CEO of affordable housing nonprofit cherishes beating the odds

EAH Housing CEO Mary Murtagh

In an industry in which five out of every six projects never get off the ground, Mary Murtagh still loves her job and can laugh about it.

“Affordable housing is Murphy’s Law incarnate,” says Ms. Murtagh, who has been with the affordable housing organization EAH Housing for over twenty five years. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

Mary Murtagh on the balcony of one of EAH’s affordable apartments.

 

As its president and CEO, Ms. Murtagh is the force behind EAH, which has built or renovated nearly 1,400 units of housing in the North Bay, and over 5,000 total in 12 counties and two states- California and Hawaii during her tenure with the San Rafael-based nonprofit. The agency is Marin County’s largest affordable builder, and second-largest in the North Bay to Burbank Housing.

The nonprofit EAH used to be known as Ecumenical Association for Housing, owing to its faith-based roots. The company employs about 350 people, the majority of whom work in Marin County.

Ms. Murtagh grew up in rural New Hampshire, near Dartmouth College. She’s a self-described former hippie, who now loves to build infill developments that are good for the environment. She has an undergraduate degree in art history and philosophy from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and a master’s in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Those degrees, she said, did not prepare her for what she would encounter at a job with the Los Angeles Redevelopment Agency where she grew interested in real estate development – specifically finance.

“Up until then you can kind of picture me as a totally naive rube wandering around with my mouth open,” she said. “The first time I went to New York though, I thought the whole thing was a terrible mistake and a terrible thing to do to the planet. And when I finally started studying real estate finance, it suddenly all became clear … I started to understand the city and urban economics.”

In Los Angeles, Ms. Murtagh became what she says was the translator between the real estate office at the Redevelopment Agency and the Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington. And when the first grant she ever wrote – to expand a Pep Boys in inner city Los Angeles – was funded, Ms. Murtagh said she felt like she was empowered to effect change.

Ms. Murtagh moved to San Francisco in 1984 and worked for a political consulting and market research company. While there she helped orchestrate the approvals for the renovation of the Arlington Hotel, a residence for recovering alcoholics still viewed as a model development in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district.

In 1986, she was hired to direct EAH, an affordable housing organization that at that time was licking its wounds from two money-losing projects and considering getting out of the building business altogether.

EAH Housing CEO Mary Murtagh celebrates the opening of the largest affordable housing solar installation in the nation.

“Obviously, that was a serious issue but I said to them, ‘If you don’t want to build anything, don’t hire me. That would be a mistake for both of us because I love to build things,'” she said. “The smell of sawdust is what makes my day. That and curing concrete.”

Ms. Murtagh set out to make her first big project at the head of the organization a success. She negotiated for two acres on Corte Madera Creek and you can hear the pride in her voice today when she talks about it.

She said 760 people applied for residency in the 28-unit development that turned out “beautifully.”

“Opponents compared it to the Exxon Valdez during the hearings,” she laughs. “And I was getting my feet wet and finding out what opposition meant in Marin County.”

Setbacks are a fact of life when it comes to building almost any kind of housing, including affordable units.

“You have five deals fall through for every one that ever sticks. Maybe more,” she says. “I don’t try and think about that ratio. It’s too discouraging.”

She said in her over 20 years with EAH, affordable housing hasn’t gotten any easier. Getting the approvals is still just as difficult. Opposition is as vocal, if not more. Funding is hard to coordinate and unexpected things change.

CEO Mary Murtagh accepts an award on behalf of EAH Housing.

And just when she says she feels like she’s “trying to sweep the ocean back with a broom,” something encouraging will happen, like the passage Proposition 1C, which opened up $2.9 billion for affordable housing.

Ms. Murtagh said her future attention will be on continuing to strive for a permanent state funding source and more partnerships with private developers.

Marin Supervisors approve plan to enable more affordable housing

This article originally appeared in the Marin IJ.

Mackey Terrace in Novato, by EAH Housing is an example of local-serving affordable housing for seniors.

