Grace Daniels

I work with a non-profit affordable housing developer that serves the Gulf Coast region, spanning from Texas and Louisiana all the way down to Florida. We provide affordable housing and do a lot of work with local public housing authorities to convert their existing housing stock that may be in need of repair or rehabilitation. We also provide supportive social services, partnering with different organizations to set up our tenants with health services, financial literacy, after-school care, and different things that help make life a little bit easier for folks that may be burdened by different costs of living. My area of expertise within the organization is on the design and construction side of things, making sure that the plans we're working through with the architects and sending to permitting are not just feasible, but are keeping those tenants in mind and making livable units. I'm always thinking about the needs of the population we're serving - some of our tenants may have multi-generational households, single-parent households, or be coming straight from a situation of homelessness and need that transitional space. A typical day can look like anything from feasibility analysis to being on-site with a hard hat walking through units as they're getting built, from calls with bankers and lawyers to site walks addressing problems on the ground. Within the past year, my team has been able to close deals on upwards of 700 units. My team is very small, less than 10 people, and the amount we're able to achieve just by working together and using our different expertise is something I'm very proud of. Housing is not an easy thing to build, which is why there is such a shortage of it, and the fact that we're able to produce that output with just the small team that we have is incredibly meaningful to me.