NH&RA Spring Developers Forum (2025)

Kanan Ajmera

Peter Barker

Peter Barker is President and Chief Executive Officer of Barker Management, Incorporated (BMI) and Valued Housing. Barker Management provides over four decades of quality affordable management services to 10,000 units in over 150 developments. The portfolio includes family, senior and special needs housing in California and Nevada. Barker Management has extensive experience working with a variety of regulatory agencies and funding sources for the developments under management and has increased their portfolio in PSH and Homeless Veteran Housing. Valued Housing, an affiliated development firm with over twenty-five affordable housing complexes and several in development. The portfolio includes preservation and new construction projects with an emphasis on infill and special needs developments.

Peter sits on several non-profit boards focusing on homeless and affordable housing issues and values the diversity of Barker Management and Valued Housing staff and the community they serve.

Ben Barker

Mr. Barker is a registered municipal advisor with over 10 years of bond program administration experience serving conduit issuers to facilitate taxable and tax-exempt bond financings. Mr. Barker's previous experience covers all aspects of Mortgage Backed Securitizations. He began his career as an analyst with UBS and continued on to become an AVP of Secondary Markets at a boutique investment banking firm. To date, he has participated in over $20 billion of structured financings. Mr. Barker is a Board Member for the California Affordable Housing Development Association and Oscar De La Hoya Foundation. He has earned a spot on the Top 50 list of Next Generation of Public Finance. Mr. Barker is a regular speaker in the public finance circuit. He has led the highly regarded “Everything You Wanted to Know About Bonds but Were Afraid to Ask” Panel for the last 9 years at the nation’s largest affordable housing conference. Mr. Barker received a BS in Finance and Business Management from Brigham Young University and an AA in Arts and Sciences from BYUI and has been certified by the Investment Banking Institute.

Tiffani Barletta

Tiffani Barletta, a Principal of CSG Advisors, advises public housing agencies on affordable housing policies and initiatives. Tiffani offers 17 years of consulting experience. Since joining CSG in 2015, Tiffani has focused her practice on Development Advising, predominately helping public housing agencies navigate the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Tiffani is guided by her passion for preserving and creating affordable housing and improving resident opportunities.

Tiffani manages RAD projects from inception to closing. She has worked on over forty RAD transactions across the country, advising housing authorities on RAD components from application submission to closing. She has submitted RAD applications for over 63,000 units and closed over two dozen RAD transactions. Tiffani has experience with various RAD elements including Transfers of Assistance, de minimis reductions, changes in unit configurations, and delayed HAP contracts. Through the RAD program, Tiffani has assisted housing authorities in converting over 1,800 public housing units to the Section 8 Project-Based Vouchers (PBV) and Project Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) programs. These RAD transactions have involved a wide range of complex financing, including 4% and 9% Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), conventional and FHA insured mortgages.

Tiffani has closed affordable multi-family housing projects involving scattered sites, replacement units, and build first strategies. She has closed two dozen Low Income Housing Tax Credit projects. Tiffani has successfully prepared LIHTC and Tax-Exempt Bond applications for housing authorities throughout the country. Tiffani worked on the first application under the Section 22 Streamlined Voluntary Conversion notice 2019-05. She has also assisted with Choice Neighborhoods initiative applications.
Tiffani advises some of the largest housing authorities in the country, including Philadelphia. She manages projects throughout the country, including housing agencies in California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, and Michigan.

Prior to joining CSG, Tiffani worked for nine years at NERA Economic Consulting where she assisted with a variety of projects in the Securities & Finance, Mass Torts & Product Liability, White Collar, and Labor practices.

Ari Beliak

Ari Beliak is President and CEO of Merritt Community Capital. Throughout his career, Beliak has been instrumental in the development of over 10,000 affordable housing units. Under Ari’s leadership, Merritt has closed the two largest funds in its history (Fund 23 and Fund 24) and, cumulatively, almost 40% of the $1.4 billion in capital raised over the past 30 years. Ari has grown the organization and granted over $2 million to Commitment to California.