Marin County supervisors’ approval of the new housing element reflects a forthright answer to one of Marin’s most pressing problems — the lack of affordable housing.
The ramification of the imbalance of local jobs and housing for local jobholders can be seen every weekday on Highway 101. The high cost of housing — and home values and rents are rising — has forced local workers into longer commutes, both in time and distance.
The board’s approval of a seven-year plan to build 378 housing units, most of them affordable, is a sign that the county is prepared to address the imbalance. The political challenge is to make sure the sites detailed in the plan are appropriate and that projects are well-designed and the right size for the setting.

A man voices his opinion at a Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday on the county housing plan. (Frankie Frost — Marin Independent Journal)

It is no surprise that Corte Madera’s 180-unit so-called WinCup apartment complex has been mentioned frequently during county hearings as the kind of development Marin residents don’t want to see. Marin planning has typically favored low-profile, less dense development.
Even the Association of Bay Area Governments, the state-created regional body that sets city and county housing quotas, has pinpointed WinCup as a poor example of local compliance with state housing plans.
Still, Marin has a regional responsibility to do its fair share to meet growing demand for housing.
Approval of the county housing element is an important step in meeting that responsibility.
The county has also agreed with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development that it will do more to provide housing opportunities to protected classes, among them people now priced out of Marin.
That settlement and the county’s state housing quotas were not going to change, whether Supervisor Susan Adams voted for the housing plan or whether the supervisors waited until her successor Damon Connolly was seated in January.
Connolly, it should be noted, has been the supervisor-elect since June and has, rightfully, had months to show leadership on this issue. He has kept a low profile. If he had problems with the 378-unit plan, he should have said something.
Supervisor Steve Kinsey, at Tuesday’s hearing, said “every single project” will be tested by exhaustive public review. Connolly will have a role during that review.
In past years, construction of the number of units detailed in city and county housing plans have fallen far short of the approved numbers. Often, the economics don’t work out for the builder, especially in Marin where the high cost of real estate raises pre-development costs and the need to build more units on that acreage.
Worries that the state is eroding local control over planning decisions are valid. Too many developer-friendly changes have been approved by the Legislature with little awareness of their possible ramifications beyond Sacramento. Our lawmakers and county leaders need to do a much better job of promoting local political awareness about such changes.
But those changes do not exempt Marin from good planning and finding potential sites for building much-needed affordable housing.
Critics of proposed housing plans are quick to draw a line of staunch opposition, without providing concrete alternatives. Much of their criticism has been pointed at design and densities, not necessarily numbers.
Supervisors have promised that design and environmental considerations won’t be short-cut.
Their approval of the new housing plan meets one important commitment. They should keep their promise that plans will be submitted to “exhaustive” public review.

How EAH housing helped one woman reduce her commute by 90 minutes

Moving to Centertown affordable apartments by EAH Housing reduced Anelyn's commute to a 2 minute walk.

Anelyn Gallego, a mother of four grown children, emigrated from the Philippines when she was 15 years old and has since lived in the Bay Area for over 35 years. She currently lives at San Clemente Place, an affordable apartment complex in Corte Madera managed by EAH Housing, with one of her daughters.
Anelyn works for the California Highway Patrol (CHP) in Corte Madera as an office assistant, and her daughter is a preschool teacher in Novato. Anelyn’s current commute is a two-minute walk to the CHP office down the street.
But Anelyn’s commute wasn’t always so short. Until last fall she was living in Fairfield in Solano County and her commute into Marin would sometimes take three hours round-trip. To avoid the worst of the traffic, she would often take evening organ lessons at her church in Novato, returning home at a much later hour.
When the long commutes became unbearable, Anelyn started looking for a home closer to her job with the CHP. She spent a great deal of time looking for an apartment she could afford in Corte Madera with no success.
“This is a very affluent area; I never thought I would be able to afford to live here.”
She then applied for an apartment at San Clemente Place and was accepted. “I am so grateful to be able to live here. The Lord answered my prayers, giving us an affordable, quiet and safe place to live.”
Moving to San Clemente Place has also drastically reduced her carbon footprint.
“The best thing about living here is being close to my job. I’m just two doors down the street and I can walk to work. I don’t have to pay for gas much anymore, because I walk everywhere. I’m walking distance from the supermarket, my gym, restaurants; everything is convenient.”
But she does understand that there are many more like her who need an affordable place to live near their job. “It would be really nice if there were more affordable homes here so people don’t have to drive so far.”