Rod Solomon

Rod helps public housing authorities and their partners navigate and maximize the use of governmental programs and private resources in support of affordable housing.  He has over 14 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’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 in other executive positions of the Boston Housing Authority and Legislative Assistant to U.S. Senator Robert Taft, Jr.

At Hawkins, among many varied initiatives, Rod has helped Public Housing Authorities including those in San Diego, Santa Clara/San Jose, Columbus (OH), King County (WA), Boulder (CO), Salt Lake City and numerous others, to reposition their public housing portfolios with substantial additional resources.  He is involved in key roles in some of the most far-reaching RAD portfolio overhauls, often accomplished with substantial supplementation of RAD revenues, including those in San Francisco (the largest by dollar volume--$1.4 billion), Cambridge (MA)  and others, and in several nationally significant initiatives to replace aging public housing fully with new mixed-income communities.  Rod also has extensive experience with the Moving to Work (MTW) program that he administered at HUD for its first five years.  He represents many MTW agencies on various implementation issues, helped several agencies be selected for MTW and assisted MTW agencies as a group with HUD MTW agreement extension discussions.

Rod has authored key affordable housing legislative and regulatory provisions throughout his career, 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, for which he led the Administration’s legislative efforts, coordinated implementation and administered several newly-enacted programs or initiatives; 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; RAD in 2011; and a series of project-based voucher provisions in the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016.

Rod is devoted to the advancement of 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)