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New Executive Director Larry Swanson

On September 15, 2005, ACTION-Housing's Transition Committee recommended the appointment of Lawrence A. Swanson as the agency's next Executive Director to take effect at the time of Jon Zimmer's retirement on June 30, 2006. The Committee cited the following reasons for this recommendation:

• Larry's extraordinary work over the past 27 years as the Director of Housing Development and Research and Deputy Executive Director, and his deep commitment to the agency's mission;
  
  
• The leadership he has provided in guiding all of ACTIONHousing's physical development programs during this 27 year period:
  
  
• His superb reputation among a broad cross-section of key public and private sector leaders involved in affordable housing at the local, state and federal levels;
  
  
• The strong support Larry would receive from the entire staff of ACTION-Housing in this new leadership position; and
  
  
• Larry's full commitment to maintaining ACTION-Housing's holistic approach to address the multiple problems and needs of our clients.

The recommendation of the Transition Committee was unanimously approved and enthusiastically supported by every member of the Board of Directors. After the vote, Peter Kaplan, President of the Board, noted that the appointment of Larry Swanson to this leadership position was important not only for ACTION-Housing but also for the entire Pittsburgh community because of Larry's special talents and his ability to work effectively with everyone in the development community to advance affordable housing.

Larry's selection as Executive Director was rooted in the close partnership that he and Jon Zimmer had developed and maintained through their years together and their determination

To build a truly great organization with the capacity to make a real difference in the lives of highly vulnerable families and individuals. They functioned as full partners in this endeavor with Larry focusing primarily on physical development activities and Jon on social services. Together they have created a large regional organization with a broad range of housing programs, supportive services, asset building programs and workforce development activities that collectively serve more than 12,000 high-risk people each year.

Larry's special value to the Pittsburgh community is based in part on his active involvement in other professional organizations that focus on state and federal housing issues. He was a founding member and past president of the Pennsylvania Low Income Housing Coalition, now the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania, and continues to serve this organization as an active member of the Board of Directors and President of its fundraising affiliate. He also served on the advisory committee that developed the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program for Pennsylvania and helped develop the Pennsylvania Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program (HEMAP) in 1983. HEMAP has since enabled more than 35,000 unemployed and underemployed people across the state to save their homes from foreclosure.

On the national level Larry played a leadership role with the Housing Partnership Network in creating the Housing Partnership Insurance Company (HPI) which is jointly owned by ACTION-Housing and 17 other large regional non-profit housing organizations across the country. Larry now serves as the Chairman of the board of directors of HPI which is providing property and liability insurance for more than 40,000 housing units owned by the above organizations.

Prior to joining ACTION-Housing Larry worked at the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs in program and policy development and taught undergraduate courses at Penn State University. Earlier in his career he worked as a land use planning consultant and also served as a service coordinator for a job development and placement program in Dayton, Ohio. Larry earned a bachelor of arts degree in political science and a master's degree in regional planning at Penn State. He is married to D'Ann Swanson, a program officer at the Grable Foundation and former Director of Finance for the City of Pittsburgh. Larry and D'Ann are City of Pittsburgh residents and have two children, Lawrence, a 2002 graduate of Penn State, and Katie, a junior at Mary Washington University College in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Introducing Our New Executive Director 29.