Prior to Merritt, Ari spent seven years as Senior Vice President for Bank of America, leading the $2.2 billion financing of the nation’s largest affordable housing project, the San Francisco Rental Assistance Demonstration. Ari’s rich background includes practicing law for Sidley Austin, serving in various real estate finance capacities at Wells Fargo Bank, and consulting for A.T. Kearney.

Ari, recognized in 2016 as a “Top 40 under 40” in the San Francisco Business Journal, received his undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley before earning a joint JD/MBA from the UC Hastings College of Law and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

Peter Bell

Peter Bell is the CEO of NH&RA and has served as the association's top executive and chief strategist since 1976. Mr. Bell is also publisher of Tax Credit Advisor, a monthly magazine focused on real estate development utilizing various federal tax credits, including the LIHTC, historic rehabilitation tax credit and the New Markets Tax Credit. Mr. Bell also serves as executive director of the Telluride Society for Jazz, a Colorado nonprofit organization that hosts the annual Telluride Jazz Festival each August.

Andrea Bell

Dudley Benoit

Dudley Benoit is a senior managing director and head of LIHTC Investor Relations on the Walker & Dunlop Affordable Equity team, based in Calabasas, California. In his role, he leads the Investor Relations group and is responsible for investment placement strategies that facilitate company growth. Mr. Benoit has more than 25 years of experience in community development and real estate finance.

Prior to joining Alliant Capital, Mr. Benoit worked at Santander Bank as a senior vice president and director of community development finance. He also held senior management positions at JPMorgan Chase in commercial real estate multifamily lending, community development banking, and the New Markets Tax Credit units during his 16-year career at the firm. He currently serves on the boards of Reinvestment Fund, Primary Care Development Corporation, and the Affordable Housing Tax Credit Coalition.

Mr. Benoit earned his bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University, as well as a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a master of business administration from Columbia University.

Geoffrey C. Brown

Geoffrey C. Brown joined USA Properties Fund in 1989 and became President and Chief Executive Officer of USA Properties Fund in 1997. USA Properties Fund develops, through construction or acquisition and rehabilitation, affordable housing for families and seniors in California and Nevada. In addition, its subsidiary, USA Multifamily Management, manages its own projects in a portfolio consisting of approximately 11,000 units.

Before joining USA in 1989, Mr. Brown was employed at Sanwa Bank California in the Real Estate Industries Division. During his tenure at Sanwa Bank as Vice President and Manager of the Pasadena Real Estate Office, he oversaw the construction lending activity for residential and commercial loans. Mr. Brown earned a BA in Economics from Willamette University and an MBA degree in Finance from the University of Washington. Mr. Brown is a licensed Real Estate Broker and Contractor in California and currently serves on the boards of California Housing Consortium, California Council of Affordable Housing, the National Housing and Rehabilitation Association and the National Multi Housing Council.

Debbie Burkart

Deborah Burkart is a Managing Director of Supportive Housing at National Equity Fund, Inc. (NEF), a leading non-profit syndicator of low-income housing tax credits. Since joining NEF in 1992, she has underwritten supportive housing and affordable assisted living investments for NEF's funds for a wide range of populations facing barriers. Because of her efforts, NEF was an early investor in Affordable Assisted Living and oversaw NEF’s investment in 34 projects. In addition, Burkart has assisted in securing more than $1 billion in NEF tax credit equity for supportive housing projects with set asides for veterans experiencing homelessness in 17 states. In 2012, she founded and directs LISC-NEF’s Bring Them HOMES raising predevelopment grant funding for veterans supportive housing projects.

In 2009, she became a National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) board member and in 2016 joined Corporation for Supportive Housing’s (CSH) national board. She is also on LA Family Housing’s and LAFHBuilds boards. In 2017, she was profiled by Affordable Housing Finance as one of ten women who have reached the top of the affordable housing industry and inducted into the Affordable Housing Hall of Fame in 2022.

