Former HUD Secretary Donovan Named CEO At Affordable Housing Developer Enterprise
Shaun Donovan, who served as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration, has been named CEO and president of national affordable housing nonprofit Enterprise Community Partners. He will begin in the role on Sept. 1.
Donovan succeeds Enterprise’s previous CEO, Priscilla Almodovar, who moved to head Fannie Mae in December 2022 after three years at Enterprise. Lori Chatman and Drew Warshaw, who have been serving as co-CEOs in the meantime, will continue in their roles as president of Enterprise’s capital division and chief operating officer, respectively.
Enterprise is a lobbying and policy, financing and development nonprofit, one of the largest in the country dedicated to affordable housing. The organization has invested $64B since it was founded in 1982, creating 951,000 homes across the U.S., according to its website. It helped to draft the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, one of the most commonly used tools for funding affordable housing.
“Coming to Enterprise is, in a way, coming home for me,” Donovan said in a press release.
“Housing touches everything in a person’s life. A good education, a good job, a healthy, prosperous life – all of it revolves around having a safe, stable place to live. Unlike any other time in my life, housing affordability is on the national radar. It's a moment I’ve been preparing for throughout my whole career.”
Donovan led HUD from 2009 through 2014, managing the department’s $47B budget. In 2014, he shifted to head the Office of Management and Budget, where he served until the end of the Obama administration in 2017.
After his time in the Obama White House, Donovan ran for mayor of New York in 2021 but was eliminated in the primary. Over the past year, he has been at the Ford Foundation as a senior fellow.
In December, Enterprise launched an initiative to help faith-based institutions in the Washington, D.C., area transform underutilized land into affordable housing. In March, the organization closed a $190M LIHTC fund aimed at supporting economic mobility with a focus on racial equity.
Over the last three months, it has made its first two investments through a program to partner with developers from marginalized communities, including people of color, who don't have access to institutional capital.
