, who is a Specialist in the US Army. When she is not working, reading and traveling are two of her favorite pleasures.