She graduated from Duke University and received master’s degrees in business administration and city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jessica Captanis

As Vice President at WNC, Jessica Captanis facilitates the tax credit equity syndicator’s origination and acquisition efforts in the western United States. Mrs. Captanis brings with her 9 years of tenure at WNC and 14 years of experience in the affordable housing industry.

Prior to joining WNC, Mrs. Captanis was responsible for underwriting, analyzing, closing, converting, and managing tax credit transactions both as a community lending banker and an affordable housing developer.

Mrs. Captanis holds a bachelor of science degree in business administration with a concentration in finance from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.

Cecile Chalifour

Michael Costa

Mr. Costa is responsible for overseeing all activities at Highridge Costa Companies, which include Highridge Costa Housing Partners, LLC (“HCHP”) and Highridge Costa Investors, LLC (“HCI”). The companies specialize in the development, financing, construction, syndication and asset management of affordable and mixed-income housing for families and seniors throughout the U.S., utilizing low-income housing tax credits, as well as other types of public and private financing.
The companies were created in 1994 by Mr. Costa initially under the flag of KBHome (Kaufman and Broad Multihousing Group, Inc.) then were sold to Simpson Housing (Simpson Housing Solutions, LLC) in 2000 where Mr. Costa became a partial owner and continued to run the companies. In 2010 in a joint venture between Mr. Costa, President and CEO of the companies, and Highridge Partners, a diversified, privately held investment firm, they acquired the companies from Simpson Housing.
Over the past 22 years, Mr. Costa and his team have been responsible for developing and growing a portfolio of over 27,000 housing units in more than 275 communities throughout the U.S. and Puerto Rico, all of which were financed using tax credits. In addition, Mr. Costa is known as a pioneer in the development of affordable independent senior apartments having overseen the development of over 19,000 units since the early 1980’s. Currently HCI/HCHP owns and operates approximately 8,400 units (84 communities) of affordable independent senior apartments making HCI/HCHP one of, if not the largest owner in the U.S. of independent senior apartment communities.
Throughout a career spanning nearly four decades, Mr. Costa has supervised the development and financing of nearly 40,000 units of multifamily affordable and market-rate housing through such programs as Section 42 Low Income Housing Tax Credits, Tax Exempt Bond Financing, 501(c)3 Tax Exempt Bonds, Tax Increment Bonds, and numerous state and local financing programs.
Through his extensive utilization of both federal and various state tax credit programs over the years, Mr. Costa has gained a wealth of specialized knowledge of the intricacies of tax credit financing and syndication. He is considered an industry expert in tax credit-based development, syndication and asset management, including the myriad of compliance issues associated with owning and operating tax credit properties.
Mr. Costa was named the Freddie Mac Multifamily Builder of the Year in 2000 and the 1999 Builder of the Year by Multifamily Executive magazine. He currently serves as a member of the Board of the NAHB Multifamily Leadership Board, the California Housing Consortium, the California Council for Affordable Housing and recently completed a term of seven years as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Community Financial Resource Center of Los Angeles (now R.I.S.E. Financial Pathways), one of California’s most active nonprofit CDFIs. He also holds the CAASH (Certified Active Adult Specialist in Housing) designation from the NAHB.
Mr. Costa earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, and also holds a general contractor's license from the State of California.

Austin Divino

Austin Divino is a Senior Vice President of R4 Capital based in the firm’s Austin, TX office. With a focus on the acquisition of affordable housing tax credit properties, he has closed a wide variety of LIHTC transactions throughout the country, representing over $450 million of net invested equity, facilitating the construction of over 1,560 units and the rehab of over 3,000 units of quality affordable housing.

Prior to joining R4 Capital in 2016, Austin worked as a financial analyst and later as an Associate Asset Manager at a real estate investment company specializing in direct-investment funds and asset management, recapitalization and restructuring services. He negotiated the disposition of more than $50 million in assets and managed a portfolio valued at $150 million. Previously, Austin started his career as a tax consultant for two local accounting firms.

