Campus & community, Campus news

HUD official to join city planning faculty, direct Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy

By Kathleen Maclay

Carol Galante will leave a leadership position with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to join UC Berkeley early next year.
Carol Galante will leave a leadership position with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to join UC Berkeley early next year.

Carol Galante, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and a Federal Housing Administration (FHA) commissioner, will join the UC Berkeley faculty in January 2015. She will be an adjunct professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the College of Environmental Design , as well as director of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy.

Carol Galante will leave a leadership position with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to join UC Berkeley early next year.

Carol Galante will leave a leadership position with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to join UC Berkeley early next year.

Galante, a graduate of Berkeley’s master’s program in city and regional planning, will hold the I. Donald Terner Distinguished Professor in Affordable Housing and Urban Policy. That post was established in honor of I. Donald Terner, an entrepreneur, innovator and affordable-housing developer; he first president/CEO of BRIDGE Housing Corp.; a director of the California Department of Housing and Community Development; and a member of the CED faculty. BRIDGE is now the largest non-profit developer of affordable, mixed-income and mixed-use developments in California.

Both the Terner professorship and the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy are overseen by the College of Environmental Design (CED) and the Haas School of Business .

“I want the Berkeley Center on Housing and Urban Policy to become the leading voice on how to best develop practical solutions and policies that address our nation’s enormous housing challenges. I am proud to be reunited with Berkeley and with Don Terner’s inspiring legacy,” said Galante, who was president and chief executive of BRIDGE before serving at HUD.

“We’re honored to welcome Carol Galante back to CED and UC Berkeley in this distinguished role,” said Jennifer Wolch , dean of the College of Environmental Design. “Carol’s outstanding leadership and deep experience at HUD and BRIDGE will be huge assets as we look to address the many challenges to designing affordable housing and communities for America’s low- and moderate-income families.”

Wolch said that through Galante’s leadership of the Berkeley Program on Housing and Urban Policy and her teaching position in the department of city and regional planning, she “will be at the forefront of UC Berkeley’s efforts to provide solutions to some of the most pressing urban problems facing cities and metropolitan areas across the country.”

Ken Rosen , chair of Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at Berkeley-Haas, called Galante “a brilliant leader” at BRIDGE Housing and the FHA, as well as “the ideal person to lead our academic, research and public policy efforts in the housing field” as she builds on UC Berkeley’s tradition as a leader in housing market research and public policy.

Galante joined HUD in 2009 as the deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing programs and after serving as the acting assistant secretary for housing and FHA commissioner for approximately a year, Galante was officially confirmed in this her role in 2012.

With her background in housing development, finance and urban planning, Galante’s focus has been on developing and executing FHA’s programmatic response to the housing crisis. The recession resulted in a five-fold increase in FHA’s multifamily business and a trillion dollar portfolio. To manage this extraordinary increase in business, Galante led the creation of a comprehensive risk management infrastructure, revamped FHA pricing and credit policies and modernized the FHA single family loan sale program. Additionally, she organized the formation of a new Office of Housing Counseling and played key roles in creating initiatives like Choice Neighborhoods and the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program, which is designed to preserve and recapitalize affordable rental properties.

Under Galante’s leadership, FHA increased the economic value of its insurance fund by nearly $15 billion and strongly supported the nation’s housing market, preventing prices from falling an additional estimated 25 percent during the recession.

Galante’s background includes working with numerous communities in real estate development, city planning and community economic development, as well as serving in active volunteer leadership roles in numerous influential housing and urban land use organizations. Her achievements have garnered recognition as Housing Wire Magazine’s Influential Woman in Housing 2012, Multifamily/Developer Magazine­–Executive of the Year in 2008, Builder Magazine’s Top Most Influential People in Homebuilding in 2006, and induction into the California Homebuilder Hall of Fame.

The Terner professorship was previously held by the late John M. Quigley, a UC Berkeley professor of economics, public policy and business.