Financing Affordable Housing

America suffers from an acute housing crisis, and one of the best ways to solve it is to build more of the affordable kind. That takes money. That’s where executives such as Bank of America’s Maria Barry come in. She talked to Commercial Observer about the financing climate for affordable housing now. Also, office owners and leasing brokers have enough to worry about from private companies reneging on leases or shrinking footprints. Now comes a major public sector tenant: California, a state with more people than Canada, is pulling back on office space in a big way. Happy Monday.

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— Tom Acitelli, Co-Deputy Editor

Bank of America’s Maria Barry On Financing Affordable Housing Post-COVID

Before she jump-started a more than two-decade career in commercial real estate banking, Maria Barry set her mark as a distance runner with the University of Connecticut women’s track and field program. Barry, who has held the role as Bank of America’s community development banking (CDB) national executive since 2009, graduated from UConn as a school record-holder in the 1,500- and 3,000-meter events. Lately the Madison, Conn., native has been focused on running down financing packages for affordable housing projects nationally through a combination of debt and tax credit programs while also navigating challenging market conditions amid rising interest rates. “The work is challenging and it is so rewarding,” said Barry, who prior to her 2009 promotion was CDB market executive for the Northeast. “There is nothing like when you get to attend a ribbon-cutting and you get to meet the residents who are moving in and you see the look on their face and just how grateful they are to live there.”

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California Government to Trim 132 Office Leases

California’s government, one of the state’s biggest office users, is tightening its belt on workplace real estate. The state’s Department of General Services (DGS) plans to shrink the office portfolio of 40 departments, which amounts to “132 individual leases, resulting in 1.16 million square feet of office space relinquished and annual savings of approximately $35 million,” according to the 2023-2024 governor's budget summary. This comes after the state government instituted remote work in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and also last year earmarked 767,000 square feet of office space to cut. CoStar first reported on the latest decision.

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