Austin is a member of TAAHP and is a Housing Credit Certified Professional and he is a frequent speaker at Novogradac, NH&RA, TAAHP, MAAHP, LAAHP and LHC.

Austin earned his BBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

Sharon Dworkin Bell

Sharon Dworkin Bell is a co-founder of Dworbell, Inc. which manages National Housing & Rehabilitation Association (NH&RA) and publishes Tax Credit Adviser magazine.

She is Executive Director of the Council of Large Affordable Housing Owners (CLAHO), a forum where top executives from industry leading companies share best practices regarding the development and ownership of affordable rental housing.

Sharon serves as Chair of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta’s Affordable Housing Advisory Council. The Council provides guidance to the Bank’s Board of Directors and staff on how best to utilize the resources of that financial institution to advance the production of affordable single-family and multifamily housing.

She is President of the David Reznick Foundation, dedicated to honoring the memory of a much beloved leader in the affordable housing industry by providing tuition assistance to deserving college students who are pursuing a course of study that may lead to a career in affordable housing.

Ms. Bell is a long-time member of the Advisory Board for Greenline Ventures, a financial services company that provides creative and flexible capital to foster community development and economic growth.

Her previous experience includes her tenure at the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) where she was Senior Vice President of Multifamily and 55+ Housing. In that role, she directed advocacy, research and education resources for the benefit of developers of affordable and market-rate apartments as well as age-restricted single-family home communities.

Rebecca Franklin

Yusef Freeman

Yusef Freeman is a Partner at The Vistria Group in Real Estate. Prior to joining Vistria, Yusef served as the Sr. Managing Director of California for the Jonathan Rose Companies, leading ground-up development and acquisitions on the West Coast out of the Companies’ Oakland, CA office. He served as a Vice President of Investments in the transactions group at PGIM Real Estate, sourcing investment opportunities for the real estate private equity funds of the company. In addition, he was the Managing Director for McCormack Baron Salazar, leading west coast operations and new business development nationally for the company, and a Graduate Program lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley.

Freeman holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley where he spent one year studying abroad at the American University in Cairo, Egypt; a Master of Public Administration from New York University, where he majored in public finance as a Public Policy and International Affairs Fellow; and an alum of the Center for Urban Redevelopment Excellence Fellowship Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the board of the National Housing Trust and as an advisor to Catalyst Housing.

Lauro Garcia

Mr. Garcia is a veteran investment banker (40 years) and a nationally recognized expert in tax-exempt and taxable multifamily housing bond financing. He has completed over $10 billion dollars in apartment financings and has been responsible for developing several innovative private credit enhancement programs for multifamily new construction and rehabilitation projects.

Prior to joining Stern Brothers as a Senior Vice President/ Managing Director in 2017, Mr. Garcia worked at Hutchinson Shockey Erley & Co as a Senior Vice President from 1996 to 2016. Mr. Garcia was both a principal in his own firm, Bancroft, Garcia & Lavell, from 1986 to 1993 and subsequently a Director in public finance for Merrill Lynch from 1993 to 1996.

In 1986, he formed BG&L with Messieurs Bancroft and Lavell in Los Angeles, California and helped develop the corporation into the largest and most successful Hispanic owned investment banking firm in the western United States. Mr. Garcia’s expertise and experience in tax-exempt finance includes revenue bonds, tax-allocation bonds, assessment district bonds, general obligation bonds, single and multifamily mortgage revenue bonds, variable rate bonds, certificates of participation, tax increment financings, Mello-Roos bonds, limited partnership offerings and refundings. Projects have included: public buildings; highways; redevelopment projects; single and multifamily housing; 501c3 Housing Bonds; water and wastewater facilities; hospitals and other health care facilities; assessment district infra-structure for public agencies and developers; commercial and industrial facilities; and shopping centers.

