Rod Solomon

Rod has over twenty years’ experience at Hawkins and thirty years’ experience at all levels of government, including as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, Program and Legislative Initiatives or equivalent positions in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Office of Public and Indian Housing, Deputy Executive Director/chief operating officer and Acting Executive Director of the Atlanta Housing Authority, General Counsel, redevelopment director and other key positions of the Boston Housing Authority and Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Robert Taft, Jr.  His local work including leading the Boston Housing Authority out of court-ordered receivership over a dozen years and leading the Atlanta Housing Authority and six decades of national legislative/regulatory work give him a unique perspective.

At Hawkins, Rod has helped PHAs including those in Minneapolis, San Diego, Santa Clara/San Jose, Columbus (OH), Lexington (KY), Cook County (IL), King County (WA), Boulder (CO), Salt Lake City and many others, to preserve or replace their public housing portfolios largely through conversion to long-term Section 8 project-based voucher contracts with substantial additional resources HUD has made available. Rod has shaped and pioneered this approach through legislative, regulatory, and local action. He has helped lead some of the most far-reaching RAD and disposition/replacement portfolio overhauls. These include San Francisco (the largest by dollar volume--$1.4 billion), Cambridge (MA; portfolio-wide, $1 billion) and many others, and several nationally significant initiatives to replace aging public housing fully with new mixed-income communities. Rod also has experience with the Moving to Work (MTW) program to provide PHAs more program flexibility that has led to substantial innovation and redevelopment, which he administered at HUD for its first five years. He represents many of both the thirty-nine original MTW PHAs and “expansion” PHAs added under different rules.

Rod has authored affordable housing legislative and regulatory provisions commencing with basic aspects of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 and continuing through the MTW and other laws between 1990 and 1998; the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 (also known as the Public Housing Reform Act and the most comprehensive overhaul of the public housing and voucher programs in their history), for which he led the Administration’s legislative efforts, coordinated implementation and administered several newly-enacted programs; a proposed Public Housing Reinvestment Initiative in 2002-2003 that was a predecessor to RAD; the HUD appropriations chapter of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act in 2009, covering all HUD programs; RAD in 2011; and critical  project-based voucher provisions in the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016.  His efforts to preserve or replace the public housing stock through disposition and replacement with project-based vouchers and to enhance the voucher program continue to shape the statutory and regulatory tools PHAs can use to assist low-income families.

Rod is devoted to advancing affordable housing and to the success of PHAs, HUD and their partners. He strives for his work to reflect that devotion.

Government Service

• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C. (1994-2003)
• Atlanta Housing Authority (1992-1994)
• Boston Housing Authority (1980-1992)
• Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency (now MassHousing) (1980)
• City of Chelsea (MA) (1976-1979)
• U.S. Senate (Washington, D.C.) (1971-1976)
• U.S. Department of Labor (Washington, D.C.) (1971)