Changemaker: Jennie Rodgers

A champion for affordable housing efforts across the state, Jennie Rodgers and Enterprise Community Partners have helped to make preservation and sustainability a focus for Colorado’s communities.

After studying anthropology in college and starting a job working for a museum, Jennie came to the fast realization that the career path she always saw for herself left her wanting more.

“I realized that sitting in the back room and curating artifacts was not really for me,” she explained. “I’m a people person, and I always had a sense that I wanted to do something to serve. So, I started looking for service opportunities.”

This led her to the Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) program, where she found an opportunity with the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless. The program placed her with a nonprofit organization in Durango that was working to establish a shelter to serve those experiencing homelessness in the region. In this role, she began to fall in love with serving people through affordable housing.

“From there, I moved to Denver and spent 11 years working for the Colorado Division of Housing,” said Jennie. “That afforded me the opportunity to build my skills, to understand how housing was financed, and allowed me to travel to places all over the state working alongside partners on a variety of projects.”

As a mother of three young children, Jennie transitioned to consulting, which gave her more flexibility as a parent while also providing her the chance to work beyond Colorado and across the Western United States. She worked as a consultant for 15 years performing market analyses for tax credit developments, conducting housing needs assessments, and securing funding through grant writing.

In 2018, Jennie joined Enterprise Community Partners, where her current role is Vice President of Rocky Mountain and Tribal Nations and Rural Communities Markets. Her leadership has been instrumental in expanding the organization’s presence from Denver to include the entire state and broader region. The role allows her to leverage her experience working in communities large and small, identifying gaps and needs in the affordable housing ecosystem.

“As a national intermediary, we’re always asking how we can advance the field and invest in ideas that are ruminating but that our nonprofit partners who are doing the work on the ground may not have the time or capacity to invest in,” Jennie explained.

One key focus area for Enterprise is affordable housing preservation. This has become a topic of increasing importance in the industry in recent years, particularly as rising housing costs have displaced Coloradans from their longtime communities, and an increasing number of developments supported during the first decade of the federal Housing Tax Credit program have reached the end of their 30-year affordability period.

“It’s been a long journey to get housing preservation to the table, and we still have a long way to go to figure out how to preserve what we need to,” explained Jennie. “If we are going to increase the overall number of affordable housing units in Colorado, we need to keep those we currently have. We’ve been working to develop trainings and resources for our partners, to gather the data that show where we should focus our efforts, and to make sure the financing tools we have available can be deployed for preservation.”

Jennie emphasized the importance of addressing housing preservation in collaboration with other partners. Coordination and communication are crucial for sharing information and for responding quickly to opportunities to preserve affordable properties as they arise. This is particularly important for a state like Colorado, whose real estate is often attractive to investors, she said.

Another area receiving significant attention and investment from Enterprise is climate resilience in multifamily affordable rental housing developments. This term refers to a variety of emerging technologies and best practices that ensure that developments remain safe and sustainable for residents amidst a changing, warming climate and an increase in extreme weather events such as dangerous heat, wildfires, flooding, and poor air quality.

“This is an area that Enterprise is really digging in on, and we are focused on developing technical assistance resources and tools to Colorado,” Jennie explained. “This will include resources for new construction as well as retrofitting existing buildings. We see this as an emerging opportunity for all of us to work together on.”

Reflecting on a 30-year career in affordable housing, Jennie said she has witnessed significant changes, and she was quick to point out just how far the state has come, though the needs and challenges persist.

“Resources have expanded, and our sophistication and innovation have really grown,” she said. “It’s exciting to see where we’ve come. It’s also daunting to think about how many households continue to struggle, and how housing needs have gotten even more acute.”

She remains encouraged by connecting with partners and witnessing firsthand the impact that safe, decent, affordable housing has on individuals and families. Seeing new and innovative ideas come to fruition inspires her as well.

“Seeing the new ways people are addressing these challenging problems inspires me in the work and it really gives me hope.”