Mr. Garcia is a member of the State Bar of Arizona. He holds a graduate degree from Arizona State University, College of Law (1982) and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology (1979) from the same University. Additionally, he is a founding member of the “Hispanic Business” Scholarship Fund.
Mr. Garcia holds several certifications with the National Association of Securities Dealers: General Securities Principal; Municipal Securities Principal; and General Securities Representative.

Isabel Jordan

Isabel Jordan is a Senior Product Manager for AppFolio's Affordable Housing product development team, specializing in HUD Project-Based Rental Assistance. She has worked in property management tech for 8 years and the Affordable Housing industry for 4 years. She has a passion for bringing innovation to the Affordable Housing industry to make qualifying residents and managing compliance simple for owners. In her free time, she enjoys playing soccer and trying out new restaurants in sunny San Diego where she resides.

Ken Lombard

Mr. Lombard is responsible for the overall direction of BRIDGE Housing, a leading nonprofit developer, owner and manager of over 13,500 units of affordable housing valued at over $3 billion.

Before joining BRIDGE in November 2021, Mr. Lombard was an original Board member when Seritage Growth Properties (NYSE: SRG) went public in 2015 and subsequently served as Seritage’s EVP and COO. Most recently he served as Seritage’s Special Advisor. Seritage is a self-administered and self-managed REIT with properties totaling approximately 39 million square feet of space across 49 states and Puerto Rico.

Mr. Lombard’s extensive experiences in urban investing date back to his groundbreaking partnership with Earvin “Magic” Johnson. During Mr. Lombard’s 12-year tenure as President and Partner of Johnson Development Corporation and Co-Managing Partner of the Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds, he negotiated numerous partnerships that brought entertainment complexes, coffee houses, restaurants, and retail centers to urban communities in more than 65 cities and 17 states.

Mr. Lombard has held other senior roles with leading companies focused on urban renewal and redevelopment. He was President of MacFarlane Partners, an investment management firm that acquires, develops, and manages real estate assets on behalf of pensions and institutional investors. While at Capri Capital Partners, he served as Vice Chairman, Partner, and head of investments, as well as President of the Capri Urban Fund, which invested more than $1 billion in in major U.S. markets. Immediately prior to joining Capri, Mr. Lombard served as President of Starbucks Entertainment, where he provided vision and strategy for the group’s entertainment initiatives.

Mr. Lombard holds a B.A. in Communication from the University of Washington. He has served on the Board of Directors of a variety of public companies, national nonprofit groups and government commissions.

Brandon McCall

John Mimms

Beth Mullen

Beth Mullen, CPA, is the National Director of the Firm’s Affordable Housing Industry Practice and a member of the Firm’s Tax Practice Executive Committee. She has more than 30 years of experience providing consulting, tax, and accounting services to real estate owners and developers. A significant portion of Beth’s time is devoted to helping clients to facilitate transactions by structuring public/private partnerships that are financed in part by Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the federal and state historic tax credit programs, the New Markets Tax Credit Program, and energy tax credits.
Beth teaches internal and external courses on these tax credits and has published articles in affordable housing and not-for-profit trade magazines. Her extensive knowledge of partnership tax law has been invaluable in resolving allocation, at-risk, exit tax, residual value, and other common partnership problems.

Beth is an industry spokesperson and is a frequently invited speaker at national and local industry trade conferences. She teaches internal and external courses on low-income, New Markets, and historic tax credits and has published articles in several trade magazines.

Julie Mungai

R. Wade Norris

R. Wade Norris is a founding partner at Norris George & Ostrow PLLC. Mr. Norris is widely recognized as one of the country’s leading experts in the field of multifamily housing bond finance. Mr. Norris has over four decades of experience in literally thousands of tax-exempt multifamily housing and other bond financings totaling billions of dollars in every state in the Untied States, primarily as Underwriter’s or Purchaser’s Counsel. Mr. Norris has played a major role in the design and development of the country’s leading bank private placement program, tax exempt short term cash backed bonds used with low rate taxable FHA insured and USDA rural development loans, the Freddie Mac TEL structure, the Fannie Mae M.TEBs structure, and, more recently, the use of tax exempt high yield bonds to create affordable workforce housing for both public and Section 501c3 borrowers.

