Changemaker: Grace Buckley
Grace Buckley helped to pioneer the implementation of the federal Affordable Housing Tax Credit in Colorado, ushering in a new era for the development of affordable housing. As CHFA’s Director of Rental Housing when the Act that created the tax credit became law in 1986, she oversaw the nascent program and helped establish a strong foundation for success in the state.
Grace had her first experience in the housing field in the 1970s while working for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Among the focus areas of the Commission were methods to address housing discrimination. “The civil rights work touched on poverty and neighborhood health. It built a groundwork for my passion for housing, residents, and urban development,” she said.
After moving to Denver in 1978, Grace pursued a graduate degree at the University of Colorado Denver in urban planning while working for the city in their Community Development Department. The Department had been awarded a grant from HUD for neighborhood redevelopment, which included revitalizing housing units. “I began to learn how you make things work in housing development,” Grace said. This experience led her to an opportunity to work at CHFA where she began in a program development position and quickly moved to the multifamily rental area of CHFA’s work. “At the time,” Grace recalled, “CHFA was still developing ways to work in the multifamily space that were different and creative. We had a mainstream role of a bond issuer.”
CHFA’s role grew after the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Among other provisions, the Act created a new tax credit to be allocated to developers to encourage housing production of units specifically for low-income residents with state housing finance agencies acting as the allocating authorities. “At first, the community didn’t understand the credits and the investor field was nonexistent,” Grace said. “There were a lot of unknowns. Nobody knew who was going to buy the credits, or what the impact would be, or what it meant for the tax status of bank or corporation.”
Grace worked to educate the investor community while emphasizing the potential community impact opportunities. “It was a tough sell,” Grace recalled, “and there was a huge challenge of balancing the public purpose of the tax credits while demonstrating that providing equity in a multifamily affordable rental housing development was valuable to investors.”
To combat these challenges, Grace collaborated with other state housing finance agencies to guide the policy framework. “Nationally, it was very interesting to see how different states went about their tax credit programs,” Grace said. Together, the group developed best practices and learned from each other while sharing how each of their respective organizations addressed the needs of their states. Under Grace’s leadership and with the support of the Board of Directors and then-Executive Director David Herlinger, CHFA emphasized a statewide approach that addressed housing needs in both urban and rural areas, from the Front Range to the Western Slope.
In the first few years of the program, CHFA had trouble allocating the full amount of credit it was provided. “It was very challenging because the price of the credits was very low, so the program wasn’t meeting its goals in terms of effectiveness,” Grace said. “Nowadays, the demand for credit far outweighs supply. The program has come a long way and been instrumental in the production of thousands of affordable units.”
After leaving CHFA in 1999, Grace continued to work in affordable housing with Mercy Housing. Her role was in preservation of expiring use of subsidized housing working on large developments in Washington state as well as Chicago. In addition, Grace served on the Board of Directors of Denver Housing Authority for 10 years. “I brought the affordable housing finance and development lens to the Board that I gained from my experience at CHFA,” Grace said. During her tenure on the Board, she served as Chair and guided strategic direction of the organization through dozens of affordable housing developments.
Throughout her career spanning four decades, Grace described her ongoing passion for affordable housing and community development. “I’ve learned to develop partnerships and relationships to form a team that can make something happen,” she said. “You learn a lot in every experience and it’s satisfying to see what comes of it even with the complexity and the challenges.” She is inspired by the dedication of her fellow members of the affordable housing community. “There are a lot of people that gravitate toward the affordable housing world that are terrific. That meant a lot to me throughout my career. Everybody is invariably committed to what they do.”
Looking back on the growth of the Housing Tax Credit program that she helped to implement in Colorado, Grace is proud of her contribution in building its success. “It’s very rewarding to be a part of,” she said, “and to see how important the tax credit is in the community and experience the industry that has grown around it. Colorado has exerted real leadership.”