The U.S. faces a shortfall of 7.1 million affordable and available homes according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Yet even as the need skyrockets, the leaders capable of delivering these projects are in short supply. The future of affordable housing depends not just on capital and policy, but on the executives who can bridge mission, market, and regulation.
Balancing Mission with Market Realities
Successful leadership in affordable housing requires mastering a paradox: driving community impact while managing financial complexity. Executives must navigate multi-layered financing, tax credits, bond structures, and public-private partnerships, often within razor-thin margins.
Unlike traditional developers, they must also align every project with public good and regulatory precision. The best leaders move seamlessly between the worlds of city planning and capital markets, understanding that every dollar must advance both sustainability and social equity.
The Complexity of the Leadership Role
Affordable housing executives are multidimensional leaders:
- Operational leaders, managing long development cycles and diverse stakeholders.
- Strategic financiers, structuring deals that blend public subsidy with private investment.
- Policy navigators, interpreting changing state and federal housing mandates.
- Community builders, ensuring developments enhance—not displace—the neighborhoods they serve.
- Trusted partners, cultivating deep networks across public agencies, syndicators, lenders, and private developers.
It’s a role demanding financial sophistication, empathy, and political dexterity — a complex combination that makes recruiting and retaining top talent one of the sector’s biggest challenges.
Bridging Private Discipline with Public Purpose
Consider one example: a former private equity real estate VP who left the world of luxury multifamily projects to lead a nonprofit developer focused on mixed-income housing. At first, she struggled with the slower pace of government approvals and the intricate web of compliance. But she soon applied her investor mindset to redesign deal structures, securing new financing channels and cutting development timelines.
Her journey underscores the power of cross-sector leadership and the ability to bring private-market rigor into mission-driven environments to create measurable community outcomes.
The Need for Next-Generation Leaders
As veteran executives retire, organizations must build a leadership pipeline equipped for this complexity. To sustain growth and innovation, organizations must:
1. Invest in leadership development — mentor mid-level professionals who understand both the mission and the math.
2. Offer competitive compensation — mission matters, but it can’t replace market alignment.
3. Recruit across sectors — attract leaders from private real estate, ESG, and finance who want to adapt their expertise to a social-impact mission.
4. Elevate purpose as culture — communicate the profound community outcomes behind every deal.
The future of affordable housing depends on leaders who can balance the head and the heart, turning good intentions into grounded execution. If you’re part of this mission, whether in finance, development, policy, or community impact, now is the time to invest in leadership that connects purpose to performance.
About the Author
Sun-Sun de Swaan
Partner
sdeswaan@mbexec.com
Sun-Sun de Swaan serves as a Partner at McDermott + Bull in the New York office where she leads the firm’s real estate practice. Sun-Sun brings over 20 years of real estate experience and works with clients across the sector, including firms involved with investment, development, financing, and property management. She has experience in a variety of functions across the industry, shaping her expertise and ability to deliver best-in-class talent to clients across the board.