Mr. Norris has been a frequent speaker panel moderator or speaker member on multifamily housing bond finance over the past 40 years, now speaking at well over a dozen industry-housing conferences each year. Norris’ paper entitled “Introduction to Tax Exempt Multifamily Housing Bonds” is widely regarded as the industry’s leading introductory article on tax exempt multifamily housing bond finance. Mr. Norris is a member of the Georgia State Bar, the Bar of the District of Columbia, the National Association of Bond Lawyers and the American College of Bond Counsel.

Ian Parker

Caleb Roope

Caleb Roope is the owner and CEO of multiple interrelated companies in the areas of development, finance, construction, modular manufacturing and property ownership. He has over 30 years of professional real estate experience with a concentration in affordable housing development, and over his career he has successfully built more than 200 apartment communities for low- and moderate-income families and senior citizens consisting of approximately 20,000 units at an estimated cost of $4.5 billion. Caleb has extensive experience producing assets that combine the resources and priorities of the public and private sectors, such as low-income housing tax credit projects, inclusionary and market-based multifamily housing developments, mixed-use properties and public schools. Highly skilled in accounting, finance, construction oversight, and project management, he is an adept and discerning leader who moves skillfully through financial, political, and other challenges. With a strong and experienced team of specialists supporting him, Caleb completes approximately 20 multifamily and special-purpose projects each year while devoting additional capacity to the affordable housing policy front where he is active at the local, state and federal levels.

Kaitlyn Snyder

Kaitlyn Snyder is the managing director of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association. In addition to overseeing the policy work, Snyder manages the day-to-day operations of the association, coordinates the various councils and organizes event programming.

Prior to becoming managing director, she spent four years serving as policy director working on behalf of members at the state and federal level. She managed a nationwide initiative focused on increasing the use of private activity bonds for multifamily affordable housing development.

Her background is in homeless services, grounded in providing direct services at Project HOME in Philadelphia and Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore followed by advocacy work at the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Housing Conference.

Snyder holds degrees in Social Work including a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania and an undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). She serves on the CORES Advisory Committee for Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future.

Jenny Song

Jenny Song is the Founder and CEO of Infilla, a technology company that makes software tools for municipal planning and building departments to process entitlements and permits faster, more consistently, and more transparently. Jenny has spent 600+ hours with 250+ applicants and government staff in 50+ jurisdictions to build tools that serve all permitting stakeholders and proudly serves customer jurisdictions as varied as El Segundo, Sonoma County, San Francisco, and New York City. She has been a technologist / product manager in both public sector and fast growing tech startups such as Affirm and healthcare.gov. She started her career as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Applied Economics and Management.

Jonathan Taylor

Marina Wiant

Marina was appointed by Treasurer Fiona Ma as the Executive Director of the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee (CDLAC) and the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (CTCAC) in January 2024. Both committees are chaired by Treasurer Ma and play a critical role in financing the construction of affordable rental housing in California.

Prior to her appointment, Marina served since 2012 as Vice President of Government Affairs for the California Housing Consortium (CHC), a statewide, nonpartisan advocate for the production and preservation of housing affordable to low- and moderate-income Californians. At CHC, Marina led a policy and advocacy team that secured the passage of a range of legislation, ballot measures, and budget resources that have transformed the affordable housing industry—including the state’s first permanent source of funding for affordable housing since redevelopment and its last statewide housing bond, as well as groundbreaking legislation that has opened new sites to affordable development and accelerated local approvals.

Prior to joining CHC, Marina worked as a legislative staffer in the California State Assembly and interned with the Assembly Business, Professions, and Consumer Protection Committee.

Marina received her J.D. from Santa Clara University, with an emphasis in international law, and received her B.A. from UCLA, majoring in political science and minoring in Global Studies and Russian Language. She was admitted to the California State Bar in December 2010.