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Sandra B. Henriquez

Assistant Secretary for HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing

Sandra Brooks Henriquez was sworn in as the Assistant Secretary for HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing on Monday, June 22, 2009 after being unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As part of the senior leadership team at HUD, Henriquez oversees the nation’s public housing and rental assistance programs that assist approximately 3.2 million low-income families across the U.S. She is also responsible for the Department’s Native American and Native Hawaiian programs, which serve 562 federally recognized tribes.

For 13 years, Henriquez was the Administrator and Chief Executive Officer of the Boston Housing Authority (BHA), one of the nation’s largest public housing authorities. At BHA, she was responsible for an 850-person workforce, a $280 million budget and nearly 25,000 units of public housing and other affordable housing serving approximately 10 percent of the city's population.

Henriquez’s leadership made BHA one of the leaders among housing authorities for redeveloping old public housing developments into thriving mixed-income communities using HUD’s HOPE VI Revitalization program. She also created housing strategies and programs to help the homeless and introduced green principles into BHA business practices and building maintenance and construction. She also used Energy Performance Contracting to retrofit the housing authority’s outdated heating systems, making them state-of-the-art, more efficient and less costly to operate. These upgrades not only saved the housing authority money, they created better living environments for the low-income residents.

Henriquez, formerly the President and Director of the Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA), has dedicated her life to housing others. Prior to working for BHA, she worked for Maloney Properties, Inc., a full service real estate property management firm specializing in the delivery of services to resident-controlled and non-profit sponsored housing. Before Maloney Properties, she was the Director of Housing Management and Tenant Services for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ Department of Housing and Community Development.

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